June Update

The pond-side aquaponics garden is doing well. The strawberry plants are sitting up and looking healthy. The lettuce are looking good too though are a little lopsided due to transplanting them into small pots from a larger pot. Once they come out I will choose something that will benefit from the site a little better as I plan to be growing lettuce in the main system anyway. Today however I noticed there must be another hole in the pond liner as the level is sinking. I have turned the pump off overnight in case the reduced level is somehow connected to the grow bed. It doesn’t appear to have leaks anywhere.

There are several medium sized tomato bushes that have come up from summer seeds and are flowering and looking very healthy. I’ll see how they go and may transplant some into the aquaponics system.

The chooks are laying at the moment. Averaging two eggs a day. Probably from Stella and Penny.

The broad beans are up in the northern garden but the Denmark seeds have not yet come up. They should have shown by now considering that the guinea pigs have been out of the garden for a week after convalescing post the Gizmo trauma.

The Madagascar beans are still doing well and I imagine will come to an end soon. I have been saving the seeds from all the pods to place into the Seed bank and to grow a large crop come spring.

I also swapped a pepino cutting for two yellow tamarillo fruit on Saturday, so I can endeavour to grow some yellow ones.

The potato plants in the drum are doing well after a good soaking rain last weekend and I need to add more straw and paper to build them up a bit more. I have taken some soil from the straw-yard and added that too as it is looking really nice now that its had some moisture and three chickens scratching it up. I will probably also add some of this to the garden beds before I plant more fruit trees in.