Dear Diary - 23rd August

OBSERVATIONS

16th August: Garlic planted in the round black pot with the bluebird olla has developed lots of teeny-tiny garlic shoots. They're very garlickiy shoots! Good for salads, etc, I think.

Generally: something in the front yard got chipped and a billion little shoots are sprouting from the wood. Looks almost like a mugwort, but hard to tell. I'm trying to pick them out but it's a bit tricky.

PLANTING on the 17th

PLUM-STONE: Onions (from Misty Ridge), Leeks, Radishes

CREPE-APRICOT: Peas (yakomo giant)

Watermelons in aquarium greenhouse

Shade Flowers in HEXABED

on the 22nd

Struck all the cuttings I took from Limestone in a bucket of sand-coir/pottingmix-vermiculite.
PEAR sensation
FIG st dominique
MULBERRY white shahtoot
PLUM sugarplum
APPLE jonny

Planted two WHITE SAPOTE seedlings (couldn't find an ICE CREAM BEAN one, alas) into small pots

SPROUTING

on the 23rd

23rd August: Tomatoes are starting to sprout in greenhouse. Peas are 15cm tall already (but no leaves) looking a bit spindly. Have taken the peas out of the greenhouse to harden off. A brief stint of colder weather for the next half week, then back up to warmer (10C) again.

PRUNING

I cut off the 'minor' branch for the APRICOT section of the FOUR STONE: it was dead in any case. The 'trunk' of the 'major' branch has shoots coming from it, though, so we'll let that grow through this year and then trim it down next year with an eye to espalier. The problem is exactly where to espalier it, since that FOUR-STONE is pretty crowded (and the chook tractor space doesn't allow for spreading in).

THOUGHTS

Use the small metal frame in the raspberrry bed to make a small bed between the two-stone and the persimmon. Put melons in there to grow separate from the pumpkins. (Or make a frame from the shed pieces.)

NOTES from ESPALIER WORKSHOP at Limestone:

The two apples in the front are definitely being espaliered (And learning how to do it was heaps helpful. That can be a project for the coming Sunday, perhaps?)

I'd like to espalier more trees in the backyard - the quad-apple, in particular, the apricot, the dual plum. It would be nice to sort out the donut peach, but I'm not hopeful.

Wondering: could I espalier using the tree itself as the upright frame? Tie the crosspiece to two vertical branches (particularly relevant for DUAL PLUM) and then train along those lines? I'd try to use the fence for the QUAD-APPLE, but the FOUR STONE presents a problem since it's very parallel to the fence, and there's very little space on the Apricot side.