dear diary: 30th November

It's been a very busy six weeks. A lot of things going on, a lot of stuff happening, and on the roll to the solstice, to Christmas, and the new year. OOF.

OBSERVATIONS:

The weather is absolutely all over the shop. Hot and then cold, humid and rainy, and then dry and soul-sucking. But things are growing pretty well.

One thing I need to remember is how much water everything needs in the middle of summer!

The water in the tank is beginning to smell. I think it needs emptying and then cleaning out.

One of the odd things is the harvest disparities.

The MANGO is way up, so is the PEACH (yellow clingstone).

Definitely down are the AVO, APPLES (golden del, gala), the NECTARINES (white), and the PEACH (china donut).

Same-state of unproductive are the backyard 'DUAL' PLUM, FOUR-APPLE, APRICOT, CHERRY, and the front yard APRICOT.
UPDATE: I have an apricot off the APRICOT in the tub!! OMG, SO EXCITED!

Same state of productive are the backyard PLUM, and the citruses - LIME (makrut), KUMQUAT, and CITRUS (oranges and tangerines).

Two that I can't really tell are the POMEGRANATE and the PERSIMMON, which are late-summer/early-autumn harvests, and the fruit set on these doesn't look very good.

One thing to note: I've tracked that a lot of times my fruit trees have a 'bounteous' year and then an 'ordinary' year. It switches between a year which is really good and year which is ordinary. Sometimes it's harder to tell with some trees - I pay more attention to the nectarine-peach duos, but I also keep them pruned back pretty hard so I can actually harvest them, and still every year I get a pretty decent harvest. But last year was crazy for the persimmons, so this might just be a quieter year.

CHOOKS:

The four left remaining after Kerry died back in late August have all been fine. We have a series of very hot days coming up, though, so we're keeping an eye on them - spraying down the enclosure, sometimes making them sit in cooling baths.

Goong is broody, and has been so for about a month. She should be coming out of it now...

We buried Kerry in one of the compost piles. See below.

COMPOST:

Dug out the middle compost pile - it's been processing since before I went away, but hadn't fully decomposed. With the assistance of the sisters, I sieved it on Saturday, and dumped most of it back in the new compost, which we built around Kerry.

Contents:
- leaf-and-grass mulch
- cutting from the garden (most of the mother-of-herb vines, trimmed back)
- comfrey
- ferns
- lucerne
- Kerry
I topped it off with a layer of leaf-and-grass mulch. I'd hoped that the gardener would have come by on Friday, but it rained all day and so I guess he put it off after I said last Wednesday wasn't any good. Anyway, it's reached the middle of 'active' status but not 'hot' according to the thermometer, and I'm tempted to try injecting it with some manures - chicken and cow by preference - and see if that gives it a kick?

PREPARING:

I have MELONS and PUMPKINS growing, and they're going to need some pretty decently prepared ground. I have the soil, I have a few planting sites, I just need to plant them out and remember to water them. I'm thinking of putting an olla in each bed. I just have to work out which set of melons and pumpkins are going together.

SEEDLINGS PLANTED OUT:
SNAKE BEANS - germinated and planted out in LOUNGE VEGEPOD
BUSH BEANS - Cherokee wax, full germination - plant out in AVO-SHED
BUSH BEAN - royal burgundy, full germination - plant out in CREPE-APRICOT

PLANTED NO GERMINATION:
BEAN (Soy green) - no gemination at all
EGGPLANT tsakoniki - no germination
No ZUCCHINI

PLANTING OUT:
PUMPKIN - mystery (brett cooper's green-orange turban type) - 2 germinated
WATERMELON - moon and stars, no germination
PUMPKIN - galeaux d'eysines, 3  germination
POLLINATOR - lion - 2 full germination
MELON - zdenka's - 1 germinated
MELON - rockmelon - 4 germinated
PUMPKIN - musquee de provence - 1 germinated
CUCUMBER - burpless - 1 germinated
EGGPLANT, TOMATO from Jen in Hornsby

PLANTING OUT THOUGHTS:

I have the BANANA CIRCLE, the FRONT TRIANGLE, and the FRAGIPANI

I would like to do THE CHOOK YARD FENCE and the FRONT LOUNGE WINDOW

1. Bury an olla next to where the seedling is going to go.

2. Plant the vines around them with:
half a bucket of compost
half a bucket of cow manure
a handful of wood ash

3. surround with straw and water in with:
an ice-cream containers of bioworm liquid

