Kiwi's SFG Adventure

Can you relocate her outside of the netting before she lays her eggs?

Oh!  Didn't think of that   If I remember next time I see her I'll try -- I'm pretty good at moving insects

It's 9:39 pm here. What time is it there?

It's late afternoon on Thursday 18th here: https://www.worldtimeserver.com/

I saw the female in the garden this morning, but couldn't figure out how to trap her without upsetting her.  Do you have any ideas for how to move her outside the netting?

Note, this is a photo from 10 years or so, when I first started. I mistakenly used wood chips as mulch on my Mel's Mix.

Butterfly net.  I made a rough net from bridal tool, wire coat hanger, plastic stake and tape.  Her little spikes will temporarily be caught in the netting, giving you a few seconds to get her out.  Maybe even over to where you want to put her.  PS:
I use the net to catch grasshoppers for dispatching.  I'm not as fast as I was a few years ago.    

I don't have the time to make something, but it gives me an idea, surely I could just use -- very gently, of course -- a small amount of tulle in my hands.  I'll prep the tulle and give it a try the next time I see her.  Hopefully I won't be too late!


I'm very used to moving all sorts of insects outside by use of an upturned drinking glass and a piece of cardboard, but clearly that wasn't going to work in the garden.  I should have thought of a bit of tulle

Oh wow!  I guess I could try that, and if she resists, get out the 'heavy artillery'

OhioGardener wrote:I frequently relocate praying mantis by just letting them crawl onto the back of my hand.

Of course you do

Yay, I saw her today, and she got on my hand quite easily, and I put her outside the bed perimeter:


Then after a while I noticed she was still just standing there, and I wondered if perhaps she can't fly with all that extra weight, so I got her back on my hand and carried her to a nearby sheltered tree.  Hopefully she'll be happy there

...stunned to see my last post was back in April   What can I say...it's been a year (in six months).

In that time the vege bed in my back lawn produced more tomatoes than I'd ever imagined possible (from just four plants) and a very pleasing number of green beans.  The strawberries along the front also did well all summer.  Elsewhere, the beetroot and silverbeet were pretty much a disappointment -- definitely a work in progress for this beginning vege gardener.  But overall, I was very happy with my second growing season.

In autumn I started intensive planning for the dedicated strawberry patch, which was going to go on the back lawn fairly close to the vege bed.  However, it soon became clear that the site wasn't going to get enough sun, so I went back to the drawing board and ended up deciding on a tabletop bed on the patio.

One other bit of learning from my second growing season was that the gardening was taking too much of my time, so I opted for a wicking bed.  The hope is that I can just do a quick check of the plants each morning when harvesting my breakfast, and water a couple of times a week.



For the veges, the plan was to buy a pair of smaller ones, to fit through our doorways and thus enable me to move them to winter sunlight, and fill them with the MM from the vege bed.  However, during September a huge personal project landed on me which is going to take all my time this summer, so unfortunately the vege bed is going to have to lay fallow for 12 months.  I'm going to miss my toms and beans, but I just can't commit any time to it.

I'm currently in the process of pulling out the winter cover crop (and weeds), turning it over, and laying cardboard under the gridlines which I hope will hold it in place adequately.  If not I'll add some long weedmat pins.  I'm guessing I'll need to check the MM for moisture every few weeks, especially the corners of the bed.

Kiwi! I was thinking of you.

That's a nice table top bed, plus it has a cover. You are going into summer now and I am interested how the wicking works for you. [I have to reverse my thinking.] So, no tomatoes this "summer".

I have a huge personal project going this year and I hope I wrap up 95% by Christmas. Summer was unusually brutal this year so I couldn't stay on top of the plants and pests, even with overhead shade cloth. I only got one large harvest of tomatoes where normally I get a big flush and then a moderate production through most of the summer. allowing me to can. Not this year so I took them out a month ago. Suddenly, now that the temps are in the 80's in the day and in the 50's at night, my peppers and herbs have new life and I'm harvesting.

Good to hear from you.

Thanks, sanderson  

What an awful growing season for you!  Very sad to hear that -- but OTOH it makes me realise that even incredibly experienced gardeners can have a tough time.  My first summer was pretty challenging with not many sunny days plus 3 intense weather events and I kinda felt I'd failed with the uninspiring harvest I got.

Enjoy your autumn harvest, you deserve it!

Oh, yes, Mother Nature and Life can get in the way. My motto is "Next Year!"

Hi,
Did I hear you say "Wicking Beds"?  Whoo-hoo.  That is the route I'm planning to take also.  There are plenty of used food-grade ICB's around, and sellers who will deliver also.  So the plan is to chop one in half, and build two wicking beds.  A LOT of preparation to be undertaken before I'm ready for that phase of establishing my garden, and because I'm a complete newbie, I need to do a lot of reading and question-asking.

I'll be very interested in your wicking bed progress.

Regards,
Duncan

Well, I'm very pleased with it so far.  I'm loving being able to garden standing up, although I was mostly OK with the raised bed in the middle of the back lawn.  I put a couple of litres of water into it every few days (until it overflows out the tubes into the bucket) and feeling down about an inch the soil feels nice and moist.  For the first week I was watering both from above and through the input pipes -- having two-year-old MM in there from storage, I wanted it to get fully moist nice and quickly!

I have two strawberry varieties in there: on the left side are 12 Montereys, and there are Aromas on the far right plus a few at the back of the middle 'column'.  (I haven't yet got around to running strings across to delineate the squares; when I planted, I just made rough lines with my trowel before I began.  DH feels that the columns are more in my head than evident in reality! )

The Aromas came to me by post as bare-root plants; very well wrapped and nice and moist, but they are taking a while to get going.  This was my first foray into bare-root plants, so perhaps I did something wrong.  They initially went into pots of (my) compost, since that's all I had and the bed wasn't yet ready to take anything.  When I transplanted them a week later I noticed that none of them had extended their roots down into the rest of the pot, whereas the Montereys were root-bound.  (Admittedly, they'd been in their pots much longer than the Aromas had.)

The Montereys on the other hand are just taking off, lovely strong little plants and I can't wait to get through this initial phase and be able to stop pulling flowers off!   

So it's 4 weeks since I filled and planted the wicking-bed strawberry patch on my patio.  Comparing the "before" and "after" is pretty pleasing!

All of the Aromas, which I had shipped to me bare-root (on the LHS in the "before" and the RHS in the "after" ), have now produced new leaf, and as of this morning one even had a flower.  The Montereys, which I bought from the local garden centre, are just bursting with enthusiasm, lovely strong little plants.  I have a feeling the fruits will be pretty large since the stems sure are!  Up till now I've only grown Aromas so will be interesting to see what differences there are between them.

You are having much better luck with bare-root than I have ever had.

sanderson wrote:You are having much better luck with bare-root than I have ever had.

Oh!  Guess I had beginner luck?    Having seen so many plants advertised for sale that way I figured it wasn't hard to do.  Thanks so much for letting me know it's more fraught than that -- when I fail in the future I won't be surprised!