Dear Diary - 12th July 2024

INTERLUDE – around the 29th June

Digging up half the 'sweet potato bed' to plant the garlic into. It will need maintainence - the vines.

Chaffcutter doesn't work pragmatically. (blades not sharp enough? Too frequent? Cogs don't have enough grip?

Planted the Purple Turban variety in the other side of the 'sweet potato bed'. 

Covered both Rose Du Var and Purple Turban with a box of chook run material. 12th July 2024

OBSERVATIONS:

Chilly week, going to be even colder next week – possibly frost.

Garlic (rose du var) are poking through, I added some water/clay to them, but maybe need to give them a regular feeding of the various microbrews

Teen worker wasn't able to start the mower when he tried today. Might need to take it for a service.

CHOOKS:

Siyao has a clean bill of health!

Daofu is a bully to Kerry, while Gladys seems capable enough of running away, at least. But the others all make threatening moves towards the two girls.

Laying again – Caramba, possibly Siyao, Gladys and Kerry seem to be doing okay.

I need to teach Kerry and Gladys to go through to the tunnels to the tractor, where they can scratch and dig all day long!

Someone is rolling the eggs out of the laying box! This is very odd behaviour, because usually the hens want ALL the eggs.

COMPOST:

Still gathering things.

Been making leaf mulch the last week or so. Stopped because I wasn't carrying the big black boxes for the leaves, but there's SO MUCH of them around the place.

Got teen!worker to chop up the branches I had,now should be able to chip them more easily when I get around to it.

PREPARING:

SEEDING:

Tomatoes, Eggplants, capsicum - set them in the new (flimsy) greenhouse to grow

PLANTING OUT:

moved: Ginger/Turmeric roots to the new flimsy greenhouse to grow

planted out: three Brassicas (probably purple cabbage or broccoli) - also in fllimsy greenhouse

dig up brassicas in PLUM-STONE, pull out coriander, move tractor let chooks in? Still want to build better compost in the garden bed spaces, but it's only Kerry and Gladys who are doing the job.

HARVEST:

Avos, Oranges, still good, harvested some scarlet silverbeets, the peas will shortly be ready, I reckon. Still gotta try that cabbage.

FEEDING:

Some instructions about dealing with brassicas
potash - at growing heads
nitrogen - to get them started
4 wks - sulphate of ammonia (blood and bone) for better structure

PRUNING:

Was going to get the lawn guy to do it, but his dad went to hospital and he didn't know if he could get it done. (I told him to go be with his family and not worry about the lawn.)

Did a bit with J's chainsaw (best chainsaw ever) but can't do all of it.

prune the backyard trees more neatly, and with an eye to a) espalier, b) netting

THOUGHTS:

After the

TO DO LIST:

Improve the flimsy greenhouse:
- aim of a greenhouse is to warm during the day and stay warm at night.

Problem: plastic isn't going to do this; heats up fine during the day, loses it once the sun goes down.

Solution:
1. Make a cloth-cover for the flimsy greenhouse to slip it down overnight. Make sure that the cover is down by the time the sun is setting. (Old cheap blanket/quilt?)
2. Add a flat stone or two (cinderblock) for heat absorption during the day so it's not quite so brutally cold at night. Place stone on the sunwards side of the greenhouse?

Diary - 15th July, 2023

WEATHER:

Sunny and dry. Warmer, no bite in the morning - my car said 25C at midday.

RAIN

None for weeks.

CHOOKS:

All seem pretty happy and healthy. Goong has a red comb, Siyao's is pretty red, too. Caramabah is still demanding food all the time, and Chouquette isn't showing signs of going into lay. Chouquette comes close and allows me to pet her, but it's more a "where's the food, no food? no pets" kind of attitude.

OBSERVATIONS

Some major cracks in the front yard. Going to contact a plumber about having a look into them with one of those long and flexible cameras. If I can find one to come do the work.

One of the brick pylons under the house is rather less-than-straight. The middle one on the eastern side of B1's bedroom is not perfectly plumb, like it's gently being pushed over. I don't know if it was always like that or has only been in the last couple of years. The problem is that I didn't notice these things before and I'm noticing them now. It's one of the reasons why observation is so important, I guess.

