Ouchie. Hope I can recover from this.

Went into the office today. Umm, a Christmas present from Marziah was looking distinctly muchade - floppy.

Man, I'm only - really - good with houseplants that can stand sustained neglect but don't die from too much kindness either. Says a lot about me really, I suppose. Ahem. And I have been known to resurrect dead plants. Ahem.

I'll keep you posted.















UPDATE: I may be out of the woods. Marziah will laugh when she sees this. Now.

Debbie White's Garlic

My friend Marziah gave me some garlic last year from one of her great friends, Debbie White. I didn't get around to using it, so I planted it.

Which was handy because Marziah had a crop failure and lost all of hers, so we can keep the strain going.

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70mm of rain last night

We'll see how my vines go. I expect badly, the downy mildew will go mad. Croppers will be selling off a heap of grain for feed. Wettest ever Dec day in Adelaide. Wow.

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$300 worth of Dutch Iris

On a positive note, I dug out a 3 year old bed of Dutch Iris, that I planted for $20. About 100 full size bulbs and a kg of bulblets.

I'll get a killer mass of new flowers next spring, and I should be able to grow those bulblets up to full size next year. Then it'll be $1000 worth of bulbs.

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Downy

These December rains are starting to cause problems. No matter how much I spray, the Downy Mildew is on the march. See the yellow "oilspots", the puckered leaves and the - well - downy fuzz on the rear surface. Any more rain or humidity, that downy will start forming on the clusters. From there the fruit ripens with black, disgusting crap all over them.

Outlook is not good, but goodness knows I tried.

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Root Knot

Out of one of my other beds this tomato is showing the first signs of nematode problems.

See those clumps on the roots? Root knot nematodes. Happens when you don't rotate. What to do? The soft answer is to plant other stuff for a couple of years. The serious answer - run a crop of marigold there all year then dig the green back in. Man, that's a big hit.
I'll keep you informed.

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Tomato progress

They're tall and with golf ball size fruit. Lovin the sun.

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