transplanting wattles

Getting sick of buying wattles for windbreaks etc (even though the IGA always has some good local ones to pick from), especially as half of them die before I get organised to plant out. And propogating from seed sounds rather forbidding - and too long-term for impatient people like me. So had the bright idea to try transplanting self-sown ones from round the place.

No hope of digging most of the tiny wattles up - long tap roots set hard into the clay, and the only ones I could dig up brought chunks of dry clay that just fell away. Then spotted quite a few tiny wirilda down in the damp dam bottom (below, at left). And these could be dug out with moist soil attached, so am having a go at transplanting those.

First lot have gone along the lower edge of raised beds that get drip blackwater irrigation and are growing some feijoas to hopefully become a fruiting hedge. So fingers crossed the wirilda will take, thrive, fix nitrogen, shelter establishing fruit trees behind them, and then die in a few years (aren't long-lived)!

The feijoa hedge seems such a permaculture cliche so I wanted to add more (and get some different fruits in there to try) but I guess there's a reason everyone uses feijoa hedges, because they've lived when the other plants (including chilean guava) have died. Mind you, they've all been royally neglected ... If the wattles take off, that might be a sign to be more adventurous with the hedge - there's a natal plum from Diggers that's staying alive nearby, and those might work in a hedge.