First bite of the season

This week: Dismantling and painting; Potting up Pups;

We have enjoyed another lovely week of weather this week.

The days have been warm, but not too hot and we have had some overnight rain as well. This of course has made the weeds grow even faster than normal.

I have had my first Tiger Mosquito bite of the season too.

The larvae hatch anywhere from late April to late May and immediately go searching for a blood meal. Unfortunately I was the victim of one of the pests.

It will not be long before they are out in force and every foray into the garden and orchard will require the application of mosquito repellent first!

While I was in the polytunnel, I saw that three male Bagworm have hatched.

These caterpillars construct a sturdy home around their bodies out of twigs and bits of leaves. They then stay inside this home over the winter, before climbing to a high spot to pupate in the spring.

This is a video I made of a Bagworm moth climbing up the side of the polytunnel to get as high as it can before pupating.

Male moths pupate and drop out of their nest of sticks, leaving the last bit of skin of their old caterpillar body showing.

The females are wingless and remain inside their nest and emit pheromones to attract a mate. Once her eggs have matured, she drops out of the nest onto the ground.

Looking like a white maggot, she hopes to be eaten by a bird. She doesn’t survive the birds digestion system, but the eggs do and of course the bird distributes them for her.

I have these interesting moth cases all around my home but I have yet to actually find one of the male moths.

Dismantling and painting

I started dismantling the patio table on Monday and moved the various parts out onto the terrace.

What was left behind was the detrius of several years, all piled up on the swing seat!

Once I was up close and personal with the metal frame, I realised that I would need some specialised paint to protect and preserve the frame.

Down at the DiY store in Stari Grad, they have a rack of spray paints which include some that allegedly give “rust protection”, however having used them in past, they don’t seem to protect metal for very long.

Being an island in the Adriatic means that whichever way the wind is blowing, it brings salt in the atmosphere. Because the swing seat has been undercover on the patio, it can only be the salt laden atmosphere which has caused the corrosion.

The Mediterranean has a higher percentage of salt in the water that other seas because of the high evaporation rate and the low volume of fresh water entering the basin throught the few rivers which feed into it.

Once I start to remove the visible corrosion, I will then need to treat the metal straight away, so I made the decision to order some Rhinofix and wait until it arrives before I start sanding the metalwork.

With the wooden table now in pieces, first job was to scrub it with warm water to remove dust and dirt. Then I let it dry in the warm sunshine.

Next I used an orbital sander to smooth the wooden top and then applied a coat of Sadolin.

In the sunshine, I was able to apply two coats in a day and then left everything overnight to dry.

The next day I treated the underside of the table and the legs, again leaving them to dry overnight before I reassembled the table.

While the Sadolin treatment was drying, I cleared up the rubbish which has accumulated. Plastics and cardboard went to the recycle centre and the leaves and sweepings went in the compost bin.

My final job was to scrub down the chairs. They haven’t been used since last year so have gathered dust.

I have to say I am happy with the result, however there is a problem! I now have somewhere nice to sit in the mornings, enjoying the sunshine (and coffee) while I think of all the jobs I should be doing…

Potting up Pups

Back in March, I wrote about cutting down one of the Banana trees in the polytunnel (Blog 25/12).

It hardly seems like eight weeks ago, but then time flies when you are enjoying yourself!

This week I was in the polytunnel and saw that the old banana has sent up several young shoots.

Bananas are not actually trees, rather they grow from an underground corm, a little like a VERY large flowering bulb.

The banana reproduces by sending out side shoots which are called “Pups”, however there are two kinds.

Water shoots have large leaves and although they come directly from the parent, they do not always fruit but sword shoots will always grow as a true replica of the parent.

As the description implies, sword shoots have long thin leaves and a better root system than water shoots.

The largest of the pups has very broad leaves and almost no roots, so I have left it in place for now. It is already large so will need a very large pot.

Of the two smaller shoots, one has sword leaves and the other which was growing under some plastic weed suppressant, has no greenery, but a thick tangle of roots.

I cut both of them off with a spade and then prepared pots for them to go into.

The accepted way to really get bananas to thrive, is to grow them on in a large pot, allowing a really strong root system to develop and then plant them out the following year.

After filling the pots with a mixture of garden soil and potting compost, I gave the plants a good soak. Then I left them inside the polytunnel.

It will be a couple of weeks before I know that they have survived being amputated from their parent.

Meanwhile, I need to find a really big pot to put the large pup in, but it is a job I can do next week. NCG…