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: 24th September

OBSERVATIONS

NASTURTIUMS are everywhere in the backyard.

FRONT PICKET BED is going beserk and in a bad way; probably going to need to poison the mugwort and the red salvia is seriously worrying me with its tendency to sprout from just about anything... But the little bulb garden I put together is now flowering ANEMONES after the JONQUILS and PAPERWHITE (also jonquils) have finished. There appear to be some DAHLIA crowns coming through, but the only thing from the meadow mix that seems to be sticking is the ALYSSUM.

GALA apple is flowering, so is BRAEBURN.

CHOOKS

Hainan had to be put down back around the middle of the month. The peritonitis wasn't getting any better in spite of the draining and antibiotics, and in the end it was better to end her suffering. She's buried under the peach-nectarine tree in the triangle garden.

Goong is broody again, and somewhat grumpy at being left out right now.

PRUNING & PREPARING

Planning to take off a giant chunk of the four-apple two very productive branches. They're not going to fruit this year - I think the rats ate all the buds. Give the other two grafts a chance to shine, maybe...

Planning to put the chooks into the dining room VEGEPOD at some point to clear it out. Don't know how well it will go; they like a bit of shelter - not too exposed. Could maybe put a few sacks or green shadecloth over it to give them some protection.

Planning to plant the snapdragons out in the PICKET FENCE BED.

PLANTING

Planted out the CORN (country gentleman) in APPLE-CREPE

Planted out the BUSH BEANS (cherokee wax) in the APPLE-CREPE, and CREPE-APRICOT, and PLUM-STONE

White BEANS (might be blue mountain), ebisu PUMPKIN, popping CORN, and maybe one EGGPLANT and one CAPSICUM coming up?

Blue CHILLI from Margaret by way of Cecelia.

RIPENING

ASPARAGUS: purple in the polybox, green in the ASPIE BED

MUSTARDS in the CREPE-APRICOT

MUSTARD in the VEGEPOD

SILVERBEET in the garage MINIPOD

RADISHES/LETTUCES in the dining MINIPOD

HARVEST

RHUBARB stems: both the green in the APRICOT bed and the red in polybox.

BRASSICAS in lounge room window, CABBAGE in pot on VEGEPOD, FENNEL in bathtub bed, CORIANDER in bathtub bed

NOTES

FRUIT TREES in triangle garden got netted (TWO-STONE and DUAL-STONE)

GOLDEN DORSETT graft has flowered and is fruiting; have started covering it over but not very thoroughly. Going to need to evaluate how that branch is managed.

Things need to be in the ground before I go away on holiday - all of October, pretty much; that, or they need to be in something that has a water reservoir...

NATIVE BEEHIVE: Opened it up with Sue, found the structure there but just no bees. Looks like the colony simply didn't manage to re-queen, and just died. Now I have to trim out all the mouldy/pollen/honeysacs in the hive and prep it for probably an October/November split.

bed check: January 2020

We had quite a lot of rain over the last couple of days. It's been pretty good for the ground and the plants,

Plum Stone:

Assorted tomatoes which are in the growing and flowering stage but not yet in the fruiting stage. Probably during January.

I have no idea what's happening to the one in the front; we just had several days of rain, but it's simply wilted. I hope it's not anything viral, and I should probably dig down to see about the root system and what the issue is.

I've underplanted mustards and brassicas (or they've self-sown), tossed in various greens and chook fodder for once the chooks are put onto this bed - and also for general harvest through the rest of the summer.

Stone:

This is a perennial bed, and it's been very heavily mulched with woodchips over the last few years which haven't at all broken down.

It had three artichokes and wormwood on the north side (not pictured), but the artichokes dried out and died and so did the wormwood. It's since been planted out with fat hen, amaranth, mustard and other 'easy greens' - so, of course, after the rain, both artichokes and wormwood are coming back, too. *sigh*

On the south side, the woodchips are king, a couple of brassicas (possibly brussels sprouts) cling to the ground at least nine months after they were planted there. I've tossed down poppies, fenugreek, nasturtiums, peas, and other things (maybe rocket?) just to build up some ground cover.

Apple-Crepe:

Corn, beans, an eggplant or two, a capsicum or two. I also sprinkled peas, mustard, silverbeet and 'clucker tucker' along here when it began raining last Thursday. It might be too early for the clucker tucker; but no help for that.

