Well it's our first day without rain and being in Auckland I'm not complaining about rain, the garden did need it afterall, but it's not so fun having to weed and train unruly climbers, vines and tomatoes whilst getting rather cold and wet.
I wanted to share that my first sunflower has bloomed and whilst other gardeners may not do a little dance like me when their sunflower opens I openly admit I did because it's my first SUCCESSFUL one! Woo Hoo! (yes the neighbours saw me and think I'm completely bonkers - thats okay). I am trying to grow a big plot of sunflowers as I read that they can be a sacrifical crop for stink bugs and alike so as to hopefully keep them off my vege patch.
My biggest hurdle to date has been pests (insect variety) in the garden, they have been munching on everything I have been trying to grow... so out came the Yates arsenal (more on that in another post). I do my best not to use sprays as I want my garden to have that happy balance of just enough beneficials to keep the nasties under control. With that in mind I have planted lots of flowers and plants to attract beneficial bugs and even put up a bug hotel. I also placed in my garden lots of bird houses, feeders and bird baths in an attempt to encourage birds to visit, hoping they would pick more on the bugs and less on my veges.
Well my plan worked a little too well! I have a family of blackbirds and song thrushes who have a built their nests in my plum tree. They have made themselves so much at home in my little utopia for them that they are digging up my well mulched beds looking for meals and have become so familiar that they have worked out how to remove my bird netting from my strawberries (now gone) and go inside my greenhouse and gobble up my raspberries. Arghhh!
Well apparently my moaning about this worked a treat! After watching one of the ru Grew (thank you Ruth!) YouTube vlogs where I saw her use of conduit pipes on her fence for supporting netting over her berries and showing it to my father-in-law there was a little sparkle in his eye. As you can see from my attached photo, he took that idea and ran with it in a BIG way and now I feel confident that there is no chance of the birds getting to my blueberries (yes, I'm feeling a little smug - like I just might win this battle yet!).
Happy Growing ;)
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