massive whinge alert!!!!! g

we've had horrendous winds for nearly two weeks. i'm just about to lose my
mind outright - i'm near homicidal (along with half the town). which is one
thing, but the difficulties the garden is having is quite another!!

i haven't helped myself at all by having planted out baby things just before
it started up, which means i'm trying to keep them alive by watering 2-3
times a day until the wind calms down.

all my mulch is blowing away.

more than half my chooks are wigging out so badly they're off the lay & are
anxious all the time. the more laid-back hens are all right, but have had to
resort to digging deep holes & sitting in them with just their heads popping
out :-)

various of the veg have responded to conditions by BOLTING & i don't think i
can bring them back.

the greenhouse has now been officially ruined (it didn't blow away but has
torn to pieces) so many of the wee things in punnets are also dead/dying -
and i have no greenhouse now. and i'm misting punnets 4-5 times/day to keep
the remainder alive.

to make matters worse, the chickens and garden are serially harrassed by
black choughs - the most evil birds in the world - who have picked this week
to come back. they dug out my blue-green ixia (to which i was very much
looking forward) & various other nice things, in their attempts to steal all
my worms (and i've worked very hard for my worms, dammit - there just
weren't any when we came so i've been very proud of how many i have now).
the choughs make the chooks even more stressed, me even more stressed, &
contribute to the mulch & hence soil all blowing away.

AAAARGH.

have you had winds where you are? how is the garden going??
kylie, who is losing it. (although nobody has been killed or injured by
falling gums. whew!!)

Yeah winds freak me out too.
But the chooks, the winds were so bad one year a chook laid the same egg
three times.
No wonder they get nervous...
No point in watering the mulch to try and make it stay put as horizontal
watering doesn't allow it to touch the ground.

Voting green may fix the wind too?
Which town are you in, or should that read "where were you living till
you got blown away?" because obviously if youre still there, the winds
are not that strong....

0tterbot wrote:
massive whinge alert!!!!! g

we've had horrendous winds for nearly two weeks. i'm just about to lose my
mind outright - i'm near homicidal (along with half the town). which is one
thing, but the difficulties the garden is having is quite another!!

i haven't helped myself at all by having planted out baby things just before
it started up, which means i'm trying to keep them alive by watering 2-3
times a day until the wind calms down.

all my mulch is blowing away.

more than half my chooks are wigging out so badly they're off the lay & are
anxious all the time. the more laid-back hens are all right, but have had to
resort to digging deep holes & sitting in them with just their heads popping
out :-)

various of the veg have responded to conditions by BOLTING & i don't think i
can bring them back.

the greenhouse has now been officially ruined (it didn't blow away but has
torn to pieces) so many of the wee things in punnets are also dead/dying -
and i have no greenhouse now. and i'm misting punnets 4-5 times/day to keep
the remainder alive.

to make matters worse, the chickens and garden are serially harrassed by
black choughs - the most evil birds in the world - who have picked this week
to come back. they dug out my blue-green ixia (to which i was very much
looking forward) & various other nice things, in their attempts to steal all
my worms (and i've worked very hard for my worms, dammit - there just
weren't any when we came so i've been very proud of how many i have now).
the choughs make the chooks even more stressed, me even more stressed, &
contribute to the mulch & hence soil all blowing away.

AAAARGH.

have you had winds where you are? how is the garden going??
kylie, who is losing it. (although nobody has been killed or injured by
falling gums. whew!!)

Yeah winds freak me out too.
But the chooks, the winds were so bad one year a chook laid the same egg
three times.
No wonder they get nervous...
No point in watering the mulch to try and make it stay put, as
horizontal watering doesn't allow it to touch the ground.

Voting green may fix the wind too?
Which town are you in, or should that read "where were you living till
you got blown away?" because obviously if youre still there, the winds
are not that strong.... But maybe the bolting vegies have got the right
idea...Bolt... Really you should have nailed them vegies down. Bolts are
ok but tend to be overrated. Even GMH are thinking of going green and
using nails to put commodores together. You can tell by the way they
fall apart... (grin!)

0tterbot wrote:
massive whinge alert!!!!! g

we've had horrendous winds for nearly two weeks. i'm just about to lose my
mind outright - i'm near homicidal (along with half the town). which is one
thing, but the difficulties the garden is having is quite another!!

i haven't helped myself at all by having planted out baby things just before
it started up, which means i'm trying to keep them alive by watering 2-3
times a day until the wind calms down.

all my mulch is blowing away.

more than half my chooks are wigging out so badly they're off the lay & are
anxious all the time. the more laid-back hens are all right, but have had to
resort to digging deep holes & sitting in them with just their heads popping
out :-)

various of the veg have responded to conditions by BOLTING & i don't think i
can bring them back.

the greenhouse has now been officially ruined (it didn't blow away but has
torn to pieces) so many of the wee things in punnets are also dead/dying -
and i have no greenhouse now. and i'm misting punnets 4-5 times/day to keep
the remainder alive.

to make matters worse, the chickens and garden are serially harrassed by
black choughs - the most evil birds in the world - who have picked this week
to come back. they dug out my blue-green ixia (to which i was very much
looking forward) & various other nice things, in their attempts to steal all
my worms (and i've worked very hard for my worms, dammit - there just
weren't any when we came so i've been very proud of how many i have now).
the choughs make the chooks even more stressed, me even more stressed, &
contribute to the mulch & hence soil all blowing away.