4. fill the olla with plain water

5. first week, water every second day with:
seaweed solution
worm wee

6. second week water with
bioworm liquid

HARVEST: Still baby tomatoes, still white peaches, all the nectarines are gone. Golden Dorset apples, the (lone) apricot is nearly ready (maybe one more day; hopefully it's not the day that the damn possum eats it), and the golden peaches are starting up

FEEDING:

Corn planted mid-October, blood and bone, cow manure

See melons

PRUNING:

STONE in backyard needs pruning (apricot above)

CHERRY in backyard needs pruning

DONUT PEACH in backyard needs pruning

THOUGHTS:
PUMPKIN - mystery (brett cooper's green-orange turban type) - 2 germinated
PUMPKIN - galeaux d'eysines, 3  germination
PUMPKIN - musquee de provence - 1 germinated
POLLINATOR - lion - 2 full germination
MELON - zdenka's - 1 germinated
MELON - rockmelon - 4 germinated

If we have five places to grow then keep them together by type - so all the Galeaux d'Eysines together, all the Musquee together, etc. Pollinator can go one for the PUMPKINS and one for the MELONS (more or less)

if we have three places to grow, then one each of MELON, PUMPKIN, and POLLINATOR in each spot.

TO DO

0. Prep ground: add compost/manure

1. make labels - wood, large, painted

2. group where they're going

3. Plant out.

FINAL PLANS - Sunday 30th Nov:

I'm going to use the Frangipani and the Banana circle this year, doing the work on the Triangle Garden this year I'll improve the soil along the chookyard fence and the front garden in the coming seasons.

dear diary: getting warmer and fruitier

OBSERVATIONS:

So much to do, the weather is doing the 'starting to get warmer' thing which it should have done in September, but unfortunately ended up being a few crazy hot days that just wrecked everything.

Driveway TOMATOES are doing okay, but not great. They're fruiting, but they're not very large, almost more like bush tomatoes than indeterminate ones. Aso, I seem to have mixed in a CHERRY tomato with the ROMA ones, so.

Lots of little ant-flies on the chook manure I got from the Dural fruit shop. Heaps of them. They don't seem to be any particular damage, but there's a lot of them and I don't know what they do.

PEACHES. The golden ones are ripening a lot earlier than in previous years.

CHOOKS:

Haamyu is still hanging on, but she gets medicated every night and every morning, and so far as we can tell, she's still not back to normal. Just hanging on. Her face is dry and flaking, and B1 worries about her. I don't feel I have time or energy to worry about her.

Otherwise, Goong went broody again, it didn't feel as long this time. There's a lot of laying, although a couple of Siyao's eggs have a hole in them, we're not sure if somone pecked holes in them or it just so happened that she didn't make the shell properly.

Started mite-watering them after discovering lice and so forth on Haamyu, although that might also be because she's not dustbathing herself properly.

COMPOST:

Got garden assistant (Noah) to help me move the compost in the bays into a single bay, and it's hit about 50C heat, so that's good. Some stuff going on in the middle.

PREPARING:

Set down woodchips around the MANGO, the PERSIMMON, and dumped a load of euchy mulch under the CITRUS and near the DUAL STONE.

Need to work out where the rest of the chook manure bags should go, along with the remainder of the chip mulch. (Unless I plan to make another compost with the chook manure, the horse manure, the chip mulch, and the spent coffee grounds. Maybe if I add the composting leafmulch to it? I mean, I could, maybe? But in what? Try the old black square composter by the fence?)

SEEDING:

A seed mix in the BATHTUB garden in the back: BEETROOT: golden detroit, LEEK: autumn giant, american flag, LETTUCE: cimmaron, BASIL: sweet italiano classico, CARROT: sprouting.

I think I should plant more:
CAPSICUM
EGGPLANT

PLANTING OUT:

In the APPLE-CREPE:
CORN (several died with the heatwave we had a day or two after)
CAPSICUM (seems to have died, likely due to heatwave)
TOMATOES (black cherry, perhaps? Or just randoms?)
CUCUMBER (or possibly a melon or zucchini, but I think it's a cuke)

Potato bed:

1. Pulled the garlic - black aphids mean they didn't get very far. Try again next year, but maybe look at better aphid control? (how to deal with other than by spray)
2. Pulled out the mint roots as best I could
3. Added chook manure
4. Dug a hole, put the long pot of potatoes in
5. Added more chook manure and the Marvel Black mix (from Bunnings)
6. rolled potatoes onto their side (away from driveway) and covered with soil dug up from the driveway side of the bed
7. Did Edge-in-situ composting (comfrey, nettles, chookpoop) along driveway side of bed
8. Watered in
9. Covered with pea straw

Planted some lettuces in PLUM-STONE, also some beets/carrots/others in BATHTUB and in APPLE-CREPE

HARVEST:

Last few avocadoes, but the peaches are in full form. That's going to be a little crazy in the coming days.

