dear diary: Monday 25th July

OBSERVATIONS

Bulb section of yard is sprouting.

CHOOKS

Coldie and Shantung went to the vet. Coldie is fine, all healthy, seems okay after her surgery and implant.

Shantung...they extracted about 600mL of fluid from her abdomen. There was definitely something happening there; exactly what, the vet still isn't sure. Apparently Shan still feels a bit 'lumpy' inside and so she's going back after her course of anti-inflammatories and painkillers is done. (which I forgot to give her tonight. DAMN.)

She was slow out the gate this morning, retreated into the laying box and stood there for a while. But by late morning she was out with the others, happily pecking away at the prawn heads. And she was roosting tonight, so that's good. But I'll have to medicate her in the morning again. UGH. I hate medicating chooks.

The fluid they extracted from her!

PRUNING & PREPARING

trimming down a lot of the trees, ready for Friday afternoon and the chipper...

NOTES

I feel like I don't have enough things for the composting on Saturday. I was planning to chip all my branches, but not going to manage that before the weekend.

1 barrowload of mown grass (2 days old)
1 chookyard of half-mulched compost
3 boxes of half-decomposed chips
3 boxes of fresh-mulched chips
1 box of paper shreddings
3 tubs of chicken poop
1 garden bed of indian borage
1 bucket of wood ash
1 packet of rock dust

dear diary

WEATHER

Actually sunshine! After a week of rain and rain and more rain, and everything going squelchy and squishy and ugh... So damn tired of the rain at this point.

CHOOKS

Chooks seem healthy. Bub-bubs (Goong) isn't going through the tunnels to roost at night. She's been finding alternative places to roost, and I'm not sure why. Tonight I found her refusing to go along the south-side tunnel, and in the end I had to carry her out and put her to bed.

Both Goong and Siyao are laying, with Shan occasionally producing an egg. Coldie and Hainan are just swanning around eating food and being layabouts. *sigh* But I don't have the discipline to kill them just because they stop laying. It's a problem.

PRUNING & PREPARING

I trimmed down several of the trees in the backyard. Going to plant some FENUGREEK in the CREPE-APRICOT as a green mulch (maybe radish, maybe mustard, too).

PLANTING

FENUGREEK.

RIPENING

ORANGES (still!)

HARVEST

ORANGES?

NOTES

Have the composting workshop this weekend.
1. worm farming
2. Composting + collecting bits and pieces for composting
3. Sheet composting using chooks
4. Black bin composting + pest management
5. making a compost
6. Weed teas

Need to:
set down woodchips across the paths
chip all the tree branches that have gathered up over the last few months
collect more leaf litter
collect more kitchen wastes
tear up newspapers/cardboard for composting
clear out the chook coop underside for nitrogen mass
pull apart the HEXABED

dear diary - 16th July

WEATHER: FROST.

That is all.

Okay, not quite all: I got the bulbs in, covered them with pea straw, and then it frosted last night. Was away all day so didn't get a look at the garden during the day to see how it managed with the frost, will look tomorrow.

dear diary - 15th July

WEATHER AND GROWING PHASE Full moon phase

Sunshine, a day of rain on Wednesday, but cool and dry. Frost predicted, so I want to get some bulbs into the ground.

CHOOKS

Laying, occasionally allowed out to generally peck around, but I think they're getting a bit bored. Need to grow some better spaces for them to hang out.

PRUNING & PREPARING

Dug up the picket fence bed nearest the driveway for bulbs.

PLANTING

Bulbs: ALL THE BULBS today. Will probably have to be lunchtime. They need to be planted otherwise. Full moon phase best to do this. Maybe I should add a moon phase to this diary entry. Might help?