AAAARGH.

have you had winds where you are? how is the garden going??
kylie, who is losing it. (although nobody has been killed or injured by
falling gums. whew!!)

"0tterbot" wrote in message
...
massive whinge alert!!!!! g

we've had horrendous winds for nearly two weeks. i'm just about to lose my
mind outright - i'm near homicidal (along with half the town). which is
one thing, but the difficulties the garden is having is quite another!!

i haven't helped myself at all by having planted out baby things just
before it started up, which means i'm trying to keep them alive by
watering 2-3 times a day until the wind calms down.

all my mulch is blowing away.

more than half my chooks are wigging out so badly they're off the lay &
are anxious all the time. the more laid-back hens are all right, but have
had to resort to digging deep holes & sitting in them with just their
heads popping out :-)

various of the veg have responded to conditions by BOLTING & i don't think
i can bring them back.

the greenhouse has now been officially ruined (it didn't blow away but has
torn to pieces) so many of the wee things in punnets are also dead/dying -
and i have no greenhouse now. and i'm misting punnets 4-5 times/day to
keep the remainder alive.

to make matters worse, the chickens and garden are serially harrassed by
black choughs - the most evil birds in the world - who have picked this
week to come back. they dug out my blue-green ixia (to which i was very
much looking forward) & various other nice things, in their attempts to
steal all my worms (and i've worked very hard for my worms, dammit - there
just weren't any when we came so i've been very proud of how many i have
now). the choughs make the chooks even more stressed, me even more
stressed, & contribute to the mulch & hence soil all blowing away.

AAAARGH.

have you had winds where you are? how is the garden going??
kylie, who is losing it. (although nobody has been killed or injured by
falling gums. whew!!)

And there was I looking forward to the wind created by my cabbages. I
apologise in advance.

0tterbot wrote:

various of the veg have responded to conditions by BOLTING & i don't think i
can bring them back.

If you work it out, please let us know. Last weekend we nominated a
patch of spinach up the back to be allowed to bolt to replentish the
seed stock.

This weekend,the larger patch that was busy producing copious nice
leaves is now bolting full time. Our Italian neighbour complained the
stalks are now too large (he only eats the stalk part), but we can still
find tender leaf.

Still plenty of spinach for us, but that will makes yet another large
plot to be soon turned over and prepared for replanting. The lettuce
went fron nice to yuk and bolted a last week as well.


Reminds me, time to plant more coriander.

The worst part about collecting your own seed is that is just seems to
take so long for it to fully form.

"0tterbot" wrote in message

massive whinge alert!!!!! g

Shit Otter! Don't get me started on the bloody wind or I will out whinge
you for weeks!

we've had horrendous winds for nearly two weeks.

Is that all? Jeeze woman, the dog kennels have been about a hundred feet in
the air with the poor dogs hanging at the ends of their chains as the tail
of the kite!

(Well that is a slight exaggeration, but not much).

i'm just about to lose my
mind outright - i'm near homicidal (along with half the town).

I've been telling my husband about how the suicide rate goes up when the
Mistral and the Sirocco blow and since he's just about tearing out his hair
because of what the wind is doing to our pastures, he could figure out why
that happens.

which is one
thing, but the difficulties the garden is having is quite another!!

i haven't helped myself at all by having planted out baby things just
before it started up, which means i'm trying to keep them alive by
watering 2-3 times a day until the wind calms down.

Put shade cloth on the windward side and mulch the baby things with a very
fine mulch like rice hulls and water it on well - the watering packs it down
a bit and if it is really low on the ground, the wind doesn't seem to get
it.

