Dear Diary: 28th September

WEATHER:

The high temps are rising, but the low temps aren't moving - currently around 13C minimum, but getting double that during the day. 30C predicted for tomorrow, a cooler day on Sunday, then HEATWAVE for early next week. ARGH.

RAIN

Rain last night - about 5mm, I think. Cool and occasional showers today. The tank is filling, there's more due later next week, but we have to get through the heatwave first.

CHOOKS:

Laying regularly: Siyao, Goong, and Carambah. Chouqette is still fluffing around, being noisy, but not apparently laying.

OSBERVATIONS

Dandelions everywhere in the front yard. Couch grass everywhere in the back. Keeping the grass in check is a trick and one that I've not gotten the hang of. The comfrey is growing back in places I don't really want it, and there's onion weed everywhere. I think the removal of that is going to be manual and slow, season by season. It's just a PITA to have to do so often and so much!

PREPARATION:

Trying to manage the dandelions, manually pulling them out (wonderful tool) and weed-tea-ing them for compost. However the north lawn (driveway side lawn) is a bit of a loss - it's almost entirely dandelions at this stage. I've actually acquired some weed 'n feed and am trying that on the lawn, but wow it smells of iron! I did find an article about organic weed control which recommends a product called corn gluten meal.

The truth is, I don't want the lawn so much as I want to be able to develop a nice meadowy space on that north side. Grass need not apply! Unfortunately what I have is creeping buffalo grass (and couch in the backyard; ugh). It's going to need more work and maintenance in the coming season to try to get it to a point of survival - especially as the summer gets hot. That said, a meadow might survive where a garden would not.

Backyard, the couch grass is starting to perk up; I'm pulling some of it up and have weed tea'd it in a bucket off to the side. The promised teenaged assistance has not materialised, so that's a PITA, and I'm mostly pulling it up by hand (and doing my back in the process).

Got the PLUM-STONE, APPLE-CREPE, and AVO-SHED beds in. Need to get the CREPE-APRICOT bed frames cut up and put together and set in place. It wasn't difficult to do - easier with 2 people, I suspect - but it wasn't difficult.

TO DO

• cut panels for last garden bed, or else buy more barrier edging from Hammerbarn.
• draw up measurements for BENCH SEATING
• white oil/pest spray KUMQUAT, MAKRUT LIME, PERSIMMON (after heatwave, when temps have dropped again)
• repot TINY BLUEBERRY
• pot TEA CAMELLIAS
• net front NECTARINE and GOLDEN PEACH
• shade back beds

PLANTING

I repotted both the KUMQUAT and the APRICOT

ICE-CREAM BEAN seeds planted

PLUM-STONE: SPINACH (perpetual), BEANS (blue ribbon - double check this) with a climbing pole in the middle, SILVERBEET?, RADISH (black spanish), BEETROOT (found in packet, unknown type), ONION (found in plastic packet, unknown type)

PLUM-STONE: TOMATOES (both indeterminate and determinate types: indeterminates up the back with suitable structures for hanging plants off (hopefully), EGGPLANTS (labelled, but also have a pic saved and set up), BEANS (pole, possibly snake) at the back.

1 Jaune Flamme, 2 Marmande (red), 2 Brad's Atomic Grape (yellow), 2 Waspinicon Peach (orange), 3 amethyst cream (magenta), 3 blue berries (blue), 2 pink bumblebee (green)

VEGEPOD: Planted Cecelia's GINGER - I don't think the other rhizomes are GINGER, they don't smell right.

RIPENING

Last of the CITRUSES. That's really about it, I think. Other than the fruit which are slowly growing.

HARVEST

Brassica leaves from APPLE-CREPE: should be suitable for a coleslaw-type thing. Last orange, maybe a couple of tangerines? Oh PARSNIPS from bathtub. There's also CORIANDER and ALPINE STRAWBERRIES coming good, and some RED CELERY is making itself known in various spots of the garden.

PRUNING

Pruned the AVOCADO tree - it's too broad and too wide, and I'm kind of worried about the weight of the avos going forward. Not very neat, though.

THOUGHTS

Thinking I'd like to plant some groundcover in front of the chook yard, but the problem is giving it enough time to get some roots in, particularly this summer.