This bed will probably be one of the last of the current set to be tractored with chooks. The corn is going to need a decent run, and I probably need to stake those beans.

Crepe-Apricot:

Corn, a couple of cucumbers that have barely grown, and I dropped a couple of peas under the watering system outlets to grow. I'm debating what to do with this one once the corn has finished. I'm not sure that I'll have that much corn out of it - my corn silks are never available at the same time as the pollination stalks are out and dusting, and although the first corn was fine when hand-pollinated, the subsequent one failed quite miserably. I'm waiting to see how the rest of it goes.

I've tossed a lot of Clucker Tucker down, and maybe some Fenugreek. Mostly to grow green things and fill the space. Whether they survive is largely due to how far the watering system goes, and whether we get any more rain in the next month.

There's also a comfrey planted at the front. It's dried out a few times in the drought, but has perked up again with the rain and the watering system.

Apricot:

The watering system is in and ready to go! Unfortunately one of the pipes has a fairly significant hole in it, and even the plug that should be holding it in place isn't quite doing the job. I'm dreading having to pull it apart and redo it; I might try it sealing it first with something like plumber's tape.

A couple of plants of Fat Hen, I've put down a bunch of chickpeas during the rain on Thursday, some of them had sprouted by Sunday when I covered them over, and hopefully some of them will stick. There's also Clucker Tucker sprinkled all along the edges.

Apricot-Avo:

Bean up the back right, zucchini (I thought, but might be a pumpkin) at the back left, tomatillo in the middle. Onions, eggplants, tatsoi, choy sum. Not sure if the choy sum will survive the sun; it tends to wilt really easily.

I've tossed Clucker Tucker, mustard, and fenugreek all over this one, too.

Avo-Shed:

Tomatoes up the back. A tomatillo taking up space in the middle, and a cabbage/brussels sprout hiding right behind it. Eggplants, capsicums, fat hen, silverbeet, and another curcubit. (I really can't keep track of them.)

I threw down some marigold and sunflower seeds outside the bed, but they don't seem to have taken. They might now that it's rained. One can hope!

Wicking Bed:

The ronde de nice zucchini is taking over. But this is the 'salad greens' bed: lettuces, tomato, radish, beetroot, kale, spring onions, silverbeet. The exceptions to the salad are the three eggplants that are in the middle of the bed and slowly growing.

Lettuce oakleaf green, lettuce salad bowl red, Gardland serrate leaf, lettuce black seeded, mibuna, mizuna, Chinese Mustard Greens - 29th Nov
4x '10 Heirloom' tomatoes - 29th Nov
Kale, eggplant (jitendra), eggplant (finger) - 29th Nov
Radish confetti mix, onion red beard, beetroot bulls blood, Onion straight leaf - 17th Dec

Bathtub:

Planted 17th Dec: Two tomatoes - one Blue Berry Cherry, one Cherokee Purple. Carrot short kuroda, Onion purplette, carrot kuroda, onion creamgold, parsnip gurnsey. Leek King Richard up the shallow end, Beetroot golden detroit at the deep end.

I've sprinkled various seeds down by the base of the bathtub but none of them have come up. *pouts*

Hexabed:

With the watering system in and occasional inputs of compost, hopefully things in this bed will grow better than they have been. Everything's been holding on, but otherwise not growing. (Story of my garden.)

I don't even know what's here anymore; the idea was for it to be a bee-friendly garden, but I've tossed plenty of fruiting and food plants in there and not just the flowers that were the original idea. It was barely growing through spring, and I don't know how well it will do over summer and into winter.

On the plus side, the rain runs off the chook house tarp and into the garden - so much so that I've had to put a bucket underneath so it doesn't drill a hole down into the soil

Banana Circle:

Bananas (at least five or six), taro (at least four), an avocado, two turmeric, comfrey, alpine strawberries, a small watermelon, hyacinth beans. Frankly there's too many plants in this space, so I'm going to take out the turmeric, taro, and a couple of the smaller bananas.

Thoughts
1. Could grow potatoes/sweet potatoes in the cheap aldi garden beds if they were set up to be wicking. (As of 21st Jan, have set up wicking bed in front of lounge window for sweet potatoes.) Contemplate doing for regular potatoes, with water thingy in the middle.

