OBSERVATIONS:
Weather's growing colder. Down to around 10C at night, still warming up to about 15C during the day.
Leaf-fall has happened on all the stonefruits and the persimmon. The persimmon dropped all its leaves in about the space of a week. The apples are holding on, both the front two and the back.
At some point, I think I killed the Gala apple with the Braeburn graft on it. I think I sprayed it with a poison rather than the antifungal I thought it was. All its leaves went brown at once, but didn't fall off. I had to strip them off once they were dead, and now it's utterly bare. I've repotted it into another box, at least for the time being. It's hopefully getting better care and remaining alive. Hopefully.
The pumpkin in the front is still pumping. It's got a small pumpkin growing after producing at least three others. They're all Kent-Butternut mixes, no idea about flavour.
The avocado is full of avos. I'm not sure if they're the right season to ripen, I've picked a few, but they seem to be ripening with extreme slowness. One has '13/4' written on it – which means it was picked six weeks ago and it's still hard as a rock. I guess we'll see...
CHOOKS:
Siyao got sick – a swelling in her abdomen, and a raw wound on her cloaca, and she was just sitting around with very little energy. We took her to the vet, she got scans done, came home with antibiotics and painkillers, and she seemed to get better.
I've spoken briefly before about the difficult of deciding if the chooks are pets or producers. Right now, they're being treated as pets, in part because neither the sisters nor I really have the distance to treat them as producers. And I have the money to afford vet care. If I didn't, that would be another matter. But also, I don't want to pay for them like pets. It's also extra difficult when the vets expect you to treat them like pets.
I think I should move the chook tractor to the AVO-SHED bed, let them run around in there for a while. Keep tossing chipmulch and other things around, let them eat what's in there. I've decided the AVO-SHED bed is a tricksy place to grow things – it's now shaded by the Avocado, and it's the bed that gets the least sun in summer. I really shouldn't be putting tomatoes in it. Where the tomatoes are doing really well? In the two small vegepods on the path from the street to the front door! Still growing, still cropping. The old sections are spotty and brown as are their leaves, but new growth is definitely happening! It's kind of crazy, we're only a month out from winter solstice.
COMPOST:
I haven't made compost in months. I really need to pack a rake or two, a pair of gloves, and a black box in the boot of the car for when I'm driving around and spot a space that I can pick up some leaves. Just a box a day – if I did that for a month, I'd have all the leafmulch I could use and some besides.
Worm farms are still going steady. Chooks are turning over the lawn clippings when we get them. And I have a big pile of twigs to chip, and a half-dozen trees that need some serious lopping.
I was thinking of getting a delivery of chip mulch, and hiring a young man from church to help move it. But I also need a working wheelbarrow for that, and the ones I have all have flat tyres or need repairs, dammit.
Chook poop hasn't been cleared from the henhouse in months. Possibly half a year. I just haven't had the energy/inclination, and the mite infestation didn't help one bit, because then I'm nervous about spreading them all around everywhere.
PREPARING:
Chook tractor on AVO-SHED, but also I've planted a bunch of green vegies out in the garden beds – I'm always late with that.
What if I use the chook tractor to make compost. Like, bigcompost. Just keep piling it up? Will the chooks still go in there? Maybe? I think they start ignoring the tractor when it gets too high. That's not good.
What do I plan to plant this summer?
1. I need to check if it's likely to be a hot summer or a wet summer.
2. Start developing a food forest?
3.Magic Square gardening (again? I've tried it several times, never quite managed to get it pumping, maybe because I'm not dedicated/organised enough?
SEEDING:
Need to plant the SWEET PEAS. I still haven't. Under the two apples, and beneath the front
PLANTING OUT:
Planted out assorted brassicas. Caulis, I think, and Gailan. I sowed a line of spinach in various beds, they seem to be doing pretty well.
HARVEST:
I've harvested all the BLACK TURMERIC. It grew really well in the driveway vegepod – as did the GINGER and the (putative) GALANGAL. I've dug up the galangal and was planning to plant it along the chook pen. Haven't done that yet, either. I've mentioned picking an avo or two off the tree, and there's a silverbeet in the vegepod that's just asking to be made into something like quiche or spanakopita.
FEEDING:
I have been using the Biocast+ (liquid vemicast biostimulant, from Island Biologicals), also seaweed brew, also comfrey brew. I feel like my buckets are producing considerably more weed teas than I can comfortably use. But a regular mix of weed teas, worm wee, seaweed brew, and biocast will hopefully give everything roots and get everything more firmly growing ready for the spring.
PRUNING:
Lawn guy has agreed to help do some pruning and lopping and stuff, and I'm going to hire the kid from church to help out – he was supposed to come on Saturday, but got sick and so I ended up trimming back the pomegranate and cutting back the pumpkin. And that was plenty on a day I got my period! Plan is to get all the trees down to a manageable height – including the DUAL PLUM, the MULTISTONE, and the DONUT PEACH up the back. Maybe the AVO, too, but that might have to wait until its fruiting is done. The TWO STONES don't need much trimming, and the APPLES are mostly manageable in their fan espalier, but the DUAL STONE always needs major trimming down.
THOUGHTS:s
1. Get Lawn Guy to do the bee garden – pulling out the sugarcane and trimming down the shrubberies there.
2. Get HS (church kid) to help reset the APPLES trellis, which is leaning on the houseward side.
- needs gravel (or use the stuff in the green box down the bottom)
- needs some sand/soil to 'cement' the post in
3. I wonder if the slowness of the plants in the tractor beds is in part because of the root systems of the trees above them. The best of the beds in the backyard is the bathtub garden and the wicking bed. It wouldn't surprise me that the tractor beds aren't getting quite enough nutrients for the plants I'm planting in them. Maybe a greater focus on leafy greens, wild greens, etc. Less on the cultivars? Could save the cultivars for the vegepod, perhaps?