Dear Diary - 19th September

WEATHER:

Hot and sunny. Still heatwave - 35C easy. Middle of the day was boiling hot, I went out to check the chickens, also move things around.

RAIN

Officially, we're in El Nino territory with the an Indian Ocean Dipole which moves cooler, wetter air on the western half of the continent even further west. It's gonna be a very dry summer.

CHOOKS:

They're hot and noisy. Two eggs today, three yesterday. Free run of the front lawn, pooping everywhere and digging up things I don't want them to dig up.

OBSERVATIONS

I actually think there's a BRUSSEL SPROUT growing in the APPLE-CREPE. Not sure it's going to set the little nubs because we're heading straight for summer this year, no spring.

PREPARATION:

On Monday or Tuesday, I dug out the HOPS pot, and got about a dozen roots suitable for replanting - green leaves or budding nodes. Planted them out into four containers for the front yard, looking to vine them up the front if possible.

Actually, thinking that a vine shade will probably need a lot more things growing.

Also repotted the GRAPE (Iona) and a large BLUEBERRY. Didn't get around to the smaller blueberry or the newbie that mum gave me. Didn't manage the KUMQUAT either. BLACK SAPOTE and LYCHEE are doing okay-ish but not great. I start to feel like I need much larger pots for the trees I have to grow successfully.

Made the APPLE-CREPE bed frame, set up the netting frame and have the netting over it. Also planted into it - WOOLLY POD VETCH and a whole heap of MUSTARD. Was going to do CABBAGES (mini) but then realised what I thought was a massive envelope of seeds of a single type was actually a massive envelope of several smaller envelopes of specific cabbage varieties. Need to go through those and work out what can be used.

Realised that the permabee helpers only left me with three garden bed frames when I actually need four. Also, council clean-up is coming, and I need to toss the old garden bed frames out.

PLANTING

WOOLLY POD VETCH and MUSTARD into the APPLE-CREPE bed. Not mulched.

POT O'POPPIES under the AVOCADO, along with MARIGOLDS. Mulched.

was going to do SUNFLOWERS in the APRICOT bed and would still like to do it, but not until after I've removed things from that bed.

RIPENING

Still ALPINE STRAWBERRIES.

HARVEST

Several leafy greens ready to harvest whenever ready.

BROCCOLI in APPLE-CREPE - more leaves than florets at this stage, but leaves can be steamed and stems could be pickled.

PRUNING

Cut down more of the FOUR-APPLE tree: the DORSET/ANNA grafts are too strong. But I want to lop a fairly major limb off both grafts, trimming the tree way back to give the other grafts a sporting chance.

I've been digging up the DANDELIONS on the front verge and the northside lawn. Also been reading up on meadows and how they go wrong, as my attempt at a meadow space did the other year - grew for one year, petered out thereafter, is now entirely DANDELIONS running wild. Need to fill the holes with something, though, otherwise we'll just end up with more dandelions and we don't actually want that.

Pulled up some of the runner grass out the back, put it in a bucket for weed tea. Need to get a lid for it.

TO DO
* mulch APPLE-CREPE bed more heavily
* cut panels for last garden bed, or else buy more barrier edging from Hammerbarn.
* white oil/pest spray KUMQUAT, MAKRUT LIME, PERSIMMON (after heatwave, when temps have dropped again)
* repot MEDIUM BLUEBERRY, TINY BLUEBERRY
* plant CALLA LILIES
* pot TEA CAMELLIAS
* pot WHITE SHAHTOOT MULBERRY
* find a lid for the backyard WEED TEA (one of the new pot dishes?)
* dig around and find out what can go on the council clean-up pile
* plant BASIL in bathtub around the parsnips
* move small VEGEPODs to front lawn? We'll want the garage space back.

THOUGHTS

Given we're heading into drought, priority with the water tank is to use it for establishing the garden, then heavily mulch and water maybe once a day in the evening for 15 minutes on timer.

Not sure what to do/how to fix the carport water barrels.

Dear Diary: 18th September

Am I going to join the Sydney Edible Garden Trail? It looks kinda like I am.

Someone is going to help me pull up the grass (I hope) and lay down chip mulch in the pathways. I think I might need to have an actual phone conversation with him to make sure he understands what I want, because in spite of being 15 (or possibly because of it), I think he suffers from manitis, which is the sad affliction of thinking he knows better than any woman, even one who has lived three times his life. I said I wanted help pulling up the grass, and he focused primarily on moving the mulch. Not sure if I want to hire him after that whole interaction.