2. Small Aldi garden bed: use frame, cover with pond plastic, poke hole in about 5cm above ground level, low layer of soil, set olla in bed, fill with soil, plant potatoes. Or garlic?

3. Run a water line down from the carport tanks to the front garden bed? Otherwise front garden bed is basically to be bucketed/heavy mulched in drought.

So many things to be done and not half enough time before the SEGT.

maps and plans

A layout for the garden before I had chickens:

And the garden on the weekend. Easier to see because it's winter and there are no leaves.

Useful to see, isn't it?

in the height of summer

Quick bed-check.

Avo-Shed: chook tractor (since at least November)

Apricot-Avo: corn is tall and full of ears, could probably do with some extra watering/mulching.

Apricot fore: potatoes (need digging out), Queensland arrowroot (also may need harvesting), random curcubit that doesn't look like anything we know.

Crepe-Apricot: Popping corn (not very good), tomatoes, kale (left over from winter), some comfrey and parsley as edging. I seeded a summer mulch there yesterday, and planted some 'homegrown pumpkin' seedlings, but one Hainan chicken got out and probably dustbathed there and killed them.

Apple-Crepe: tomatoes, beans, a couple of pumpkins/curcubits,

Stone-Apple: tomatoes, 'good bug mix', sunflower.

Stone fore: Wintermelon seedlings, zucchini seedlings. I trimmed down the stone fruit tree pretty severely - it went up and up and up and the only harvest I really got were the plums, so I'm cutting it back.

Plum-Stone: ginger up the back, parsley, a single beetroot, some tomatillos that are just about to fruit, only I want to put the chook dome over it for the next two months...

Upper Cherry-Peach: bathtub water garden - need to check for a hole in the plug area. It's leaking.

Lower Cherry-Peach: bathtub garden - nothing in here yet, but I'm thinking I might plant the garlic in here if I can get enough good soil. (Good soil is tough to find in decent quantities; at least until the compost bioreactors finish getting their acts together...

Chook house: Due to be moved sometime this weekend (I hope; maybe.)

Asparagus bed: (upper step bed)

Annual herb bed: (lower step bed)

Vegepod:
Front row:eggplants, capsicum (peppers)
Middle row:tomatoes
Back row:melons, cucumbers, possibly a pumpkin or two? They're growing up the vines with the plan to provide shade (this aspect of the house faces north, which is the sunny side here in the southern hemisphere, so the shade would have been good a month earlier, but the bed was only created in December).

Front garden/orchard: various plants which aren't doing so well - probably the soil isn't rich enough or deep enough for them. I'd need to run the chooks through here rather longer than I did, I think.

the permabee post

So Sunday came and was crazy hot - 35C with strong winds in the afternoon.

But we got SO MUCH done!

1. Permanent chook run

Ironically, while this was something I particularly wanted completed, it didn't get finished. It didn't even get started, due to the one thing which I'd casually earmarked as 'necessary but not an actual task' turning out to be seriously labour and time-intensive!

I'll talk about this at the end of the list.

2. connect up rainwater tanks

This was beautifully done! Two linked 60L barrels set on a platform with a tap installed so the water can be bucketed elsewhere, or channelled down a hose to the orchard!

3. make composting bioreactor

At first the bioreactor was difficult because nobody had seen it done before. However, after I got my laptop out and showed the taskgroup the video of the Johnson-Su bioreactor, they got the gist of it, and things proceeded pretty well.

A compost bioreactor is essentially a 'set and forget' compost that's supposed to be very rich in fungal nutrients because it doesn't get turned to aerate, thereby requiring the biota to readjust when everything is turned over. Instead of turning, six 'air columns' run through the middle of the pile, allowing the bacterial to breathe and do their thing. It takes a while to break down (some 5-6 months was the estimate) but the results are excellent, and not having to turn it means you can create several of these around the yard and deplete one while others do their thing.

Bare space where the bioreactor is going:

They put down a wooden pallet on bricks (to keep it from rotting) and then positioned the bioreactor on top.

Completed but lidless bioreactor on the day:

The bioreactor contents were basically two garbage bags of horsemanure, two containers of guineapig litter, one container of chook litter, and a helluvalot of chip mulch.

A day later, with the pipes pulled out to leave the airholes, and a 'lid' on top to keep the moisture in.