NOTES

Contemplating signing up for the Limestone Winter Homestead Espaliered Orchard workshop - it's been moved to the 3rd August, which is a Wednesday and which I can make b/c I have that week off. However, I will have a healing back tattoo... Hm.

post-permabee thoughts

Things that weren't done:

• the chook yard roofed
• apple tree growing frame shored
• back hexagon garden cleared
• the northern wall cleared

Things to do now:

• plan the stripping of the house, asbestos removal, window replacement, insulation, wrapping, cladding
• plan the strengthening of the chicken run to something solid enough to set up sections as seating around the edges. (Future plans.)

The former bee bed needs rethinkng. The norhtern side is far too damp for the avocado, which was why it was slowly sinking. An alterantive would be to put something in there that doesn't mind exposure (west winds) and likes it warm (northern slab heating) and which also can take watering.

The area surrounding it needs thought as well: in part because the grass creeps in either way - the long runners that end up taking over the bed or sneaking in under it. When I made the compost for the bed, I didn't really dig up the grass and now I kind of regret that.

I could put in bulbs, but the grass would overrun those. Also, they make mowing the lawn edges tricky, because one doesn't wnat to whipper snip the bulbs, but one wants to get the grass. Probably the best option then, is to grow something that doesn't mind being cut down and which will bounce back.

TBH, ideally this would be comfrey edges. But I'd want them according to the layout of the Linda Woodrow chook dome (in the future, which is probably quite a way away right now).

Maybe the temp option is the bulbs and a meadow mix. Plant the bulbs now, staying back from the edging. Then plant alyssum and yarrow and other easily-mown plants along the edge, pulling back the grass wherever possible. Do marigolds repel grass, by any chance? Oh, there's the thick 'looks like violet' stuff that was growing thickly around the black sapote. That looks like it might do a decent job once transplanted: dig out a big chunk and lay it down?

Need to take a photo of that and ask people what they think it is.

Right, first half of this week is planting time for the bulbs. Also need to contact Steve-the-neighbour and ask if he's willing to help chop out chunks of the frangipani. May need to get the termite guy to look at this, too.

Dear Diary 10th July

Permabee yesterday: got most of the pruning and the digging-up-and-repotting done. YAY!

WEATHER

Saturday was sunshine. Today is pretty much on and off rain. Temps have been down to 3-4C and up to 18C during the day. We've had a few days of heavy rain, and this morning our locality hit the annual rainfall record this morning at 8:30am. That's how wet a year it is. It's our wettest year on record.

CHOOKS

The chooks have been through the northern side of the garden: the triangle orchard and the frangipani flower meadow. They got a brief full yard free-range this morning before it began raining. After that, I nudged them back to the

PRUNING & PREPARING

A video on Fig Pruning suggested cutting back the already-fruited wood each year, since that wood won't fruit again, and if the goal is to get fruit, then cutting it back each year will keep the tree manageable in size. Something to remember.

I need to dig out some of the chook yard, and lay the mulch around the fruit trees that we just transplanted to pots: LYCHEE, KUMQUAT, ACEROLA CHERRY.

PLANTING

PERPETUAL SPINACH all around the PLUM-STONE bed, some SILVERBEET in the PLUM-STONE to join the kale and cavolo nero.

LETTUCE between the rows of garlic in the CARPORT VEGEPOD: two rows of 'mixed lettuce', one of 'aggro woman' (or some such lettuce), one of the forellenschluss. Also, four SILVERBEET.

SILVERBEET in the lower step bed, a sprinkling of ROCKET on the left side.

RIPENING & GROWING

The potatoes from the Pumpkin&Potato patch are sprouting, the oats have straight green stalks, everything else is a little bit random.

TWO-STONE is flowering, DUAL STONE has been pruned down to reachable levels and requires a little more trimming and neatening to prepare for netting this year.

HARVEST

Picked the KUMQUATS before we moved the tree, need to remember to eat them!

NOTES

Now that the picket fence bed is cleared, I need to think about what's going to happen in that space, taking a moment to consider that it does need some visibility for cars coming and going, and that that area is very wet in rainy weather, and probably quite dry in drought.

ROMANESCO BROCCOLI planted back in May didn't make it. Probably not enough sun. Or too much? Or the soil was the wrong type? IDK. He didn't make it any larger and ended up dead.

