Update on Nature's Curator

Ten days into my trial of Nature's Curator and mixed results so far. The tomato plants are actually a couple of cm smaller than the unsprayed ones so far. However the black krim is looking much healthier and is flowering now. For the broccoli its the same, both plants are smaller than the unsprayed one but the one that had been slug eaten has developed some new leaves and is looking well. So the spray is living up to its claim to improve the health but not doing it in terms of bigger size.
Baby beetroot for tea last night was delicious with burgers. The mesclun is growing so fast I am having trouble eating it all. The cut and come again is working great. I just take some scissors out and hack away. Within a few days its like I haven't even been there. I really should have planted more than 6 strawberry plants as I am getting two or three ripe strawberries a day but not enough to feed the family. Especially when the kids keep nipping out to the deck to help themselves. I have to say though, that they are the sweetest strawberries I have had for a long time. I had a look in a couple of garden centres this week but I think I must have missed the boat as none of them have any more strawberry plants. Oh well, there's always next year.
My pot of one pea plant has given me some lovely pods, and I have munched away on the raw peas. However I'll have to wait for the other plants, in the square foot garden, to come in before there's enough for a proper feed.
Potatoes are flowering- so I might get a crop for Christmas. Capsicum in small pots looks healthy and should be ready to go into the beetroot box as that finishes. Chilli is still small and I think I may have had some pumpkin seed in my wormcast as that seems to be whats coming up in the barby. Surprise!

What's happening in the boxes?

The last three days of warm weather and showers has made a real difference in the gardens. My rubbish bin full of potatoes has gone mad with the plants at least 40 cm above the top of the bin now. I hope they flower soon or I may have to tie them up to passing planes. The cucumber plants have doubled in size but no sign of budding yet. I have enough lettuce and mesclun to feed an army this week. Still not much hope of getting the kids eating it though. The barbecue and wicker basket are full of first leaves - always a difficult thing for me to realise that I have to hold off weeding as I will probably pull out the things I want. The earth gems look very lush and the tomatoes are getting lovely thick stems and a few buds. The only difference I have noticed with the Nature's Curator plants so far is that one of the tomato plants budded a few days before the others but other than that there is no change. In fact the unsprayed broccoli looks a bit bigger than the sprayed one although the slug battered one is picking up. But early days yet.
I have just thinned my pot of oregano, and I think there will be baby beetroot for tea this week. The garlic and onions keep plugging away.
In the square foot garden I have sprouting spinach, quite large calendula, peas that need staking today, chilli that is looking well (if much smaller than everybody else's I know), lush sage and a rapidly thickening tomato. On the down side there is still no sign of the silverbeet, about half of the carrot seeds did not germinate and I have a feeling that some of that 'grass' I pulled out of the spring onions may not have been grass at all. And no green bits in the courgette square.
A friend saw my motley collection of pots, buckets, kettle, recycling bin (shush don't tell the council they gave me two) nail boxes and home made planters and came up with a really good idea. She went to the Warehouse and bought some nice looking square buckets for less than $2 each. She has filled these with compost and put in seedlings of various herbs and veg from her thinnings. These will become her Christmas presents to her family. Very green and encouraging I thought.

Nature's Curator

I was approached last week by a company called Nature's Curator. Having read some of this blog they wanted me to test out their product. Yesterday, I received a small bottle of this liquid which is diluted and sprayed onto your plants. It only takes 10ml to mix with a litre and they state that it is completely organic. This stuff is not a fertilizer nor a pesticide but is supposed to stimulate both growth and resistance. They have asked me to perform a six week trial complete with photos. As well as giving them the information that they need I will also be logging results here. Yesterday I sprayed two tomato plants (one the Black Krim with which I have so many problems and the other a moneymaker which is the same size now as the others in my deck planter; and two broccoli plants, one the same size as the other in my square foot garden and the second a little larger but much abused by slugs). No change this morning - but I really didn't expect results quite so quickly, hehe!
I am interested to see if this product will work as claimed and you can be sure that you will get an honest review here. If anybody has other products that they would like to have reviewed I am happy to do so but with the warning that I will be completely honest and I refuse to endorse anything that does not live up to expectations. Bear in mind too that this blog is about organic gardening so I don't want to try any chemical solutions.

Tie up tip

When I got home from work yesterday not only was my garden freshly watered from all the rain but it was looking a bit windswept. Luckily nothing had been broken but it was a reminder about tying up the taller plants. I have large flax plants in the front yard so I cut off a couple of leaves, split them lengthwise and used them to tie my tomato plants to their stakes. I also used the vertical method from the square foot gardening book. For my cucumbers I have an inverted u-shaped frame and from this I have tied strips of flax to the bottom of the plants and then twisted the flax around the stems. I'll let you know how things are going.
My heirloom Black Krim tomato was looking very sorry for itself last week and I was on the verge of pulling it out and composting it. The leaves were yellowing and curling up and the veins had become very prominent. I decided to give it a last shot and mounded the base with seaweed. This didn't seem to have much effect so as the last resort I mulched it with coffee grounds. The lower leaves died and I removed these and threw them in the rubbish but the upper leaves are looking very healthy now.

