Firstly, some of the seeds I planted last week are up. These seeds are cabbages, but the beans and peas are beginning to break through too. I have taken the damp towels off the punnets now but they will stay under the upturened plastic box which working well as a mini hot house. The water condenses on the inside and runs down. I also put a piece of bubble wrap under the punnetts for more insulation.
Do you remember the 'Whatsit in the veggie garden'? Well it was supposed to be a bird proof shelter for the existing strawberries and the raspberries I'm going to plant. You may remember the poor saggy thing. The irrigation hose I chose was just too soft.
So here is the berry house mark II. I ended up using conduit which is flexible but stiff and holds its shape without any horizontal supports. The nice young man at the hardware says he doesn't know how it will hold up in the weather so it is a bit of an experiment. The shelter is about 4 metres long by 2 metres wide. In the photo (which was taken before I put the bird net on) you can see the chooks busy spreading the pea straw everywhere except where I wanted it. You just can't get good help these days!
Also harking back to an earlier experiment, do you remember the strawberries with the old blanket as mulch? Well, that worked berry well with only a couple of weeds weedling their way through the blanket. Although the chooks scratched off the straw I had on top, they didn't do any damage to the plants. The blanket is a bit rotten now and I will mulch the bed properly with pea straw. But check this out...flowers and little strawberries already.
Tomorrow I will go next door and dig up the raspberry canes that my neighbour doesn't want and plant them in the berry nice berry house.
Berry good!
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