This is what beetroot seedlings look like when they are praying for rain.
After all the lovely lovely rain filling up the tanks last week, I went a bit mad and planted three punnets of beetroot (and some silver beet, but enough about that).
I am of the mindset “waste not, want not”, which meant I took about two hours to do a ten minute job: instead of simply thinning out the extra plants like a normal person would do, there was much tender extraction of each little baby plant that had sprouted from the rest of its brethren then planting them out in a bit of vegetable mix. So instead of planting eighteen seedlings, I now have umpteen. Heapsty-four. I’ve lost count.
Because the seedlings were going to be too delicate to stand up to the blast of the midsummer sun, each morning I have been covering them with layers of mosquito netting, and in the evening uncovering them again. Sort of like my relationship with mosquitoes, but in reverse. If there were vampire mozzies that went vegan and lurked in the daylight because they were allergic to starlight, then yes, this would be what I am protecting my beetroot against.
Dad hiding from the chickies behind a sheet of plywood.
The care has paid off in that most of them are greening instead of withering (or whithering), but this is why I am not a farmer. I have no sense of time investment or proportion of effort for reward, and normal farmers would not be putting out layers of netting to stop vegan mozzies attacking their beetroot.
Another reason for netting is that one of the chickies now flies (badly) over the electric fence when he sees me out gardening. He seems inordinately proud of his efforts at being a semi-guided fluffy missile, and rewards himself with stolen spinach. The little bugger.
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