I found a ladybird on my seedlings

Volunteer gardening at Cabramatta High School 🌱

I volunteered at Cabramatta High School yesterday as part of their annual Green Day. It sprinkled for about 5 minutes but the rest was overcast. Perfect for gardening! Students from their Environ Club also helped out. All up the school has 1.5k students and they also have an Intensive English Centre which includes students which are migrants, refugees, and international students.

My group helped weed and mulch their Peace Garden:

I’m most proud of this area. We weeded, pruned, and mulched this section:

The clouds started looking ominous which also meant the photos look a bit dark ☹

We mulched both these areas:

Which involved some ingenious ways of moving mulch:

We also had a trailer which was moved BY HAND, by their teacher. He then proceeded to pull the trailer back to the mulch stash with about 10 kids at the back.

It was a great day and I learnt some neat gardening tricks!

Unlimited marigold

I removed some of the dead marigold flowers i.e. deadheaded them, and collected their seeds. I didn't realise how easy it was! The seeds were smaller than the ones from the packet, probably because the pot I have is smaller than recommended.

Left: a dead marigold head. Centre: removing the petals. Right: Marigold seeds

Next step... germinate from seeds!

Using a wick to water plants while away

I had a four day weekend and used an old cotton t-shirt and some 3 L milk bottles to keep my plants hydrated. It's the same trick I used while I was away for two weeks in December.

Day 0: I was in a rush so was only able to set up a few pots

The basil and capsicum are growing heaps! The marigold seeds will be ready to be harvested soon.

Day 5: Most plants were hydrated

Growing capsicum from store-bought capsicum

I rinsed and dried some seeds inside a capsicum then planted them in a pot. I didn't sow them very carefully and a week later a bunch of them said hi 👋

Day 8 after sowing: they've sprouted!

Some of my capsicum seedlings in toilet paper roll pots

First basil harvest of 2017

A few months ago I sowed some sweet basil and marigold seeds. When the seedlings came up I repotted them into takeaway containers.

Pre-basil harvest

Today, was the first harvest for the season. Basil can be harvested when it's 30 cm tall or has three sets of true leaves. Mine had seven sets! I snipped off the top three sets of leaves about 2 cm above the node of the next one and added them to lunch. We had basil tomato cheese sandwiches for lunch. The aroma was amazing and a little went a long way.

Post-basil harvest

The original plant was quite small so I'm wondering how this will affect future growth... I need larger pots as well!