I too had similar problems to you, but now this problem is fixed as I rammed
8ft high star pickets on the windward side and put up sheep wire and then
put the shadecloth on the widward side of the sheep wire. The sheep wire
wiht it's big holes give just enough support to the shade cloth to stop it
beating itself to death in the wind. My shadecloth runs all along the
western side of the veg garden - prolly about 80 feet.

all my mulch is blowing away.

more than half my chooks are wigging out so badly they're off the lay &
are anxious all the time. the more laid-back hens are all right, but have
had to resort to digging deep holes & sitting in them with just their
heads popping out :-)

I also put shade cloth on the western side of the chook run. That protects
them when they are in the run and when they are let out into the orchard
(which is where their night house/run is located) they can find protection
under the fruit trees and in the clumps of big perennial grasses that grow
there.

various of the veg have responded to conditions by BOLTING & i don't think
i can bring them back.

the greenhouse has now been officially ruined (it didn't blow away but has
torn to pieces) so many of the wee things in punnets are also dead/dying -
and i have no greenhouse now. and i'm misting punnets 4-5 times/day to
keep the remainder alive.

to make matters worse, the chickens and garden are serially harrassed by
black choughs - the most evil birds in the world - who have picked this
week to come back. they dug out my blue-green ixia (to which i was very
much looking forward) & various other nice things, in their attempts to
steal all my worms (and i've worked very hard for my worms, dammit - there
just weren't any when we came so i've been very proud of how many i have
now). the choughs make the chooks even more stressed, me even more
stressed, & contribute to the mulch & hence soil all blowing away.

I also have choughs and although I really lover their chatter and social
habits, I too get the poops badly when they rip the garden to shreds. They
pulled up a whole lot of baby Red Orach (Mountain Spinach) seedlings the
other day and it was only because my husband dutifully pushed some back into
the earth that I have any left.

My chough cure in to cut up hoops of No 8 fencing wire and shove each end
into the ground and then cover it with bird netting and to lay bamboo stakes
horizontally along the sides between the edge of the wire and the edge of
the timber in my beds. I bought 3 metres of very wide stuff (white, not
black as I want birds to see it and not get tangled in it) and am gradually
cutting it up to cover things. I also did this to my strawberries this year
as last year I only got about 5 I think. A sodding Blue Tongue Lizard (the
size of a small dog) found they were delicious. He would look at me over
what passes for a Blue Tongued Lizard's shoulder ans stick out his toungue
and slurp in whole huge strawbs.

AAAARGH.

have you had winds where you are? how is the garden going??

I have a lovely crop of lettuce in what used to be my windiest spot and I
also have spinach. I bought a bunch of spicah, noticed that it still had
roots left on it although chopped and not a great deal, so I cut off the
leaves and planted the spinach in with the lettuces (all gown from minute
seedlings and mulched with rice hulls and covered with bird netting as
described above). I have rocket and corn salad and red Orach and lots of
other things in a more protected part of the garden (really a flower bed but
that is the best place to grow them at this time of year. Sodding winds.
Sodding cold.

kylie, who is losing it.

Join the club :-))

"SG1" wrote in message
...

have you had winds where you are? how is the garden going??
kylie, who is losing it. (although nobody has been killed or injured by
falling gums. whew!!)

And there was I looking forward to the wind created by my cabbages. I
apologise in advance.

dude, if you can make wind like that, i bow to your superior powers!!!
kylie

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:

various of the veg have responded to conditions by BOLTING & i don't
think i can bring them back.

If you work it out, please let us know.

don't hold your breath :-)

Last weekend we nominated a
patch of spinach up the back to be allowed to bolt to replentish the seed
stock.

This weekend,the larger patch that was busy producing copious nice leaves
is now bolting full time. Our Italian neighbour complained the stalks are
now too large (he only eats the stalk part), but we can still find tender
leaf.

Still plenty of spinach for us, but that will makes yet another large plot
to be soon turned over and prepared for replanting. The lettuce went fron
nice to yuk and bolted a last week as well.

my lettuce always ends up bolting (refer prior whinges ;-) even when i've
thought it was finally going nicely. dh had a dh-like brain wave in which he
suggested we just let any of them that bolt go for it, & self-seed whereever
they want. i have a notion that either this will solve the problem outright,
or at least mean it had nothing to do with ME. g

Reminds me, time to plant more coriander.

The worst part about collecting your own seed is that is just seems to
take so long for it to fully form.

i am too disorganised to actually _collect_ the seed (except coriander, of
course) but as i've now got rocket, dill, parsley just going wild, i've
decided it's a top idea to let certain things just go for it - easier on me,
the plants that grow are sturdy & happy, & it fills the garden nicely!

i salute your patience, terry. i have none at all, due to the wind. :-/
kylie

"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message
...
"0tterbot" wrote in message

massive whinge alert!!!!! g

Shit Otter! Don't get me started on the bloody wind or I will out whinge
you for weeks!

at what point would everyone become tired of us?

we've had horrendous winds for nearly two weeks.

Is that all? Jeeze woman, the dog kennels have been about a hundred feet
in the air with the poor dogs hanging at the ends of their chains as the
tail of the kite!

heh, it's like that :-)

(Well that is a slight exaggeration, but not much).

i'm just about to lose my
mind outright - i'm near homicidal (along with half the town).

