urban vegetable patch

We are very lucky to live in an area of Melbourne that has such abundant wildlife. But as nice as it is to see and hear birds, possums, lizards etc it can also be a challenge. We are currently being visited every night by bats and can hear them chattering in the trees and also hear them as the flap their huge wings and fly over the house at night.

But “Houston, we have a problem” they are literally bombing our house with bat poop… it is getting everywhere – on the house, on the pavers, on the driveway and on the cars. I would hate to think what might happen if we left washing on the line overnight!

At first we couldn’t work out what they were after, usually they visit in the warmer months and eat the neighbours fruit on the loquat tree, but its not loquat season? At last we realised they are arriving each night to feast on the berries of a neighbouring lilly pilly tree… the berries are black, so that will give you an idea of the tar like “bombs” that we are being hit with.

Has anyone else experienced an ongoing problem with bats bombing them????  Would love to hear from you.

Earwick, also known as Forficula auricularia is a real PEST! I know, I know (*sigh*) there are countless counter argument about how beneficial they are but to me, there are a real pain in the neck. Not to mention they rape my wong bok!

The problem with earwick is that they will destroy your vegetable (especially the leafy ones) in no time. It starts off with bits of holes on the leaves and before you know it, “Houston, we have a problem“.  And the markings (holes) left on the leaves makes it really hard to tell if the damage is caused by caterpillar, slugs or earwick. Frustrating!

The earwicks pulverise my Wong Bok by drilling its way through to the heart of the vegetable and then start eating its way out! Not to mention it invited more friends to party in this earwick’s haven. You can only imagine my horror when I found the mini colony inhabiting within my vegetable. Firstly disgusted then anger! I am going to kill these little bustards!

Found quite a fair bit of post on trapping earwicks in an organic way. Personally I am filling takeaway containers with fish oil or linseed oil and use it as a trap. Result is not quite what I expected; Caught some wondering ones but nothing worth celebrating. If you are like me, plague by earwicks, have a read on these links I found. I would love to hear from anyone who has any solutions that might help.

Generic info about Earwick
Fish oil trap

Well, it wasnt snow, cotton wool or a spiders web.

So what was it?

This was the big question facing vegie patch owners Fiona and Peter and their family.

The even bigger question was, “is it bad”?

Having just recently planted their vegie garden they began to wonder what they had done to cause such a problem.

So after a couple of photos, they began to surf the net for an answer and after just a short while, they found the answer.

And it was all good news, they had done nothing wrong and the white stuff was in fact a fungus, but a good sort of one. Saprotrophic Fungi.

According to the Fungi section of the CSIRO – Saprotrophic fungi (also known as saprobes, saprophytes) obtain their energy and nutrients by breaking down dead organic matter such as in soil, litter, dung, and wood.

And for a bit more info a search of www.environment.gov.au came up with this info: Saprotrophic fungi obtain their nutrients from dead organic matter. There are many forms of dead organic matter—leaf litter, dung, soil, dead animals, wood and dead fungi-to name just a few. Saprotrophic fungi use them all. Saprotrophic fungi feed on and recycle about 85% of the carbon from dead organic matter, with bacteria and animals responsible for the other 15%. These fungi release the locked-up nutrients that can then be used by other living organisms, making the fungi vital to the health of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems around the world.

The original answer that gave way to further investigation came from Wiki Answers: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_can_you_remove_mold_from_the_dirt_in_your_garden

The cause may have been due to the fact that the weather had been quite warm and all of a sudden the garden owners received almost 100mm of rain in just a couple of days, and with the weather still being warm, decomposition of the organic matter may have been quicker than usual for that area of Australia.

But whatever the cause, we found it fascinating to look at and we learnt something ourselves.

If you have come across a problem in your garden and then solved, it feel free to share it with us and the readers of the Urban Vegetable Patch.

There are some juvenile delinquents roaming my neighbourhood at the moment and boy are they sneaky!

My juvenile delinquents are in fact 2 young butcher-birds… I have done the “crazy vegie gardener” thing ( I think much to my neighbours amusement) and waved my arms and “shooed” them, but they hardly take any notice and fly into the large gum tree, pretend to hide and then after a while they return. So what are they doing?

They are sneaking cherry tomatoes… And are doing so through the bird netting…. its actually quite an achievement and I have watched them do it out of fascination for their skill, they put their beak through the netting, latch onto a tomato and then twist and manoeuvre it through the netting, I don’t quite understand how they get a tomato through the netting but they do it.

But the worst thing is they are only doing it as a bit of sport, they don’t eat the tomatoes, they bite them, then throw them on the ground and try for another. I am not sure if my tomatoes just aren’t to their taste or if it is a bit of a game.

Wonder if  I built a scarecrow, if that would work???

Male Zucchini Flower

I have noticed that both my cucumbers and zuchinni have both had loads of flowers lately, but I dont seem to be getting much in the way of crop.

So I made myself periodically visit the vegie patch at various times of the day, I know it seems odd and a bit overprotective, but I needed to confirm if my suspicions were correct.

And they were, I seem to be sadly lacking a bit of Bee Action!

I checked the flowers and as you can see in the picture there are male and female flowers which is a good thing, but no sign of any bees buzzing about doing their thing.

So its time to put opertaion Bee into action.

Plant some Bee attracting plants nearby the vegie patch and fingers crossed that this will encourage some bees to visit the garden and more importantly the vegie patch. While it wont help this cucumber and Zuchinni season, it may help next year.

Female Zucchini Flower

Some of the Bee attractors that I will consider are Cammomile, Hyssop and Lemon Balm as the 3 of these are not only ahndy for attracting bees, but also are great herbs. I will also look at some other non edible plants as well, becasue I really need those bees!

Disease Tomato - See the black bits?

Ever since I came back from my holidays, I find that my red-fig tomato plant seems to be suffering from bacteria/fungal attack. I first starting seeing black spots appearing on the leaves. To best describe it, it looks like sprinkle of crack pepper over the leaves. The funny thing is it’s mainly affecting the new shoots. But trust me, it will slowly but surely spread to its unsuspecting neighbours. If any of the nearby truss comes in contact, it will turn black and the fruit will eventually die.

I did some quick googling and from what I can find suggest that this might be Blight of some sort. What I am doing now is to vigorously prune as much of the diseased portion away and spray a bicarbonate soda solution over the remaining plant. I am also doing a daily rounds to inspect for further damage. Fingers cross that it will slowly die down as the weather warms up or fire fighting will have to continue.

Do you have the same problems as me? Love to hear your solutions!

Melbourne had a wild weather night on Friday; There was wind, rain and more rain. My mob of unruly tomatos flopped over their existing supports and nearly killed itself. It’s probably my fault for not staking it properly in the first place.

unruly red-fig tomato. Look closely on the bottom left of the bush

While stalking them securely to the existing bamboo stick, I realised some of the undergrowth are starting to grow out and up to get more sunlight. This is not good because as they grow bigger (which is what happened now), they will be heavier and lay in the soil bed for support. This is bad bad karma for spreading disease from soil to plant.

What I did was, I had a bit of a DIY moment with 2 kebab sticks and a rubber band. I tied the two sticks together in the middle (using the rubber band) and poked them in the ground to form a ‘X’ shape. I then gently lifted the branch and rested it on top of the kebab stick frame.This will lift the heavy branch above the ground now. Not sure about its performance in high wind condition; Will deal with it when it comes. For now, I am a happy girl.

Branch support to lift it up and up