little extras

I decided to tidy up a little in the garden. There was one area that had become a rubbish dump with stuff being prepared for the tip. In this mess were the old barbecue which had seen one rainstorm too many and given up the ghost and an old firewood basket coming apart at the seams. Both have now been filled with compost, a little clay and wormcast and are new garden beds. In the barby, I planted parsley,(from some I had in a pot that was looking sorry for itself) coriander seeds, chive seeds and courgette seed. I am hoping that this effort with the courgette might avoid the slugs as it is raised about a metre. As for the basket I have backed it with a bit of old trellis and planted peas, tomato, spring onions and calendula.
So now my rubbish pile which was nearly a trailer load and ready for the landfill is back to a quarter the size again- she who must be obeyed is not overly impressed that I have avoided throwing stuff out again but I tell her its about saving the world, reducing my footprint and becoming more environmentally conscious. She says it about me being a hoarder and too tight to spend out on the landfill fees.
I was surfing the net a few days agao and found this website
http://weathersfieldorganics.co.nz/

They are supliers of organic herb seedlings and are looking for new franchisees. I liked their little newsletter with tips on what to do this month.
As for today the rain has started coming down quite heavily which hopefully will be jst right for the seeds I planted yesterday.
Happy gardening

Beer IS an answer

Despite my best efforts with coffee, pine needles and the torch, our weather cycle of a few warm days and then a few wet ones means that it is a constant battle to beat the slugs. I really do not want to use derris dust if I can possibly avoid it (anything that smells that bad can't be good to put on my food). So I decided to sacrifice some of my precious home brewed beer and set out slug traps. A little plastic pottle with a couple of centimetres of beer in the bottom and dig it into the ground a bit to give the slugs easy access. On my first attempt with only 1 trap, I caught 9 slugs and the second night I caught 12. Inspired by this, last night I put three pottles around my square foot garden. And the result? Three slugs! Oh well, I suppose the hard part was having to drink the remaining beer each night as the sun was going down.

Battling the slimies

Much as I thought that the slugs and snails had died down they were back with a vengeance last week, so over the weekend I added some more pine needles around my square foot garden. I was speaking to a very nice lady who sells organic seedlings at our local market and she had a great idea. Coffee grounds also repel slugs and snails but it can take a while to get enough grounds to make a difference. So this morning I went to my local coffee cart and asked them for their rubbish sacks full of coffee. They were very happy to let me have a couple of sacks which I have layered over the top of the pine needles but still left a few centimetres of needles between the coffee and the beds. There were a few milk bottle tops and receipts in the sack but it only took a minute to remove them. Our particular cart uses organic and fair trade coffee so I am compromising neither my organic nor my ethical values and I am recycling what would otherwise be destined for the landfill.
I have also planted some capsicum, some more beetroot and some spinach. The mesclun just keeps on coming and I am eating green salads almost every day. Now the challenge is to get the kids eating them too.

Things are growing

The rain and wind this week have not been too good for me but my garden has loved it. The tomatoes that I planted out Labour weekend have taken off, I have now filled the bucket of earth gems and the bin of potatoes with compost. The cucumber are reaching for the skies and my onions and garlic are tall and lush. In the square foot garden the sage looks great, the chilli have germinated as have the peas, radish, carrots and marigolds. I think the spring onions are coming up - either that or I had grass seeds in my compost, always a possible given that I compost my lawn clippings and put some of them in the worm farm. The carrots are just poking their heads through. Three out of four broccoli look very healthy but the fourth is a bit sorry for itself. I gave it a spray with seaweed tea to try and perk it up. The courgette gave up the ghost after being dealt to by the slug and I have replanted that square with dwarf silverbeet. I kind of guessed at how many to put in the square and decided on 9 as the seed packet recommends growing them 5 cm apart. I was down at the beach this morning and collected some of the compost like 'seagrass' that gets washed up after bad weather. I have used it to mulch the beetroot which were poking their beets above the surface of the soil, but I think I will be able to harvest them in the next week or so. The strawberries and their companion parsley are doing really well although one of the six plants still has no fruit and I still have no idea why.
I went to visit someone who lives by the beach yesterday and their garden seems to be about a month in front of mine. It's amazing the little microclimates that form - my friends who live in the same street as me never get frost whereas I, living at the bottom of the hill, get three or four quite hard ones every winter. But, hopefully, the frosts are completely over and now its growing time. And harvest time. I have had several salads from my mesclun and lettuce and I am looking forward to being able to eat my own cucumber and tomatoes too. Oh yeah my kettle full of carrots is doing great too and I repotted my chick peas into a larger pot.

You can tell its the weekend...

... because the rain is coming down. After a lovely few days of sunshine Saturday limps along with drizzle and high winds. My tomatoes are planted out and I have surrounded my square foot garden with pine needles and mulched the bigger plants with ponga leaves. It seems to have kept the slugs and snails off for now but I'll have to get out there with the torch tonight with this weather. I planted some more chilli seeds during the week as the first lot seem to have disappeared and not sprouted. The radishes, carrots, peas and marigolds have sprouted in the SFG. No sign yet of the spring onions. My dustbin full of spuds is going great guns and has had to be mounded with compost twice this week. I also have a bucket full of "Earth Gems" -small yellow and purple potato-like tubers- which are also going well. Lettuce and Mesclun are sprouting away and my kettle of baby carrots is looking well- I thinned some out the other day and the discards, although tiny, tasted just like carrots used to before the industrials recycled them in plastic bags for us.