Pulled the GARLIC, it was vastly inadequate to the effort I put in, and the black aphids had eaten most of them. I've picked two lots, got the black box and the ones up the back of one of the vegepods to do. I think the ones in the vegepod might end up being the best of the lot.

BEANS from the BUSH BEANS (mistakenly thought to be POLE BEANS) in the back of the AVO-SHED

CORN has pollination stems, but not much by way of cobs and silks. I've saved some of the pollen, but I may need to save some more early morning.

Small Vegepod TOMATOES are growing and ripening well.

And, of course, the fruit trees:

FEEDING:

I've fed the CORN, the MANGO tree, the 2 small VEGEPODS, the back

STAKING & PROTECTING:

Staked the TOMATOES in the PLUM-STONE bed, and pruned them down. They're just going into flowers.

Should probably check the GOLDEN DORSET apples, also whether the other apples are setting fruit. Not sure about that right now, they don't look great.

PLANNING:

Need to better work out the CREPE-APRICOT and what's going to go into it. The APRICOT died, so did the LYCHEE.

• Was it the soil? Something else?
• I could try putting the other apricot in? Prep the ground properly this time: loosen the soil, build it up, etc.
• Or plant something else entirely?
• That's a space that gets a lot of sun in summer but not much in winter down at ground level (once it's 1.5m high, it will get sunlight)
• Will get shaded by the avo in the midsummer (until it gets too large)
• If it needs feeding, it could be tricky to feed.

Plan would be:

• Test the soil - pH, etc.
• Build up the soil profile there.
• Gotta think about this - maybe consult with people.

THOUGHTS:

The AVO-SHED bed doesn't seem to do very well. No, I lie, the BEANS are doing well. Although it turns out what I thought were POLE BEANS are actually BUSH BEANS, and what I thought were BUSH BEANS turned out to be POLE BEANS, so there's that.

In the AVO-SHED is also the EGGPLANT which is...holding on. But not growing. I don't know if it needs better soil, more watering, richer nutrients or what. But its not much bigger than it was when I planted it and I don't know what's going on. Maybe the bed itself isn't great with nutrients? I can't tell.

I want to pull out the GARLIC bed (which currently has POTATOES in it) and relocate it to that section right between the APPLE ESPALIER and the DUAL STONE. Better sun, less shade than beneath the persimmon, and maybe better chances of growing things.

dear diary: 24th November

Initial posts were about the 15th November, ETAs and thereafter are as ofthe 23rd.

WEATHER: Warm and fairly dry, although we areapparently set for a week of rain beginning Sunday.

ETA: the week of rain keeps getting pushed back,but as of the 23rd, it looks like it's going to be cloudy with spotty rain fora while, and then major rain next week when I'm leaving Sydney.

CHOOKS: Mites in the coop. Not blood ones (yet),so far as I can tell, but definitely there. I've been giving the chooksAlphaMites water to keep them mite-free, but that doesn't mean that the mitesaren't surviving in the coop off rodents, etc. Wondering if I should spray thecoop again - last time I had to do that I think was 2021 and I kind of had to wait for a space between the rain when it was hot enough that the coop woulddry in a day. Also, I'm not a fan of spraying the coop. That time it wasnecessary - blood mites everywhere - but it was a last-ditchresort. Since then, I've mostly relied on the AlphaMites solution to make the chooks unpalateable to the mites, but I don't think that actually kills themites, just means the chooks don't get sucked on by them.

ETA: Alphamited the chooks for the next fewdays. One of sister's vet friends suggested double-sided stickytape on the ends of the roosts to catch any mites.

COMPOST: The last one got burrowed by rats. Theplastic surrounding the compost bays aren't tacked down at the bottom, so thecompost keeps pushing through (probably aided by the rats). I'll need to dig it out and redo it. As in dig all of it out, probably let the area dry off, thenaffix the plastic down properly. Ugh.

ETA: Have dug the compost out, now need to findtime to tack down the plastic (might require the addition of a wooden slatalong the bottom back face), and remake the compost for decomposing while I'maway. Hopefully without rats.

PREPARING: Watering system for MANGO at the veryleast. Also, netting the MANGO. Dug a worm trench for Turfan Depression Melons(cf. One Good Square gardening)

ETA: MANGO is netted. Have raked the jacarandaand flametree flowers around its base for decomposing, to add soil fertility.Might need to get some chook poop in there. And I think I'm going to bewatering around the mango for the next couple of days from the tank. Both touse up the tank water and to keep the mango going.

