Thursday, May 20, 2010

The sunroom makes a good greenhouse!

So a few weeks ago, I planted some "Purple tiger" (a.k.a. Trifetti) chilli seeds I got from a friend - some in the sunroom, some in the courtyard. Turns out the sunroom worked well as a greenhouse. 5/7 came up there, as opposed to the courtyard where 0/8 came up.

They look like this now:

You can see the purple tinge in the leaves. They won't be very hot as chillis but they should make a decorative plant as well as a milder chilli option.

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Gardening and chickens

So working on the back yard again at the moment. The removing of some grass gave the chickens the best day of their lives. Am a bit worried about the brown chicken (Godzilla). She's got a lot of patches where the feathers seem to be snapped off. Not sure what is going on there. She seems happy enough, and there doesn't seem to be anything visibly wrong apart from the broken feathers.

On the flora side of things, we've been planting things in the back yard too. Mostly natives, like this correa reflexa (Australian native fuchsia):

The wire cage at the back is protecting the fig tree from the chickens. Turns out that they find the leaves irresistibly delicious. It needs two layers of protection to keep the chickens out, otherwise they reach through and pull the leaves out.