The gardens are alive!

 It's spring and our gardens are brimming with life and new growth. Row crops in the AP orchard are coming up.           Carrots ->

 <--  "Purple Plum" Radishes

 "Black Spanish" radishes    ---->
(more than I'd care to eat)

and spring onions (mostly for next year)

 A happy looking frog in the lounge garden. Must have eaten a lot things in the garden that would have eaten our food. A good friend to have and a sign of garden health.

 Lettuce seedlings coming up in a seed bed in the seed garden. These ones are "Butterhead".

 The nursery is starting to fill.

 Lisa's pot of pansies.

 Snow peas ("Roi de Carouby" - my favorite) coming up in the kitchen garden. The quendas didn't find these ones.

 Some things are flowering already in the seed garden. Broccoli, Chinese mustard and Alexanders.

These Dutch Purple-podded peas are looking OK. Definitely better than last year in the drought. I think it's going to be a good season.

The mystery of the disappearing peas

For the last 2-3 weeks my pea seeds have been disappearing. Mice, I thought, after the first few holes. Next night - more missing. Filled the holes in. Next night even more - way more than I'd ever lost at once in any previous year in my life. I had to replant two whole trellises of peas and a quite a few off a third trellis. OK - I covered all the pea trenches with 1cm mesh - I do this some years when the mice are bad.
Next night - more peas gone. They had dug under the mesh. Most unusual.
Next night more peas missing. This kept going on for a while. I'd fill holes in (the mesh couldn't quite cover all the peas) and the smaller pieces of mesh weren't that heavy. Then one night I noticed larger pieces of mesh moved quite a way back from the trellis.
I put pieces of wood on top of the mesh to hold them down - that should do the trick.
Rats - I put it down to - big buggers and lots of them.
This kept on going for a while. Then it dawned on me - it can't be rats - even rats couldn't move the wire that far - it must be Quenda's (short-tailed bandicoots). I've seen a lot of quendas around recently. So I quickly found some old cupboard doors to act as low solid gates to the seed garden.
This morning - no peas eaten.
Problem solved - gourmet PEA EATING QUENDAS.  Quenda's have a taste for garden peas so watch out!

PS. My war with the quendas is over and finally we have peas.....

NZ spinach for bread

We swap NZ spinach (also called warrigal greens) with the local cafe for loaves of bread. It's much easier for us to grow greens this way than produce bread - although we still do that too!

Spring In the Seed Garden

The seed garden is looking good this time of year.

 I cut back some of the black wattles from behind the garden to reduce root competition.

 Too much ruby chard!

Still getting broccolini - leaving the rest for seed.
Letting the berries grow up the trellis this year - the plan is to cut them back after fruiting so we don't get too many spiky leaves in our seed bed.

 Chinese Kale is doing well (about to flower)

 Here's natures pest control at work - a ladybug eating aphids on a broccoli. If you squash some of the aphids the ladybugs are attracted to the scent. Ladybug nymphs look totally different (kind of like a striped earwig) but eat a lot of aphids all the same.

 There's a spider waiting in the beet.

 A bee pollinating the broccoli.

 The beets are almost too beautiful to eat!

Seed pods (siliques) forming on the broccoli.

Mulching madness

The Seed garden is nearly mulched up

Lisa has mulched up a new herb bed (what a feral!)