PLANTING: None of the melons are geminating.Only a couple of the pumpkins are. I don't know why - I've got them in a nicewarm space, lots of water. Did they rot? Did the rats get them? I even have agood space for them, with a trench full of worm castings ready to feed them! 

ETA: some of the melons have germinated (oneALLSWEET, a couple of WARPAINT), and some of the pumpkins (EBISU, MUSQUEE DEPROVENCE). Have planted the pumpkins in The Trench, and put the ALLSWEET in thevegepod (I feel like I should dig out a space for an olla in there), and there's more space for the WARPAINTs in The Trench, or I could put them in lastyear's 'winter tomato' bed. (Would need some serious feeding, though.)

Reading back on the 'Turfan Depression' idea in Lolo Houbein's bookOne Magic Square, she does a lot more than just wormcastings, but manures and compost and seaweed solution and weed teas. It'sserious stuff. 

Ah well. I won't be around to do all that feeding, but I can dowhat I can before I go away.

I sowed some ZUCCHINI through the APPLE-2STONE bed while I was atit (tricolour, under the APPLE ESPALIER), along with a bunch of legumes.However I don't know if they will actually take. I think it's doubtful - directplanting often doesn't go anywhere much for my garden.

PLANTING OUT: Still have RADISHES, BEETROOT andother vegies to plant out: the big question is probablywhere. At this point, I think it's just 'anywhere thatthere's space' .

HARVEST: last of the stone fruit - peaches andnectarines. Also MUSHROOMS. Got a couple of mushroom 'logs' from a friend in aswap. They were secondhand - already spawned at least once, but she said theymight have a bit of life in them. And once they were spent, you could just tossthem into the compost. Anyway, I did the watering thing, and they're producingquite nicely! 

Now, I gotta work out what to do with them while I'm away.

FEEDING: Pumpkins and melons and corn to be fed

PRUNING: All the fruit trees could do with agood hard prune before I go away. Cut down the branches - especially all thenew ones. But I probably won't manage the time.

OBSERVATIONS: MANGOes are growing but a bitwrinkly. Possums have been deterred from remaining gold PEACHes with a cage.

THOUGHTS:

Going to have to dig up the front bed at some point, mostly to getthe mugwort out. Damn stuff is everywhere and probably all linked up together.

TO DO:

1. Feed all melons, pumpkins, tomatoes, eggplant,corn
2. Take off chook tractor and plant out bed.
3. Plant out RADISHES, BEETS, etc.
4. Make a leaf-mulch (again, properly, in theblack compost frame)
5. Cut off the netting over the chicken coop
6. Trim down the sunflower.7. Plant the space for small native birds

Dear Diary - 21st November

OBSERVATIONS

The grass is long and the lawn mower from the last couple of goes hasn't been by, although he said he'd be here on Monday, and then this weekend. I don't think he's going to turn up - I don't like our chances. I just wish people would say they're not going to instead of setting expectations and then failing them.

Contacting a local gardening guy, but might just farm this out to AirTasker.

CHOOKS

We ended up giving away 'Baby' - a.k.a. our unexpected windfall of a chicken who turned up on the street at B1's friend's place, and who was given into our care. We didn't end up finding her owners, but we couldn't keep her - she was too much of a free spirit to fit in with our flock (who have a routine down) and so we gave her to someone in Turramurra. She's got three chickens already, they get to free range a lot, and she'll be pretty happy.

PRUNING & PREPARING

I'm down to hand-picking out the seedy weeds where I can, but I think a session or two out on the front verge may be necessary. Not that I want the grass, mind you, but that's what I have to work with...

PLANTING

Nothing. Haven't planted anything new in the last few weeks, which is stupid; should have at least planted some lettuces, or the coriander in something that's able to be kept cool.

RIPENING

Nectarines and Peaches

HARVEST

POTATOES: King Edwards, some Nicola (long oval), some Dutch Cream (round), maybe some Bintje? (long and a bit knobbly).

RASPBERRIES: getting a handful every couple of days

NOTES

None of the backyard trees are producing this year, except for the AVOCADO. I think the end of this season is going to have to be some major pruning and rethinking. Year 3-4 was the good year, when things bloomed, blossomed, and produced. This year - the last few - have been tricksy. CHERRY isn't producing, APRICOTs aren't, PLUM barely is (only the Mariposa, the Flavor Supreme doesn't).

I could dig the backyard trees out, clover up the ground, and rebuild the chicken tunnels. That's the two year plan, I think, after the windows.

Sydney Edible Garden Trail is set for November next year, so there's going to be a fair bit of interest in the fruit trees, I thihnk.