Pickle Me Cucumber!

The garden has just been going bizzurk with the consistent rain and heat! Cueys (as we refer to them as) have been one of our success stories and most visitors are sent home with a few.

So when we stumbled upon a pickling recipe out of a book the other day it seemed perfect timing to give this preserving thing a go.

The recipe calls for a kilo of cucumbers (approximately 8 medium sized), 500mls of white wine vinegar, 3 bulbs of garlic, some pickling spices, sugar and an onion.

You leave the salted, sliced cucumber and onion for a couple of hours before rinsing and draining then popping into the sterilised jars. Our jars were 500ml - enough to fill two. They recommend eating within one month of bottling - hopefully that won't be too hard if they turn out!

With an Easter-break camping trip just around the corner one jar will be coming with us - can't wait to slap one or three on a burger!

Bugs Everywhere!

And they have knocked over about 1 meter of my carrot crop – I’m out for revenge.

Now that its rained and actually won’t stop the bugs are out and yep…they’re hungry! A few types of caterpillar getting about the garden so I whipped into action, firstly prepared some garlic spray – this acts as a deterrent more than anything but will knock over some grubs.. As I’ve bantered on about before, please don’t spray your veges with artificial chemicals these kills things and even humans eventually.

Garlic spray:
· About 1 bulb of garlic
· 100ml vegetable oil
· Soak overnight

Into the blender add above mixture plus:
· Squirt of liquid pure soap
· Litre of water

Strain, then spray onto bug infested plants

** Warning keep away from children!

Then I whipped up some chilli spray to get the actual grubs.

Chilli fire spray:
· Handful of fresh red chillies

· 1 litre of water

Now blend really good
· Couple squirts pure soap

Blend again just quickly

Strain then spray onto bugs!

** Warning keep away from children! Chilli spray very dangerous on eyes and sensitive skin (and caterpillars hahaha)


You can actually mix the two sprays together as an all in one I suppose, please yourself, and if you’re not sure spray a little on one plant as a test first to check that no adverse reaction or burning occurs.

This is garlicky smelly stuff, but the smell dissipates quickly once it's been sprayed around. These mixtures need to be re-sprayed frequently, such as after rain or heavy dew.

It's best to spray every few days until there's no sign of pests, then about every week to 10 days for any eggs or larvae that may have hatched out.

Roses 'n' Rain

We have suffered a few weeks of drizzling late-summer rain and getting into the garden to weed and prune has almost been impossible without gum boots, a rain jacket and a row boat! Okay, well perhaps not the later, but you get the idea!

Any attempts at pruning the roses today quickly dissipated when yet another dark cloud dropped its load overhead.

So instead of snipping, I pulled out the camera and did some snapping...

Back in late January when we scored that 21 inches in almost 21 hours everything, roses included, was fertilised with blood and bone. 5 weeks on, the results speak volumes.