Also, the only thing that survived in the LOWER STEP BED was the Valiant GARLIC. None of the Monaro made it, IDK why.

raspberries for L

Some weeding as a surprise 50th Birthday present for a friend.

I was roped in for the 'initial consult' to determine what had to be done: pretty much my suggestion was get the obvious weeds out of the way, trim down whatever needed to be trimmed down, and clear the raspberry bed.

The initial idea by the organiser was to actually plant things and pretty it up. I put the kibosh on that: best not to add difficulty to their maintenance or put in things that they don't want to the garden. She may have an aesthetic that we can't envision, so don't do anything that might complicate that.

But clearing the weeds thanks to the help of friends? Is definitely a plus. Even I struggle to clear weeds, etc. on my own. Having someone else willing to chip in, if only for an hour? So good.

I couldn't make the Saturday the others had planned (I had my own permabee that date), so I went on Thursday lunchtime and did some weeding of the raspberry bed.

There are raspberries in there, we swear! Anyway, I ended up taking on the raspberry bed, because the others barely realised it was a raspberry bed and didn't know what raspberry canes looked like, let alone how to prune them. I'm pretty sure L would trust me with her raspberries, though.

There was quite a bit of dead wood; I cut as much dead wood as I could, but I'm not 100% what type of raspberries they are - the kind that fruit on last year's wood or the kind that fruit on new wood. So I chopped them all down to about knee-height, and will have to charge Louise to notice where the green shoots grow come spring.

Unfortch, her neighbour spotted me while I was weeding the garden on Thursday lunchtime, and although I swear I mentioned that it was a surprise present in our little chat, she emailed L telling her what lovely friends she had who would weed her garden as a gift!

*sigh*

There went the surprise. Although apparently L is delighted with the gift now that she's found out, it would have been nice for the actual surprise and maybe have her husband or kids video her expression as she realised?

I do feel a bit left out of the Saturday bee, though. By the time my own stuff was finished at my place, they said they were cleaning up. And then fifteen minutes they took a photo of all them...without me. *sigh* I have serious FOMO.

Anyway: mischief managed, and I'm happy to talk to L about further planting plans. I have a couple of ideas for a rocky section that's really hard to weed and probably a bit of a pain to deal with, but I would run them by her and her hubs first. (They're the ones who'll have to look after it, after all!)

Dear Diary - 3rd July

First day in a while I felt good enough to go out and work in the garden...

WEATHER

88mm in the 24 hours to 7:30 this morning; I think they'll be worse off down south than us up north, but it's still a lot of rain. More due in the next 48 hours, plus significant winds.

CHOOKS

Still on the CREPE-APRICOT, Goong is laying in the leafmulch, Shan and Sisi in the laying box (which I've stabilised with a brick.)

Something has dug into the chook pen, probably won't find out until the pen gets fully dug out...and even that's questionable.

PRUNING & PREPARING

Trimmed off the pumpkin vines that were on the netting up to the northside gutter. I think that entire side needs a stronger pergola and something more permanent to grow across. (Vergola plans.)

PLANTING

I added two King Edwards POTATOES to the POTATO/PUMPKIN bed.
PEAS in newspaper pots to be grown up the APPLE espalier frame.

RIPENING

ORANGES, KUMQUATS.

HARVEST

RADISH from Dining room Vegepod. KUMQUATS.

NOTES

1. planted LILIES in cement planter by gas meter. Covered with chook run diggings
2. Covered TURMERIC with chook run diggings.
3. Covered POTATO (random) in APRICOT bed with chook run diggings.

