Dying to plant cabbages in the heat of Summer?

Well, my clever neighbour, Haklyka, came up with a great plan one day. Between the two sisters, they built a giant cage with a very tidy netting over it. When everyone elses cabbages are being devoured by the white butterfly caterpillers, she grew the most perfectly amazing cabbages. I was very luckly to be given one of them. Even the most annoying aphids couldn't get near it.


I believe the cost of the netting came to NZ$28. Another way to get around this is to use recycled window netting although it will probably last one season. But then, there are always someone willing to part with their curtain netting. Note that she had to crawl from under the netting to get in there, so it's good to think about accessing the plants. Also, I think there "Net cage" only need to be half the height.

I made 3 bottles of sauerkraut from the cabbage and gave her a bottle.

The helpers in the garden

The Spring plantings have all finished and I'm doing the second round of planting for the summer season. And the chookies are such good workers that I really can't imagine gardening without them.

The chookies clear, prepare, fertilize and mulch the veg beds so well and quick that within 3 days the veg beds are ready for planting. To achieve that, all I need to do is to move the chook tractor to the target veg bed, and give them the barley straws on the 2nd day and to think up plants to plant at the end of the three day. How difficult is that?

They were under my Royal gala apple trees for 2 weeks, and so far the apples on the tree are looking excellent without any work from me. Maybe they had taken care of the cothling moths.

My only concern: soon I'll be running out for places for the chookies to scratch...
Possible solution: maybe I can load them out to gardeners who want to clear their slug and snail populations!!

Cutworm

Judith, my gardening buddy, found this in her garden yesterday. It is a larval stage of a moth and yes it cuts down your seedlings in the dead of night. So, if found, feed it to your chookies or kill it.

Organic Fungal (RUST) Control

There are rust on a patch of vegetation. From my research for an organic combat, Neem Oil and Garlic sprays are two natural fungal control for Rust.

Garlic Spray:

1 garlic bulb
1 quart water
crush the garlic bulb, place in a pan of water. bring to boil then turn off heat.let mixture cool. Strain out garlic.Pour liquid into spray bottle and spray affected areas of plants. repeat as`necessary.

Garlic is known to fight many types of disease causing fungi, including mildew,gray mold, rust. Garlic has not only been shown to fight fungi, but it also has repellent qualities for other diseases and insects. Plant Garlic bulbs next to your roses, and you should not have any problems with aphids.

Milk is another combat but it works a little differently from Neem Oil and Garlic. A comment from a forum:

There are many layers of bacteria and fungi living on the outside of your plants. The simple proof of that is the rust fungus living on the outside of your plants. The problem is that the beneficial microbes, which usually live there and protect your plants from disease, have lost their ability to do that. They need to be revitalized. Your compost tea will help with that, but also I would spray separately with milk dissolved in water at 3 ounces per gallon of water. Spray as often as you want to. Up here we shoot for spraying every 2 weeks. Your area may appreciate it every week. The milk will provide real food for the microbes living on the plant surfaces and should restore the good health to the beneficials. Once they are healthy, they should eliminate the rust fungus for you.

As an experiment, I'll section out the problematic veg patch into 3 sections and try each of the remedies on 3 different areas. Looking forward to finding out the outcomes.