Native bees are back and active on the warmer days. Very still and quiet on the colder ones, and I try to remember to cover them up a little on the cold nights, then open them up so they won't grow mould. But they're active and involved and seem to be doing well.

The TWO-STONE and DUAL-STONE are in flower. The TROPIC DORSET on the Golden Delicious APPLE is setting buds ready to bloom.

The TOMATOES in the bed under the TWO-STONE tree are generally dying - we had some frost, and although I had the old window screens up to give them a bit of a buffer, the one on the south blew off and I think that the tomatoes that would have been otherwise protected by them are now dying.

PREPARATION:

Green mulch. Need to plant out some green mulch in the summer beds. And I just realised that I prepped some COWPEA mulch for the back beds...and forgot that the stuff is for summer mulch. I guess I can plant it and see what survives, but I don't really like the chances. I should have prepped the Woolly Pod Vetch but that stuff can get weedy really easily and I didn't want to risk it. *sigh* Well, we'll plant the COWPEA and see how it does.

PUMPKIN-POTATO bed should probably be green-mulched.

PLANTING

Today, I planted out four ASPARAGUS ferns into the LOWER STEP BED. I've been trying to grow things in that bed for years and the only thing that really grows there are weeds. But the asparagus grows fine in the upper beds with some fertilising and watering, so I'm doing it. Also put the THYME in there from Wormticklers, and tossed down a lot of MUSTARD. To finish it off, I need to put down the remaining pea-straw from the pack.

I was thinking about fertilising the UPPER STEP BED with matured chook manures collected from the coop back when there were blood mites - I think it was 2021? Going to have to look back at the diary for that. But because I associate this manure with the mites, I'm nervous about putting it on the garden, even though it's a long way from the chooks. Just gotta bite the bullet I guess and do it. Get past the fear, etc.

I also planted PARSNIPS under the apples, both the FOUR-APPLE and the GOLDEN DELICIOUS. Less for the roots themselves, more for the greens and the flowers and the promise of pollinators and pest-control. (If they flower.) Probably should have also done daikon and beetroot, just to break up the soil some.

RIPENING

Still the oranges and I think they're tangerines? The ALPINE STRAWBS have been doing their thing pretty well.

HARVEST

BROCCOLI leaves. I need to remember to cook the BROCCOLI leaves! Occasional TOMATOES from the westernmost bed in the TRIANGLE GARDEN.

PRUNING

Did the RASPBERRY PATCH a couple of weeks ago, trimming most of it down and clipping up most of the canes. I didn't really check for spring/autumn canes, and now I need to toss down a bunch of manure and maybe some hay/mulch to give it some feeding before the spring.

Backyard AVOCADO needs pruning down, snip off the tops of the tree. Needs it soon because it's starting to sprout again and I think the next round of flowers are likely to be coming...

The bush of THAI BASIL and the SALVIAS out the front need serious haircuts and soon. Now's a good time to do it, the flowers on the stone fruit trees and the Golden Dorset branch will keep the bees occupied.

THOUGHTS and PLANS

With the weather looking very fine, I could probably make the wooden seats in the next couple of weekends.

I want to set up potable water collection off the roof - I should probably look into that sustainable house in the inner west, find out what they did and how they did it and whether it's replicable here.

There's a part of me that wants to die very fast and very soon. I'm good for it, no real regrets, no need to live forever. But also, there's a part that would like to see what I've developed here go to someone who wants to use it, not just someone who'd bulldoze the lot and build a McMansion.

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.

Pruning Fruit Trees

The brief version of Margaret Siri's series on the ABC (circa 2010) about pruning fruit trees: Gardening Online With Margaret Siri

Apricots
Prune back to the fruiting spur
Fruiting spur is usually a trio of buds
Check for end fruiting spurs on softer branches
Prune dead material
Bring down height of tree so fruit can be reached, remove crossover branches in the middle - trim back to a fruiting spur, encourage fruiting spurs to grow thicker by having them at the end.
Spray with lime sulphur after

Peach & Nectarine
Bring the height down, trim off dead and dying
Fruiting spurs have multiple buds (2 or 3)
Trim back to a fruiting spur (check for multiple spurs)
Spray with lime sulphur after pruning (before bud swell)

Apples
Fruiting spur on an apple is pretty thin and not so clumped.
Cut just behind a growth spur, forming a short stub for the fruit to appear
Thin out shoots that are too near to the trunk, and any little pieces that have died.
Cut back to a stub, control heigh and growth, clear centre of tree, and encourage fruiting spurs to form each year rather than growth.

