Garden Update: Plant Babies

Things are going quite well in my garden. I did get potting mix and I moved the four pea seedlings to their own pot. It really is too hot for newborn peas right now, and unfortunately I've already lost one. The other three seem to be holding on, though. Go, go little pea plants!

My lettuces are starting to look like lettuces, too. They're all in a clump as they self-seeded, but I've found lettuces can usually sort themselves out.

I've thinned out my carrots, leaving the biggest, strongest looking carrots where they were, I transplanted the very smallest few to other tubs in the garden and moved the medium-sized carrots further apart in the carrot tub. Carrots hate being transplanted, it's really their least favourite thing to do, so I watered them in with seaweed solution to ease the shock. I will be surprised if the smallest carrots recover, but at least they have a chance... when I say "smallest", I mean this size:

See that little red-orange thing? That's a carrot!

I sprinkled some more dirt in the carrot tup to cover up the exposed part of their roots, so now my carrots look like this:

Well that's actually much blurier than I thought it was when I took it. Really my carrots are not blurry at all, but they do have a lovely crop of green fluff.

I removed the mini greenhouse from my chilli today and moved the pot into the main part of the garden. It's now this big:

The other new plant babies I have are strawberries. I got this handy little all-in-one greenhouse from Kmart:

And it now has four tiny little strawberry sprouts in it. I tried to get a good picture of the actual sprouts, but it turns out they're camera shy.

What's going on in your garden? :-)
Happy Planting!
Cassandra Louise

Beauty Tuesday: Microbead-Free Exfoliation

Last week I decided that every Tuesday would be Beauty Tuesday and I would talk about sustainable fashion, environmentally responsible cosmetics or natural beauty products on Tuesdays. This Tuesday, I want to talk to you about microbeads.

You've probably heard about microbeads but you may not know what they are. A lot of companies use microbeads as a selling point. It is a selling point - microbeads are great for exfoliation - but microbeads are wreaking havoc on our waterways and marine life. Microbeads are plastic. They are tiny little pieces of plastic that go down your drain and then never, ever dissolve or disappear.

You can read about what microbeads are, exactly why they are a problem and what products you may have that contain them here (the link will open in a new tab).

If you have something with microbeads, I would suggest throwing it out. You should know by now I don't suggest throwing things out lightly, but the less microbeads flooding into the ocean, the better.

I don't have a photograph of microbeads for you as I don't want to demonise a particular brand or product, so I drew some for you:

I didn't think that adequately captured how evil they are, so here they are lighting a bushfire and running away:

And here's one making a fish sad:

But on a serious note, they make fish more than sad, they make them sick, dead and extinct. Don't use them.

"But what," I hear you cry, "can I exfoliate with?! I'll get all scaly! Do you want me to be all scaly?"

Of course I don't want you to be scaly, and that's why I've made this simple recipe for you.

You will need:

The most gentle conditioning baby shampoo you can find

Normal white table sugar

And... that's it. Pour one tablespoon of baby shampoo into a small bowl or a teacup.  For the kind I have, 1Tbsp is ten pumps, so that's easy.

Next, add two tablespoons of sugar to it.

You can either just let it sit, or poke it with a spoon for a bit, either way, in less than a minute the sugar will have absorbed all the baby shampoo and turned into a sort of crunchy gel:

You can use this scrub and know that you will not be scaly and you are helping to keep marine creatures and environments safe.

If you have very dry skin, you can replace the baby shampoo with olive oil or coconut oil.

I would like to make this post an informal link-up, which will be open... well, basically forever since it's informal. If you have a beauty post you would like to share, link to this post on yours and leave a comment here letting me know you've linked up.

You could link an environmentally-friendly alternative like this, a natural skin or hair care product like the one linked here, a fashion-centred op shop/thrift post like the one at this link, or a refashion project like this one. I really look forward to seeing your stuff! :-D

Happy Scrubbing!

Linky love,

Cassandra Louise.

Garden News: Chilli, Carrots and Peas

Remember my mini greenhouse from this post?

Well, look what's in it now!

I moved it slightly so it was over the strongest plant. If I still get more than one, that's fantastic, but this way I'm guaranteed to get at least one. It's about 5cm tall now. I think I'll be taking the greenhouse off it in about a week.

My carrots are recovering well and the roots (the carrot part) have visibly started growing again.

