Rain at last!

Finally, after months of drought, its raining.  It started yesterday afternoon with a little teasing shower.  At the time, I was unloading a ute load of mulch to put on top of the cardboard in the raised garden area.  I knew that if it rained too much, I might not get the ute off the grass and back onto the driveway.  But thankfully, it only drizzled for a few minutes but was still promising more later.  So I worked like a maniac and got the whole load into the raised garden bed area, laying it about 20cm think at least.  I'm sure none of those pesky weeds will get through now.  Once that was done, the rain started in earnest and really hasn't stopped since.  I'll take a pic once the rain has stopped so you can see how nice it looks now.  So let me show you this patch instead...

Mulching is certainly the theme around the veggie patch lately.  I've decided that I've been too lazy with mulching in the past.  I mulch when I plant and then don't top it up.  Well no more!  So I did this patch (which is patch six).  I took out what was left of the peas, did a bit of weeding, piling it all up onto the garden bed, and then mulched heavily on top of all that. I hope that everything will rot down nicely, creating a nice area for the next planting.  As you can see, there is still a few things on the go - kale, zucchini, pumpkin (still there from last season and coming back on), beetroot and onions.  With the rain in the last 24 hours, this should make this patch ready to go for some more planting.

Can you also see the corn in the back of this pic?  Its twice the size now with lots of ears of corn on each stalk.  I've put beans in at the base and they are busy winding their way up each one too.  There is squash, watermelon and sweet potato as ground cover too.  Its gorgeous to walk through this patch now.  And as I've mulched heavily, there is hardly a weed in there.  The only downside - and its a biggy - are the RATS!  They are coming into this patch and munching on the corn, but only after they've visited the tomatoes and helped themselves to a dozen of those.  They are driving us crazy.  We are trapping them as we don't want to use poison with all the chickens around, but they have learnt to avoid the traps now after a few got caught.  Any ideas??