Two days later, with a water barrel that gets filled with the 'waste shower water' that fills up a bucket while showering, and which seeps into the compost to keep it moist:

This one, more than the other projects, will probably have pictures in future, so others can see what it looks like as it breaks down over time.

4. (move lattice and) set up composting bays

The front and back yards of the house were previously defined by the position of a lattice that ran in line with parts of the house. It left a gap behind the shed of about 1.2m, enough for a composting space, but not a very easy place to work. I wanted the lattice moved forward to run in line with another corner of the house, and a couple of compost bays set up behind the shed.

Late on Sunday afternoon:

This afternoon (Wednesday):

The idea of the composting bays is to have something that regularly gets added to. Paper wastes, vegetable wastes unsuitable for the worms or chooks, possibly chook manures. It will require turning after a while, but right now, it's just settling with the compost that was made on Sunday (left-hand bay) and the pine-and-banksia woodchip mulch that I've been filling the right-hand bay with for the last couple of days. We'll see about the results - ideally, there should be more 'green'/nitrogenous wastes to make a hot compost, but the chips are only about 4 days old and might still have some decomposing to do. Either way, neither of these composts is likely to be much use for a few months at least.

5. empty, move, and refill vegepod

This took somewhat longer than I expected; I was just expecting a move-to-a-new-location, but the wonderful women working on this task went about not only repositioning my vegepod and making sure it was flat and supported and positioned to my satisfaction, but also turned it into a wicking bed. Which I kind of wanted, but didn't figure I had the time/materials to do.

Well, they found the time and scrounged the materials, and although this meant that the task took longer than expected, it's a wonderful surprise and will be extremely useful!

Next week, I'll plant out the melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplants, and mild/sweet peppers that I've been growing for the last month, and set up some wires to run up to the roofline. The goal is to get the vines growing up those wires to give a little shade to the house in the coming months of hot northerly sun...

6. set up bathtub gardens

We moved the bathtubs, and that was about it. I needed to seal up the holes in the tubs, and I haven't. But they're in the location I've envisioned, now I just have to get them sealed and re-positioned, and then we can add what goes in them. One water garden, one above-ground garden - possibly a wicking bed.

Unexpected

Team Chook Pen had the task of not only creating a run for the chooks, but moving two lattices (one of them blocking the area for the compost bay) and combining them into a single fence.

I put this down as a throwaway line - in brackets - a task that needed to be done in order to get around to the chook pen.

It took ALL DAY.

Out of all the tasks, this was the most time-intensive one! Taking the lattices apart, digging out the fenceposts, digging the new post holes, putting it all back together... A team of five or six started when the bee began, around 10am, and it was pretty much the very last thing to be completed around 4:30pm.

WOW!

But the result is also WOW!

Overall, that is easily several months (if not several years) worth of work done in a single day by dedicated teams of people who love gardening. The old adage "many hands make light work" precisely sums it up!

The non-existent chook pen is a bit of a pain, but I have a reasonable idea of how to go about it now, I just have to kick myself into actual gear in the next couple of weeks...

I'm thinking about applying for a permabee next year, too - this one to simply plant out a food forest along the picket fence line...

Permabee

Got a permabee happening at my place on sunday - a Permaculture working bee - with my local permies group, and while I'm looking forward to it, I'm also a little worried that I won't have enough to keep everyone occupied for the entire day.

1. Permanent chook run
- using metal fencing in picture
- this is somewhere for the chooks to go that isn't the backyard while I'm growing things out the back in the middle of summer. I can move the chooks around the backyard in winter, but I want the space for growing things in summer
- need to work out the plan of which piece is going where and how to make it all fit together (or I could ask people to do it?)

2. connect up rainwater tanks - the main 4000L rainwater tank hasn't arrived, but we have a couple of 60L barrels that could be set up next to the carport and connected up to the downpipe there.

3. make composting bioreactor
- full resource guide
- this is an experiment in seeing if this kind of composting system could work: just set and forget until it's needed six months later (and I always need soil in my garden)
- this will be the most labour intensive one to do

4. (move lattice and) set up composting bays
- one video here
- another one here
- still another one here

5. empty, move, and refill vegepod
- can do this myself but will be easier with multiple people

6. set up bathtub gardens
- can do this myself also

On re-reading this post, I suspect I've underestimated just how long it's going to take to do some of these things. We'll be lucky to get the chook pen, the bioreactor, and the compost bays done in a day, I think!