...and then a friend I saw on Thursday contacted me about coming down with COVID over the weekend. She was RAT positive and her husband was RAT negative, but he's tested RAT positive in the last few hours, I think. I'm so far RAT negative, but this evening have a slightly sore throat. And I saw a whole bunch of people this weekend, too! ARGH.

raspberry pruning

CHILCOTIN raspberries:
- fruit on second year wood. Prune after fruiting, but only remove the canes that have already produced fruit.
- smaller autumn harvest appears on the tips of primocanes

AUTUMN BLISS:
- primocane variety, these canes are easy to maintain. Simply cut down the old canes in winter after you’ve finished harvesting to make way for the next year’s crop of fragrant berries
- prune to the ground after fruiting in late winter, ready to harvest berries again in autumn.

CHILIWACK:
- fruit on second year wood. Prune after fruiting, but only remove the canes that have already produced fruit.

gardening for a friend's 50th

A friend, L, is turning 50, and she's always admired my garden - she got really excited when Costa did a livestream of my garden a couple of years back, and she watches 'better homes and gardens' with her teenaged son (who's always seemed like a sweetheart).

A mutual friend from church suggested that as L's 50th Birthday Present, we could do some work in her garden: clear some of the viney tangled spaces, trim down some of the hedges. etc. The kind of thing that you need multiple people to work on so it doesn't seem endless and impossible. I volunteered to do some reconnaisance and work out what could (and should) be done (as well as what probably should not).

I did the recon with the assistance of her son, talking about the garden and what their family did so far as maintenance (mowed the lawn, really, that was it). I put together some notes and a plan, we arranged for the first weekend in July to do the majority of the work, while they're away, and to finish up in the second weekend in July. Unfortunately, we got a bucketload of rain this weekend. So that turned out to be a no-go. But we did have a group of us turn up so they could walk around, look at things, and get an idea of the plans for what could happen.

Nobody except me really gardens. They just maintain their suburban spaces as most people do. Lawns, hedging, some shrubs, etc. So we turn up and I'm talking about a patch that has a raspberry bush in it and how we have to weed the grass but leave the raspberry canes. And then we had the problem of them not recognising raspberry canes. I told them to let me trim the raspberry canes down and then anyone can pull up the grass/weeds. Sometimes, after decades of reading, observing, learning, it's hard to remember that most people don't have the body of knowledge that I do. (And some people learn it, but don't manage to keep the knowledge.)

So, there we all were in rain gear, while I explained what probably needed doing. In the end, we agreed that we'd get rid of the viney things, leave the shrubby/tree things, and probably bring along our own green waste bins to fill, because theirs is going to end up filled in a matter of hours. I mean, if I had everyone there at the same time in the same place, then I could have marshalled people to do things - but that unfortunately wasn't an option due to the rain. So people are going to come by and do what they can during the week, with a more concerted effort next weekend.

Except next weekend I have my own minibee happening at my place. ARGH.

We do think we discovered a tree - possibly the lemon tree that L's son vaguely recalls from childhood, although he thought it was more in the middle of the garden. There is no tree in the middle of the garden and there never has been...

I also have ideas about shrubbery along a southern fence - salvias, thai basil, mexican marigolds, maybe some lemongrass - but it will take a couple of seasons to actually grow everything into place (at least 2 years, probably - as long as it took my picket fence garden to really take off). Still, it'll look pretty, attract bees, etc.

(Speaking of bees: varroa mite is in the country. This is DIRE and terrible for our crops and for pollination of our crops. I had a native beehive the summer before last, but it died and the friend who split her bees for me initially had a partner who was in the last stages of cancer for the last 18 months and so she's been in no state to deal with the beehive and to check out if it was something like hive beetle, or what. I haven't dared to open it up myself. Maybe I should ask someone else with native bees about it? IDK. At this point, I imagine getting hold of native bees is going to be like winning the lottery; everyone with native bees will be holding tight to them.)

Anyway, I'll have to go around early this week to trim down the things that need trimming which my non-gardening friends are unlikely to recognise.

Also: do some reading up about whether the canes need to be cut back or just trimmed to a reasonable length to fruit. I don't know what kind of raspberry it is (I need to work out with my own raspberries what kinds they are as it is, and I already trimmed them yesterday - oops), but the raspberry will need a trimming if only so we can get down to the ground and pull the weeds.