October gardening: sprouting and flowering and advice on gardening with cats
It rained for the first time from Thursday to Saturday and the garden is bursting with joy. My rainwater tanks are full and now it's growing time, as most of the preparation is done.
Spring is cactus flower time and this Mammillaria is putting on her best show
The roses are just about to start flowering
Most of the scraggly plants I bought on sale are doing extremely well although I am not yet bored enough to go looking for a four-leafed one in there
Just for fun, I decided to try growing pineapple tops: I left these two to dry for a few days then stripped off about 1cm of the bottom leaves and suspended the tops in a glass of water. After about a week, I had roots so I potted them up. They will go into the vegetable patch as soon as I take out the rest of the peas which are dying off in the heat.
Four out of 15 of the horned cucumber seeds I mentioned last month have sprouted
Which brings me to the usual spring problem: getting seedlings established despite the best intentions of my cats
That's Toffee above and using the vegetable garden for a toilet and scratching out plants is his favourite thing. Behind him are what's left after the beans got decimated in the late frost. I established those seedlings by covering the soil with the white mesh that you can see in the top left. Now, I'm sprouting more in trays to fill up the bare patch where he's lying.
He isn't the worst offender though, the two youngest love having wrestling matches in the plants, that's why I put all the pots in among the bean plants to try and protect them from their boisterous antics
These are the results of another wrestle-fest. I suppose in 6 months I'll have some well established little plants to sell at the succulent show. The other morning I woke up and it looked like a little tornado had been through the bean section, pots knocked everywhere. Got into the kitchen and found a dead baby snake on the floor. That seemed to have been the youngest one's handiwork, he was so proud of his poor little harmless young Brown House Snake that he had killed. RIP, little snake
This is how I keep my spinach and kale in one piece
Saving the cycad: the rocks are pretty but that isn't their primary function
This Agave will grow into its pot, provided the cats don't pee there. So far, so good with the pebbles as toilet deterrent.
As much as the cats drive me crazy, they do keep the mousebirds out of the vegetables: mousebirds are like flying rats and they can decimate your garden in a few days - they have a real taste for kale and succulents so it's a case of pick your poison.
That's where I'm at for this month, @gertu and @mipiano, why not join us with some garden pictures? Look here for details https://hive.blog/hive-140635/@riverflows/is-it-october-already-more-garden-journal-fun-on-hive
You have a beautiful relaxing garden wonderful flawors!
Thank you!
Every time I read the word winter in some of your previous posts, or spring , like here, I am so confused 😅 I know that is the season that is now coming at your side of the planet, but it still always puts me out of my perception :D
Nice flowers on the cactus 👌 so many of them.
My mother in law tried with the top of the pineapple, like you, but I am not sure if she finally got something from them. Probably not survived as I didn't see any of pineapple in her house this summer. And she also has cats, 5 of them 🤣, well, same garden problems, hahaha.
Spinach and kale look great, I love them, in my plate of course even more :D
RIP little snake!
It takes 2 years to get pineapples grown this way so I'll have to see if I have the patience and persistence for them. Yes, cat problems are universal and I have 6 so I thought I'd share my solutions
You are so talented in making things thrive..😊
There's no big secret, just water and attention
The attention part is the secret..
perhaps the gardening is just an outlet for an obsessive streak
My kitty Deidre (since passed) was the one who liked to use potted plants as a litterbox. She's the reason I made my biggest dragon tree cat-proofed with knicknacks and Happy Meal toys half-buried in the dirt (half-buried so they couldn't be knocked out or pushed over). Yuan used to try and eat the dragon trees (not good for cats) until I figured out that as long as I have cat grass on offer, he leaves the dragon trees alone. Maggie has never messed with the plants.
Dudley the Dragon Tree with his colorful protection
Yes, there's always one. Grass is a must for indoor cats
Beautiful plants! Good luck!
My Óxalis died, probably I did something wrong :-(
Thank you! Some oxalis are winter growers, I think this one will die back once summer truly arrives
Do they germinate again later?
Or should they be planted every year?
They should resprout if they aren't dead
Thanks!
Are they reborn in a year?
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Your garden is now very beautiful after all the hard work! Those pebbles do a nice trick! I like the way you protected your kale! Hope you’ll have lots of small pot plants to sell next time!!
Yes it has taken a while and a lot of work but I am glad the soil is slowly improving
All your hard work has paid off!👍🙀🌺🌸😂😻
Yes, I am glad I never have to do that awful job that you saw ever again!
That cactus is glorious in the first picture!
I definitely understand your garden challenges with the cats, I had to put chicken wire around my garden beds when the plants were young. The cat's think that the loose freshly planted soil is perfect for pooping in...
Yes they consider it your gift. Still, I have had gardens ruined by birds in the past so I have to take it as it comes
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Cheers friend @nikv. Your naughty cats are very similar to mine. They make messes in the arrangements I make to my garden. I have to keep the plants elevated or trellised for them to survive.
I don't know if I still have time for this contest. I was inactive for 4 days due to the suspension of platforms that took place in the country on September 29th.
I could not enter any platform until last night when this page opened.
Maybe it's too late for this contest but I'm still going to visit to see the end date.
Thanks for inviting me, I appreciate it.
By the way the cacti are all very beautiful.
Thank you, there are still some days left so try and post if you have time, as you did before when the gardenjournal was run by @simplymike
Yes, I will. I have already verified the date. I've been here twice before, I think, in this contest. See you and thank you.
Hi friend @nikv. I did everything wrong and today is that I could contest and I went to the publication I realized that the time I read it neither voted , nor shared and today is already 7 days of the contest. I took a lot of pictures today and now I realized that it is late.
All October is going wrong no matter how hard I try everything is going wrong.
It will be for September to come to the contest. Thanks friend.
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Yes, you will be ready by then
Tofee looks super cute though, so he can scratch as much as he wants! 😁
Man, that Kale/Spinash look healthy and well fed!
Yes, he gets away with a lot
As for the well-fertilised spinach and kale, it must be the cat shit 😁
The things we do to keep critters out of our plants! Seems like smooshing everything together would make it easier to water them too. I lay lengths of thorny bramble across the soil of everything I put in a pot. But I try not to put much into pots - watering them is too much work, and must be done on hot days, when I can't always get to it.
Pots are a disastrous for many plants but succulents do quite well because they don't want constant moisture around their roots, especially not when it's very hot
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He he he - gardeners always have problems with cats, they never seem to be a good mix, haha! Your garden is so unusual, I guess because it's a mix of succulents and other interesting thigns like pineapples! Loved how you keep your silverbeet protected, haha! A moat of cactus. I have the same problem with my chickens.
Sorry I took so long to get to this post - been a bit busy in the garden! Thanks for joining in!
Thank you. Gardening is always a bit of a war and it does look a little different in the Southern hemisphere