Very soon I'll need to go through them and move them a little further apart. There's some very straggly ones that are having a lot of trouble and they may need to come out, but I'm soft hearted/headed [delete as applicable] so I'll probably make a carrot nursery for those ones. 

The little one on the right of the screen probably can't catch up.

I also found the kind of surprise you only get when you put your used potting mix back in the compost to refresh:

Surprise pea plants have come up in the tub of a native plant I potted up a few weeks ago. It's really getting too hot for peas, but I still want to give them the best start I can.  On Saturday I walked to Coles with my wheelie bag (you know, like grannies have) to get some potting mix to rehome my peas, as I don't have any more compost ready right now. Turns out Coles no longer sells any potting mix. Boo! So today I'm walking to the next closest shop which may have some and hopefully wheeling some home to replant those peas before they climb on my native friend there. Potting mix is heavy and I'll be walking really quite a long way considering, so that's my workout for the week, thank you very much!

Happy gardening!

Lots of Love,

Cassandra Louise.

Bugs Are Being Mean To Me

So this is happening to my poor innocent little carrot plants:

 

I'm most upset about it, so I thought I'd make a garlic bug repellent spray based on this recipe here and a recipe I was given via Twitter (which unfortunately I forget who gave it to me, but thank you!) which used grated dish soap.
I used this spray bottle:

Minced garlic out a jar:

Normal cheap cooking oil:

And dishwashing liquid:

I filled the bottom of a small saucepan with oil (about 4mm deep) and put in a big heaped tablespoon of garlic:

Meanwhile, before I turned the heat on, I put the kettle on to boil. I turned the stove on and gave the garlic a good stir to evenly disperse it. When it just started to fry, I got the now boiled kettle - how good is my timing? so good! - and filled the saucepan to about 1/3 with boiling water:

I let it bubble until everything smelled of garlic, even my hopes and dreams, then I pulled it off the stove.

I put about this much dishwashing liquid in the bottom of the spray bottle:

Then filled it to about 1/3 with cold tap water. I stuck a funnel in, lined with paper towel to catch the garlic bits, and poured the contents of the saucepan in:

It dripped through slowly and it was quite content doing that. Look at it's smug little face, being all content:

And I, being me, got impatient and balled up the paper towel and gave it a squeeze to help it along and the paper towel burst and now I have some garlic bits in it anyhow, but not nearly as many as I would have.

I went outside and sprayed my carrots liberally.  I'll have to do that again every time I water them and every time it rains.  I'll let you know how they go.

Garlickly yours,

Cassandra Louise.

Leonard

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you are very patient, and also you know I'm a crazy plant lady, in much the same way some people are crazy cat people or crazy dog people. My plants are my babies, I talk to them, I give most of them names (I don't often name short-lived plants or plants that will get pulled up for food, such as carrots). One plant you may remember is Leonard.

Leonard the chilli plant

Unfortunately, Leonard didn't survive the winter. Chilli plants are very sensitive to the cold. I did everything I could think of including bringing him inside at night, but he died. He's now in my compost bin so he won't be wasted.

It's not all bad news. A few months before Leonard died, he was quite laden with fruit when a severe storm struck. All the fruit dropped, and some sprouted. a few of the baby chilli plants survived the winter. Determined to keep them alive and hopefully see them grow up and become big, healthy plants, I made a little mini green house out of a plastic water bottle:

And stuck it in the pot over the baby chilli plants.

I watered the pot thoroughly and the little plants under the cover have been thriving ever since. They grow slowly, but I can see they are growing. I'm going to keep them covered until they start to really flourish.

That's what I've been up to, how are things in your garden?

Happy Gardening!

Cassandra Louise.

Fixing Up My Garden

For about the same amount of time I was being a slack blogger, I was being a slack gardener.  Depression really doesn't want us to have any nice things, does it?!  Anyway, last week I fixed up my little garden of tubs and I took lots of pictures so I can share that with you.  I know you care. ;-)

Here's the bit where I tried to get a "before" picture:

I started by taking out anything dead, and crying a little if it was something not meant to be dead; then I stood up the droopy climbers (tomatoes and potatoes).  I had no plant ties or old stockings, so I cut some strips of bubble wrap and tied them very loosely.  I took out some of the clover, but left a bit because I like it, and another patch I left in a tub I then sprinkled lettuce seeds in.  Clover actually puts nitrogen in the soil rather than sucking it up, so my lettuce will be extra green and lush!  I also found one basil plant- I thought none of them had taken!- and a little radish plant.

