Season started late, with very cool, wet Spring through Oct/Nov 2008. Good rains during Spring turned to drought in Dec08. Weather very strange: mostly warm, very humid, but continually overcast, resulting in low light intensities. Consequently everything has grown very slowly, Chillis especially.

DragonsLingerieBeans (GardenBed7) were badly damaged by rats; planted Sep/Oct-08, harvested Dec-09. HopiBlackBeans (GardenBed11) were much more successful, planted and harvested about 2 weeks later.

Tried using bought seedling mix for seed trays. (Purchased from Agri.) It was a disaster -- set like cement in the trays, and caused me the loss of a great many Chilli lines. Never again!

15-Mar-09

Still extremely hot, high UV. House-dam is empty -- just enough water for seed trays and lettuce beds and Tomatoes & Chillis where I can. Forecast is for 50% chance of rain Mon evening into Tues. PumpkinFly activity seems to have slowed down some; maybe I'll try planting some more YellowCrookneckSquash if we get some rain.

07-Mar-09

Extremely hot, dry weather. Losing many Tomatoes to sun-scald, so I've put 12% shadecloth over GardenBed7 where the Tigerella and PinkX08 Tomatoes are to try and mitigate effects of UV.
Tomato Experiment: Pl BrandywineTomato (1999), TaxiTomato (2007), TigerellaTomato (2005) and LimeGreenSaladTomato (2006) to see if any of them will perform into Winter, since they struggle so much during peak Summer. The Brandywines are more in the nature of a germination test for the old seed; 12 seeds sown.

Feb-09

Weather hot, very humid. Decent rains, mostly over a single week of wetish weather, with a few other useless dots of rain helped to relieve the drought somewhat, though not enough water to recharge dams/soil.

Jan-09

Quite a lot of the Tomato and Chilli plants are showing some interveinal chlorosis, almost exclusively on older leaves. The books would seem to indicate that this indicates a Molybdenum deficiency. Is it? Everything is very dry; total rainfall for Jan: 10.5mm :-( The House Dam is almost empty -- enough water for perhaps another 2 waterings. Seedling beds (Salading in GardenBed5, Carrots, Beets, Chard in GardenBed13) I've written-off... I can easily plant more seed. Water is being reserved for established high-value plants -- Tomatoes, Chillis, Squashes, Cucumbers and some DragonsLingerieBeans.