WEATHER:

HEATWAVE. 35C days lately, everything needs watering in the morning and it's dried out by lunchtime, especially if it doesn't have pea straw mulch keeping the moisture in.

RAIN

Not for another week at least, and probably on cm.

CHOOKS:

Hot and grumpy because they're always complaining that their yard has no green things in it, but they're laying pretty well.

OBSERVATIONS

Citrus scale on the MAKRUT LIME

PREPARATION:

Got the PLUM-STONE bed set up and settled in. Need to do the others, but it's so hot right now. Also: the process of actually bedding it down would go easier with two people.

THOUGHTS

Bed prep for SEGT
GOALS:
-display chook tractor function
- display fruit trees in the garden
- display shade bed

APPLE-CREPE
- get bed in
- sow with more mustards
- for SEGT: chook tractor here

CREPE-APRICOT
- get bed in
- sow CORN, CUCUMBERS, BEETS (up the back), BUSH BEANS up the front

APRICOT
- SNAKE BEANS up the back
- ZUCCHINI at the front
- ONIONS around the edges (all the different types and kinds)
- mulch heavily

AVOCADO-SHED
- get bed in
- TOMATOES

BATHTUB
- BASIL

HEXABED
-need to think a bit about this - already has celery and flowers there, could probably do with the HELLEBORES actually planted there, possibly set the chooks in to weed it? Not sure how to contain the space - whether to do so.

I think this might be illustrating a shade bed - what to grow, how to set it up? IDEK. Think more on this, but not too long, or maybe leave it as unchanged ground simply for SEGT people to come by and make suggestions?

SEATING

1. need to make the garden seat sections of the chook tunnel

2. need to fix up the metal frame garden seat (possibly for next year)

Spring Veggie Garden - basic course

I ended up having less time than I thought I did: 90 minutes rather than 2 hours.

Then the level of skill/experience was greater than I anticipated, so it pretty much ended up just being me trying to answer questions in some kind of context.

INTRODUCTIONS

Name, gardening experience, why you're here

* why do you want to create a garden?
- go around and have people offer reasons
-> why you want to create a garden will vary the kind of garden you want to build and how you want to develop it/maintain it

* What I am going to teach in this course is *modular*. You are not required to use any and all of it. Think of it as *guidelines* rather than *rules*.

Answers I expect.
- a garden for exploration
- growing vegies to show what can be done
- food stability and staples
- pleasure and enjoyment
NB: more than one of these things can be true at the same time

Course was originally aimed at educators - is this still the case? I will be addressing some of the generalities in early education.

1. How much garden do you want?
- enough to grow your veggies?
- as much as you can comfortably manage: a couple of hours a week? a couple of hours a day?

2. What to grow in your garden?
- whatever you will eat
- whatever the wildlife won't eat!
- how much time do you have to maintain it? (note: weeds are plants that have found a niche they can exploit)

3. Where to put it?
- somewhere you'll see it every day and which is easy to maintain
- somewhere with good sun and good water: talk about 'good sun' in Australia, coupled with the conversation about water and water conservation
- soil quailty? Soil can be made, but the direction of the sun and where structures are can't usually be changed

4. food for your garden and your garden for food
- soil, composts, worm farms, worm towers
- "food" for the garden: also "inputs" into the garden's productivity - eg. companion planting/pollinators
- flowers and not just food

5. three legs of a garden
- plants for human food
- plants for soil food
- plants for pollinators

BREAK - things to eat

6. Practicalities of gardening
- weeds: the site and how to deal with weeds - "pull, outcompete, suppress" - make it so there's no space for the weeds to grow.
- water: ollas, mulch and ground covers, composting trenches
- pests: bugs that eat (predatory insects), birds (cockatoos, etc.), possums and rats, and human
- time and energy: do things in 'units of work' - mark off a space for working in, then lay out that space.

I thought I was a bit scatty, but everyone else seemed to think it was great and they came away with info they didn't have before.

Dear Diary - 13th September 2023

Well, that's been a while.

WEATHER:

The nights are still pretty cold - less than 10C - but the days are in the twenties, and we're due for some 30C+ day temps this weekend.

