Spring's comin' a callin'

[Grub]

I am so pumped!

Ordered another $180 worth of potting mix.

Tomatoes in and growing.
Hot peppers partly in and growing.
Sweet pepers to pot up.
Eggplants to pot up.

Basils, etc, powering along.

Studying backyard and mapping every bit of spare space.

It's crazy and fantastic. I can't wait to eat like a Roman.

[Mantis]

Not going to be as hot here today, only 31 or so. My outside plants grew noticeably yesterday in the heat. Lucky I watered them well the night before. Going to have to spend some time on the weekend mulching and covering pots to cool them down.
Heres my biggest pepper so far, a Mariachi Hybrid in the greenhouse, but the others outside in the main bed are catching up fast.

[Patrina_Pepperina]

Great pics everyone! Full Moon, I see some wee tomato volunteers popping up

Patrina

[Grub]

How things change in the space of a few hours.
33C everything wilting.
Bringing eggplants back out of the sun (Amalgro babies are wilting to death).
Tomorrow is supposed to be 35-37C.
Mad for spring. It's becoming a challenge just saving the seedlings.

[Mantis]

Its mad ok. They predicted 31 here today and it struggled to 24. The weathers gone crazy.

[Spatzbear]

We had your weather a few days ago.
Today's forecast: 17C ! Tommies will go into the ground in a few days. They should be ready by then.

Got a few bags of great horse manure and will pick up more tomorrow. Yum yum.

[Mantis]

Not as extensive as Craigs driveway pot setup but I'm happy with it. All this space was being taken up by one overhanging mangey native something. Its gone and the pots are in. Good plan I thought.



And the Grumpy F2's are in. The two at the end in the main bed are Grumpy indeterminates I think.



Thats a total of 67 tomatoes and 15 peppers in.
Mantis *off to the fridge for a frothy*

[Grub]

I must say I'm enjoying your threads Mantis.

Every year something else goes and more tommys and stuff are planted out.

Big southerly forecast here tonight and the temps are supposed to drop big time.

I'm salty from boating all day.

Shade top dismantled. Tomorrow I plant out the rest of the peppers and maybe start on the eggplants.

The eggplants are going in pots on my driveway

Grub, resuming his tour of the world's best beers. Still hot as hell here. Ksscchh goes the Corona. Wish I could drop in for some lime. My tree will produce one day.

[Grub]

Another day of toil. Not really. Cooler temps made it delightful out there.

Everything is in —★tomatoes, peppers and eggplants — except for nine more eggplants in pots, the leftover peppers in the flower bed, and the fall patch, whose babies have mainly just set true leaves or are about to.

All up: 62-70 tomatoes, 15-18 eggplants, 12-24 hot peppers, 12-18 sweet peppers, herbs of all kinds, and more.

Also, more cold beer, some teddy bears for the the baby's room, and some stretchy tops for Mrs Grub's ever-expanding tum-tum

[Full Moon]

Patrina, there's a few volunteer but there's also coriander growing in that bed.

I think there is something wrong with my pepper bed, can't figure out what's going on. The plants are yellowish and don't look happy.

[Grub]

Got a PH test kit Full Moon?

[Full Moon]

No I don't Grub. Read they were not very reliable. Do you think I should get one?

[Grub]

I think they are reliable. Sometimes the new beds can be quite acidic if you're using things like chook manure, which I add to my compost bin, and cow poop and stuff. The addition of mushroom compost can sweeten the soil, ditto a good handful of dolomite.

It's good to know the PH of your soil. I had a dud bed last year and another that wasn't great. The PH kit revealed the latter was acidic, especially where the blood and bone hadn't mixed in properly. The former, I have no idea, but reckon it was a dud batch of sugarcane mulch.

Just a thought if the chillies are slow.

[Mantis]

Hey Grub, what sort of fish is this - offtopic

[Grub]

It's hard to tell from your pic Mantis.

Body and head shape and profile are very much like an archerfish. Pretty easy to tell if it is. Turn out the lights at night and put a small light - classically they use a burning cigarette - above the fish and it will spit water if it's an archer. Hence the name.

However, mottled colouration has me stumped. So I'm thinking it might be what's known as a freshwater butterfly fish. I checked in my reference, but no.

I stil think it's some kind of variegated archerfish.

Any background?