Radish. :-D

I took out my last silverbeet plant.  It had always been stunted and recently got attacked by bugs.  The plant was over a year old, so I thought I'd use it's space for something else.  I was a bit sad but managed to save this much to eat:

So not a total loss.  The roots and the rest of the leaves are in my compost bin.

If you are very obsessive or have a lot of free time, you may remember this little guy:

Well, now my chilli plant looks like this:

It's in a much bigger pot and gives my more fruit than I can use.  Wonderful!

Then I tried to get an after picture for you:

Well, you get the idea.

Signed with love and joy,

Cassandra Louise.

Some of my Favourite Op Shop Posts

For the purpose of this post and others like it I may do in the future, "op shop" will mean op shop, thrift store, secondhand shop, true vintage shop and any other place you may get "pre-loved" clothing, toys and homewares, including online.  I fished some really fantastic things out of the bin at a sharehouse I was living at, once, and I am extending "op shop" to include things like that, too.

This post is essentially a list of blog posts which I have found especially inspirational or inspiring.  In some cases I searched through many posts by a particular blogger to find just the right one, in some cases I knew exactly what post I wanted to feature before I even started.  I hope from here you get some wonderful, inspirational ideas!
They are in no apparent order save for the order I found/rediscovered them.

First, a little shameless self-promotion with this post of my own: Things You May Not Know About Charity Op Shops

2. This post about clothes swapping by Agy: Have You Been To A Fashion Swop?

3. Thrifted maternity wear with Erica: Human Friendly Fashion Blogger Outfit- Maternity Edition

4. This one at I Love To Op Shop, in which I quite like the ugly clock: How Ugly is my Clock?

5. This adorable collection by Op Shop Mama, as I'm a sucker for a kid's xylophone: But Wait, There's More!

6. This one by Ali, because she opens with a delightful pun: Confessions of a Serial Shopper

If you enjoy reading these, let me know.  I would love to make another list for you.  Lists are cool.
I was a bit sad that some of my all-time favourites are from blogs that have been taken down.  Boo! :-( Lots of gems here though, all from blogs that are still up and have a lot of interesting content. :-)

Do you have a favourite op shop post or thrift blog?

Signed with love,
Cassandra Louise.

Follow-up to that thing I asked you about...

In my last post here I was asking for gardening advice.  Some of you had some great suggestions!  I think I've worked out what the problem was, and I hope I've fixed it.
The soil was very sense and tough, which is a common problem in pots; it needed to be dug over and aerated.  Unfortunately it would have been very difficult to do that with the tiny little plants in the pot.  I did manage to save the largest silverbeet plant, which hopefully will take off now.  One silverbeet plant that I had to dig out and add to my compost (never easy for me!  I love all my plants!) was only two centimetres tall but had roots close to thirty centimetres long, so obviously the plants in that pot were trying very hard, they just couldn't take hold.  I've since planted some radishes and calendula seeds in the tub.  The radishes have already sprouted and seem to be growing a little every day so I think I have solved the problem.  The tub now looks like this:

And my darling little radishes look like this:

The main problem I had with my last lot of seedlings was transplant shock, so to avoid that I've decided to put my Autumn nursery in peat pots and egg cartons.

That egg carton at the front there has lettuce seeds in it.  I've put them in an egg carton and not a peat pot so I will have to do less thinning out later; when the little lettuces appear, I will simply plant the entire egg carton in one of my garden tubs, just as I would a peat pot, but longer.
That big round plastic pot there has/had a potato plant in it that I found in my compost bin.  Having had a dig around, I have my suspicions that the plant rotted in the rain.  I would still quite like to grow potatoes, please, so just in case I planted some more.
I checked the one potato in my pantry for eyes.  One eye!  Plenty!  I cut a small slice of potato with the eye on it and planted that in the pot.  It should be sufficient to grow a new plant.

Worst thing that can happen is I'm no worse off than I am now.
The other plants in my garden are all doing quite well.  Here's pictures of all of them which I expect you to look at and enjoy as if I were showing you a cute thing my baby did...

For those playing along at home, that's two kinds of tomatoes, chillis and strawberries.  No fruit on the strawberries yet, but since I thought it was dead for a while there that's ok.  The first few years are always rubbish for a strawberry plant, anyhow.
The herb garden is also going well but looks a bit stragly, so I'm not going to show you any pictures of it, much like it's my baby and it just farted or something.

Happy gardening!
Love to you all,
Cassandra Louise.