RAIN

Not much. A couple of storms, half a day of some downpour, and otherwise...very little regular. And we're heading into hot-and-dry season.

CHOOKS:

In August, Goong was in clucky mode for the usual two weeks, came out of it, laid an egg, hasn't done much since. Siyao and Carambah are laying every couple of days. Chouquette's comb is getting red, but she's still not laying!

They get really grumpy when they're not let out of the yard - Chouquette in particular gets exceedingly vocal. Admittedly right now they only have one part of the yard to run around in - I'm trying to grow things in the yard on the other side. Not so successfully, admittedly. Once the chooks get in there, it's really quite difficult to grow anything else.

OBSERVATIONS

APRICOTS are not flowering - again. Interestingly, CHERRY has a branch that looks like it's going to do some blossoms, but that's the only one. The PEACHES and NECTARINES are as usual. PERSIMMON appears to be the 'off' year (biennial, I believe). FOUR-APPLE early grafts aren't flowering at all and the late ones don't seem to be budding either. The TROPICAL DORSETT graft on the DELICIOUS is doing a second flowering.

AVOCADO is back in flower again - still harvesting avos off it, need to pick up the pace. MULTI-CITRUS still has some of the smaller orange fruit on it (and an orange or two). MAKRUT LIME had a huge harvest, but I think it's falling prey to some kind of scale infestation, which need to be treated ASAP. (White oil.)

Big BLUEBERRY is in full flower, medium is half-flower, baby is still stuck in a teeny tiny pot, and the newbie I got given by mum is still sitting in its pot.

Have some SPINACH ends from the shop, but they have this white dust all over them. I washed the dust off when I cooked the original spinach, but i set the spinache ends in water and picked one out today...and it's got all this white dust again! Anyway, after a quick Google, I discovered that the white dust things are trichomes, and they're part of the way spinach grows! How interesting! Okay, good to know - I was thinking it was a mite infestation or something like that!

PREPARATION:

PLUM-STONE: get bed frame wired and into place. Plant out spinach ends.

APPLE-CREPE: eat the brassicas and peas, take frame off, get bed frame wired and into place. Put chooks on for a few weeks.

CREPE-APRICOT: get bedframe wired and into place. Plant CORN, CUCUMBERS, BEANS

APRICOT-AVO: flower meadow (that was the plan, unfortunately the girls getting out and scratching around in it means it's not doing so well right now).

AVO-SHED: Get bedframe wired and into place. Plant...something that doesn't need too much sunlight...

PLANTING

TEA CAMELLIAS and WHITE SHAHTOOT MULBERRY need to be planted out into bigger pots. So do the PINEAPPLES (3).

I planted out a whole slew of seeds during August, with the intent of taking them along to the course I'm teaching this Saturday. Some of it will be planted in the community garden where I'm doing the course, but I'll probably hand out the excess to the participants.

CARE:

TOMATOES that over-wintered need some trimming back and feeding/mulching.

RIPENING

Brassicas all over the place.

HARVEST

Avocados and oranges, mostly. Could do makrut lime shampoo if I had the time/exec function to get on with it.

CARROTS and BEETROOT are harvested. The beets (golden detroit) are super tasty and I regret giving the ones I had away! Carrots are decent, but I already gave away three bunches. Unfortunately the PARSNIPS are disappointing: there wasn't any frost to make them sweet, so they're mostly just starches. I'll harvestthem from the bathtub in the next few weeks, then scatter BASIL seed there as I usually do.

PRUNING

Everything's pretty much pruned back, but the runner grass on the back path needs pulling up and disposing ASAP.

THOUGHTS

TO DO:
treat scale on MAKRUT LIME (possibly also on PERSIMMON?)
properly pot two BLUEBERRIES
properly pot WHITE SHAHTOOT MULBERRY
properly pot TEA CAMELLIA
trim back TOMATOES from overwintering and feed.

This Saturday I am teaching a course at a local community garden, run by the next council over. It's a little terrifying; I can rabbit on quite easily, but I don't know if I want to - it's about learning and drawing people out. There's a garden bed at the community garden that I can plant out and which I've kind of agreed to take over for the next few months - it'll be something of a community plot, possibly also an example of what can be done in a small space. I'm kind of excited but also mildly terrified!

I might make another post with my notes.