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Frosty Morning On The Plaas |
With the arrival of winter, comes the arrival of frost and this winter has been the worst we've experienced in our 6 years here. I make it sound like an awful phenomenon but in actual fact, it is beautiful and I love it, besides, within the first hour of direct sunlight, it is all gone! So, if you oversleep because bed is just too cozy on these cold mornings... you will miss it!
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Putting The Veggies To Bed |
Every night, I put my veggies to bed, so to speak This entails covering my beds with shade cloth, a practice that I have started to do because during the night, we have hungry visitors like rabbit and porcupine.
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Baby Cabbage, lettuce And Peas |
This works really well as it also gives you a chance to keep an eye on any nightly pest invasions, i.e. snails and worms.
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Cauliflower, Coriander and Peas |
In the morning, when I remove their covers, I do a quick pest check, maybe a spot of weeding while the day time is still warm enough. It also protects your lettuce from frost. So while the farmer next door is trying to deal with his nocturnal visitors by setting traps, or setting his alarm clock hoping to catch the night time marauders in the sights of his 22... you are fast asleep. You could also fence your veggie garden in, although my neighbor said that fences don"t work as they just burrow their way underneath. This led me to trying the shade clothe, as I had some lying around and so far so good! No traps or guns on our farm!
5 comments:
Good idea - I'm having hares eating my peas... Luckily I have got some scraps of shadecloth.
Thanks :)
We haven't started our veg patch in the new place yet. Looking forward to it though. We have a lot of buck and can't wait to find out what lives in the big holes just the other side of our fence :) This sounds like a good idea, will try it.
Aren't you afraid when you lift up those covers there might be a snake under there?
Haha no. Harry we dont have snakes that move around at night in this part of the world, at least not poisonous ones. I see you live in a really beautiful part of the world.
Dani, Time for an update! I'm really interested in your life there and I enjoy your posts. I know you are busy but keep us up to speed on events. ;-)
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