Japanese Plums - Blood and Golden
Try to promote new growth each year.
Small shoots are the fruiting spurs. Double and triple buds are fruiting buds.
New growth has small growth buds. To encourage growth, cut ahead of growth buds in direction to grow.
To encourage fruiting, cut behind growth buds.
Take off old wood to encourage new wood.

how do you like them apples?

Quite a lot, actually!

On Saturday I went to the garden of one of the women at my Permaculture Gardening Group who was going to take us through Pruning, Air-Layering, and Grafting.

The part I was really interested in was the part where she offered scions of her apple trees. She has FOURTEEN kinds of apples in a suburban garden, most of them grafted on individuals trees. It was AMAZING and I came away quite inspired in several dimensions.

I did have about six apple types before I got a bunch of her scions. Four arrived already grafted on a single rootstock: Anna, Granny Smith, Golden Dorset, and a mystery apple (I lost the tag that indicated what type it was, but it might have been a Jonathan?). And two were individual trees from my mother: a Golden Delicious and a Gala.

I got about nine apple scions from her: Akane, Adre Sauvage, Blenheim Oragne, Tropic Sweet, Tropic Dorsett, Tropic Anna, Egremont Russelt, Kid's Orange Red, and Yates.

I have two more apples coming: a Pink Lady with a Braeburn grafted to it. The Braeburn is because my sister loves them, but they don't grow them commercially this far north because the climate doesn't support it - Braeburns are cold-weather trees.

So, yes, we should be covered for apples through the season. Assuming I can get a harvest from them.

And, more importantly, that I can successfully get the grafts to take...

Right now, I'm thinking of which ones I should graft together - cross-pollination requires multiple cultivars flowering around the same time.

Having looked up various apple types, I'm reasonably sure there are maybe 4 pollination groups:
P1: Anna & Golden Dorset
P2: Tropic Sweet, Tropic Dorsett, Tropic Anna, Egremenot Russet.
P3: Akane, Andre Sauvage, Blenheim Orange, Kidd's Orange Red, Yates, Granny Smith, and Golden Delicious, Pink Lady
P4: Gala & Braeburn.

The strikeouts are already on the one tree, along with the mystery apple, which is most likely in a similar pollination group. I could add to the existing multi-apple, I suppose but more than four is probably pushing it, and there are other rootstocks available.

So, probably a mix of P2, P3, and P4 on the Golden Delicious and the Gala and the Pink Lady:
Golden Delicious: Tropic Sweet, Tropic Anna, Blenheim Orange
Gala: Akane, Andre Sauvage, Tropic Dorsett, Yates,
Pink Lady: Braeburn, Gala, Egremont Russet, Kidd's Orange Red

I think some of it will very much depend on what takes. It could be a bit of a hit and miss.

The pruning unit was educational too. I've been pruning my apples like my stone fruit and...that's not the way to do it apparently... But the multi-apple has a few blossoms - at least one of the branches appears to be a tip-bearer rather than a spur-bearer, which might explain why I haven't really had any fruit from it at all! I've been pruning it back and probably pruned off all the fruit-bearing shoots! and then there's nothing left to enable cross-pollination...

Ah well, we garden and learn. I just wish I'd learned a bit earlier.

a bunch of apple-growing links

University of Mass: Spindle Pruning Apple Trees (video)

Fruit Grower’s News: Tall Spindle Design for apples - I’m still trying to find a proper/definitive description of spindle systems and how to prune trees into that shape.

Kimmel Orchard: Tuesdays With Tyler high density orchard plantings - there’s a whole series about orchard care in here.

How to prune apple trees in winter: summer for fruiting and growth, winter for vigour.

I’m also going to need to read up on apricots soon. I’d like one really good harvest out of the backyard apricot before it gives way to probable gummosis. *sadface*