I've been telling my husband about how the suicide rate goes up when the
Mistral and the Sirocco blow and since he's just about tearing out his
hair because of what the wind is doing to our pastures, he could figure
out why that happens.

it's generally accepted that vincent van gogh's most notable total breakdown
(which led to him cutting his ear & sending it to a prostitute) was because
of the wind at arles!!! i can understand that. (although i don't know that
i'll be sending any of my body parts to ladies of teh night...)

snip Top Tips

thanks for that! i'm going to get some rice hull mulch too, i think! (it
would solve one of my recurring problems - how to mulch tiny things, that
is.)

Sodding winds.
Sodding cold.

preach it, sister!!!!!!!!!11
kylie

0tterbot wrote:

dude, if you can make wind like that, i bow to your superior powers!!!
kylie

Perhaps I shouldn't mention grammar pie either, but that might just be me.

0tterbot wrote:

my lettuce always ends up bolting (refer prior whinges ;-) even when i've
thought it was finally going nicely. dh had a dh-like brain wave in which he
suggested we just let any of them that bolt go for it, & self-seed whereever
they want. i have a notion that either this will solve the problem outright,
or at least mean it had nothing to do with ME. g

we tend to move it from one plot to the next by either;

1) pulling out the whole plant flowers have dies and large paper bagging
it, then scattering the seeds 7 stuff when appropriate, or

2) pulling the plant when most of the flowers have died and jst dropping
on top of the mulch in the new plot.


i am too disorganised to actually _collect_ the seed

See method above. It is just storing the large paper shoppng bags, etc.
The major problem about "collecting" you own seeds was all the dust that
blew back in my face when I tried to blow off the husks, etc. Hence the
above method.

(except coriander, of course) but as i've now got rocket, dill,
parsley just going wild,

YES, we seem to finally (cross fingers) maintain parsley by
self-seeding. For years we strugged to keep parsley growing. No,it looks
after itself. I had to alter the spud planting plans today as I noticed
that two parsley had added themselves to the corrander row.

i salute your patience, terry. i have none at all, due to the wind. :-/

Well, when your the shovel man, it is easy to have patience.
we have plenty of space as well.
Now, if it was a wet year, it might be a different matter.

"0tterbot" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message
"0tterbot" wrote in message

massive whinge alert!!!!! g

Shit Otter! Don't get me started on the bloody wind or I will out whinge
you for weeks!

at what point would everyone become tired of us?

Dunno, but given some of the threads we've had here, we could go on for
weeks.

I've been telling my husband about how the suicide rate goes up when the
Mistral and the Sirocco blow and since he's just about tearing out his
hair because of what the wind is doing to our pastures, he could figure
out why that happens.

it's generally accepted that vincent van gogh's most notable total
breakdown (which led to him cutting his ear & sending it to a prostitute)
was because of the wind at arles!!! i can understand that. (although i
don't know that i'll be sending any of my body parts to ladies of teh
night...)

He also spent a lot of his time almost starving himself. Lovely artworks
but totally round the twist.

snip Top Tips

thanks for that! i'm going to get some rice hull mulch too, i think! (it
would solve one of my recurring problems - how to mulch tiny things, that
is.)

If you can't easily find rice hulls then get a bag of lucerne chaff (or even
wheaten chaff) from the local horse food supplier. It works just as well.

Sodding winds.
Sodding cold.

preach it, sister!!!!!!!!!11

Amen to that!

"Terryc" wrote in message
...
0tterbot wrote:

dude, if you can make wind like that, i bow to your superior powers!!!
kylie

Perhaps I shouldn't mention grammar pie either, but that might just be me.

hmmm, i think that one might just be you. g
kylie

"Terryc" wrote in message
...

we tend to move it from one plot to the next by either;

1) pulling out the whole plant flowers have dies and large paper bagging
it, then scattering the seeds 7 stuff when appropriate, or

2) pulling the plant when most of the flowers have died and jst dropping
on top of the mulch in the new plot.


i am too disorganised to actually _collect_ the seed

See method above. It is just storing the large paper shoppng bags, etc.
The major problem about "collecting" you own seeds was all the dust that
blew back in my face when I tried to blow off the husks, etc. Hence the
above method.

aha!!

(except coriander, of course) but as i've now got rocket, dill, parsley
just going wild,

YES, we seem to finally (cross fingers) maintain parsley by self-seeding.
For years we strugged to keep parsley growing. No,it looks after itself. I
had to alter the spud planting plans today as I noticed that two parsley
had added themselves to the corrander row.

i truly think there's probably no other good way to do it. parsley is such a
struggle - yet left to do it on their own they make hundreds more. i am
trying to learn when to just leave things alone, quite frankly. will try
directing the self-seeding location a little in future, i think, & see how
that goes.
kylie

i salute your patience, terry. i have none at all, due to the wind. :-/

Well, when your the shovel man, it is easy to have patience.
we have plenty of space as well.
Now, if it was a wet year, it might be a different matter.