Written by Krisy Goodwin
Hello readers, I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and are looking forward to the new year ahead. My New Year’s resolution is to never have a year like the one just past…well that’s my hope anyway…
My veggie garden has kept me on my toes, with heat, wind and bugs trying to thwart my efforts! So far things are still looking good, with my corn, lettuce, capsicum, beans and bok choy still producing well. Though the December rains played havoc with my zucchini and cucumber causing powdery mildew, they survived after a heavy pruning, but it’s looking like it may be time to retire them.
My garden right now looks like a patchwork quilt, a myriad of coloured pieces of shade cloth, nets and structures to keep the searing sun and tomato stealing birds at bay, it may not look picture perfect, but it does the job.
So one of the things on my bucket list isn’t an exotic trip to far away places or a candle lit dinner at the base of Uluru ( I have ticked that one), but to have one big roll back shade-cloth that covers my entire garden for the summer. Another is to simply win the lotto so I can hire someone to set to work doing all those little things a gardener sometimes struggles to find time to do… oh so nice to dream,
right?!
Speaking of those jobs that sometimes get forgotten are the poor tools that do all the work for us, now would be a good time before the best growing season to give your tools a service.
QUICK TIPS:
- Give them a good clean removing any rust or dirt either with some steel wool or a brush. Barkeeper’s Friend is a great product for this. Allow to completely dry.
- Give them a good sand with a medium grit sandpaper.
- Sharpen your secateurs, shovels and shears, you can pick up specialised inexpensive sharpening stones for this.
- Give your tools an oil using machine oil or olive oil if you have it.
- A handy trick is to fill a bucket with clean river sand and any sort of clean oil, just enough to lightly dampen the soil, you can pop your smaller tools into this when not in use, or rinse, dry well and dip into the sand before storing away, it will stop them from going rusty in the future.
- Finally, I like to tie brightly coloured ribbon or tinsel to smaller tool’s, so they are easier to spot in the garden when they get misplaced…doing this has helped me out many times.