last winter tasks

I've sowed seeds and put them in mini greenhouses to grow; the tomatoes (planted in July) are going great guns, haven't seen much of the others yet but they were only planted a week ago so...not surprising.

I really need to set up the proper greenhouse along the back of the carport, but that probably won't happen until at least the end of the month.

Kumquat, Avo, and Lychee are planted. The rose has been trimmed back with the assistance of a neighbour (thanks Bev), and the chooks have been moved to the back yard again.

I grafted a couple of the apple scions on to the multi-apple up the back. We'll see how they do going forward.

There was an exceedingly brief spell of rain yesterday evening (as in, ten minutes, max) and then it was gone.

This week, after work, I'll remove the fencing around the fruit trees in the front, smooth out the ground, fertilise at the dripline, then water the trees and shift around the woodchips for best effect.

I wonder if I could collect water in wall-to-wall buckets in the shower. Could get interesting.

Water management is going to be a big thing going forward. So much of what goes down the drain is lightly soiled at worst - has just run over human skin or washed vegetables clean, and could easily be reused on the garden. Need to call a plumber and talk about how difficult it would be to switch things around. Even using bathroom sink water to fill the toilet cistern.

That's not even counting the water tank that we have. Need a pump. Need to connect it up. Need to work out where the water is going to go on the garden...

I wonder if I could recruit the neighbours for scraps and lawn clippings and chook scraps this summer?

ETA: It’s now a couple of weeks later, and things have shifted – sometimes incrementally, sometimes rather more than that.

All the stonefruit is flowering: peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots. The exception is the cherry, which hasn’t even broken leaves yet. I’m not sure what it’s waiting for.

The multi-stone plum is flowering quite nicely as usual

One of the peaches already has significant-sized fruit on it. I’m going to have to net it this weekend or it’ll end up fruit fly fodder. That’s pretty much the call for this weekend’s work – netting the fruit trees and finishing off the composts. As projects go, they’re pretty big ones.

This is the multi-stone apricot, with teeny tiny fruit:

I have two more bare-root apricot trees. They arrived on Tuesday. *hangdog look* I couldn’t help it! They were on sale! My finger slipped! (They’ll be going into large pots with water wells for moving around the garden.)

The apricot tree in flower. It has gummosis, which is why I’m not sure it’s going to last very long. But even if it didn’t, I don’t think there can be too many apricots ever.

The broad beans are flowering (going to have to work out how to deal with the inevitable aphids), and the mustard is going pretty well in that bed. Need to start using those leaves instead of letting the bugs eat them.

Nasturtiums everywhere, which I don’t actually mind, they make good groundcover. I need more groundcover and more border plants.

I wonder if I could co-opt church kids to help me build garden beds. (I made a joke of it last night at bible study and some of the parents were ‘you might actually get some interest there’.) Except, you know, safety and stuff. And circular saws and toes. *shudder*

So this weekend the list of potential things to do are:
net fruit trees
building compost
potting bare-root apricot trees
re-potting mango or chocolate pudding tree

Next week (after work), the list of things to do is:
plant out the cabbage-eggplant box
seedbox all the seedlings that are starting to go beserk
set up potato bags (dirt and potatoes in the bottom, add sifted compost on top)