cherry tree slugs

Nasty slimy black slugs have appeared on pear and apple tree leaves. Turns out they're 'cherry tree slugs', the larvae of the black and yellow sawfly, and can be quite damaging. A bit of a google and I've put together some notes and ideas. Sounds as if initial hunches - squishing them and a spray of pyrethrym - weren't too far off the mark. Will try one of the drying techniques next, and monitor - both presence and extent of any damage.

brave little fig

If this thing can actually grow, I will be stunned. But thrilled. One of two figs (my favourite fruit tree of all) planted into pots last year and then replanted into garden, this one is on the levelled 'terrace' to west of house - which is basically compacted clay and sand fill. Planted into a mound of soil and compost, extended regularly with compost form the bukashi system, it has finally come back to life with spring rains.

playing lady bountiful

Almost the best bit of having a productive garden - giving it away! Couldn't resist taking and posting this: a collection of herbs (mint, thyme, lemon balm, sage, chives) some in blossom, and silverbeet leaves (as clearing last of them) in a gift bag to take to friends as a housewarming present.

tank and beyond

Now that tank is installed, we can take stock on the impact around it. Sure I did plans on paper, but there's nothing like seeing it in situ. With first heavy rains, it immediately became apparent that water flows and pools behind the tank, so paths/channels have been roughed out above to redirect water from orchard into the veg area, and thoughts turned to environment immediate round the tank itself.

the baby faced killer

Here she is, Bella the rabbit-killing beast of Fryerstown. Who'd have thought it. Not me, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. Unfortunately, also heard it, the squeals of poor bunny in its death throes. My cityness severely exposed by resulting panic. Dead bunny now buried deep in a veg bed to decompose. Hmmm. Will see how that goes....

my new favourite plant?

Starting to develop their flowerheads are the shallots grown from last year's cloves. Though fighting for space with monstrous cabbages and silverbeet, they make lovely punctuation marks poking from the leaves. Love these extravagant pixie-hat curlicues and plump little cupolas. The stems themselves bend and curl - I can't resist sliding my hands along them as I pass - and the whole effect just makes me smile!

rain rain and more rain

Spring has come to an end, and the figures are out. The wettest in Melbourne for almost twenty years, and in parts of regional Victoria for decades longer. The unfamiliar sound of driving rain through the night. The unfamiliar sight not only of full dams but - even more startling, because it sneaks up on you - watery sheets lying low or peeping through the bush or garden. The look of rippling expanse as rain hits the dam, roughing up its surface. The feel of soft, sticky, yeilding ground underfoot. The surprise of muddy boots and wet, trouser legs clinging round the ankle. The never before imagined reality not just of a trickle of water between the dams, but a cascade, noisy, frothy and exuberant. The powerful swell of water forcing its way.

tanks et cetera

At long last tanks have arrived! Well, the delay was us trying to decide what we needed, and the circuit breaker (given we'd been discussing this for ... oh .. seven years ...) was meeting a friend of SeraJane's who just happened to be driving at truck advertising a tank business. But better late than never.

crossing a culinary rubicon

Arthichokes! Love the way they look, love the way they grow, love eating them. The flaccid yellow ones from the deli, that is. But home grown?

unidentified weed

What is this? Can't see it in any weed sites. But it's scattered all through the grassier areas of my property, and has started forming its very nasty burrs, which are borne singly along long arching black stems. Hopefully lawnmowing this weekend will catch most of those burr-bearing stems before the burrs have developed sufficiently to be a problem.

seasons end, seasons begin - footy and gardening

What is it about plants, soil, water that is so tremendously soothing, even cathartic? Just found several photos (here, removing regrowth from base of olives) taken in the days after the second AFL Grand Final. Yes, the one in which Collingwood smashed a St Kilda that had so bravely, magnificently, forced a draw a week before.

what a full dam looks like!

After almost 100mm rain in a week, following dam-filling rains a months ago, our dams are officially full. Bottom dam is receiving overflow from the top dam and spilling into culvert beside road. Wondering how long it will last ...

All in the timing

Fruit trees? Veg? Fruit trees? Veg? What to prioritise, and how to get the best out of both, especially when only one of the fruit trees planted last year to live alongside veggies has managed to survive and kick into second-season life. (Bless you, nashi, planted for Lydia and her eager nashi appetite, and looking happy springing from your nest of shallots and silverbeets.)

a new herb garden

As plans for a redesigned veggie patch take hold, I've realised I'll need to start a new herb garden. The existing one, in what was one of the old veg 'beds', has actually been one of my few successes. Mint, lemon balm, chives, shallots, sage, oregano, thyme ... for a couple of years now there's always been something to throw in the cooking, toss over a salad, or brew into a tea.

trying to love capeweed

Capeweed colonises poor and disturbed ground, so it hardly needs saying, it flourishes here. Unfortunately, efforts to improve soil and watering only seem to speed it along! I may even have inadvertently encouraged it in the orchard by using sheep manure as part of compost to build up beds, as it likes soil rich in nitrates, as often found round sheep pens. 

now you see them ...

Cape tulips - priority 'regionally controlled' weeds in this area - appear to have no particular use or benefits. So after ripping off new shoots last month and finding them resprouted, am now pulling them out properly as they reappear. Hopefully this will finish them off!

dynamic accumulators

Homework for September permaculture class: present info on 'dynamic accumulators'.

water water everywhere

Rain, rain and more rain. Fryers Creek is flowing. Lake Johanna in the Botanic Gardens has filled, an expanse of water linking it with the overflowing Barkers Creek along the gardens' boundary after last Saturday's rain, and our dams - as good as dry a couple of months ago - are full of water. The back dam is still filling, broadening and deepening, with overflow from the dammed gully behind. We've never seen it like this.

winter salad for a VIP

Sunday saw a community gathering for a working bee at the old school, to launch the revival efforts to turn it into a community hub. Chris spent the morning hammering flat nails in the old floor from which lino had been lifted. I managed to get down for lunch (a big showing being in order, as the local MP was attending) but remembered only at the last minute that I was supposed to take a salad or cake.

Permaculture class at my place

Lay awake listening to a night of heavy rain and mulling over a big day ahead, and woke to a drizzly morning and an early start to the day. There was the vegan cake recipe found online to try (with my own lemons and rosemary), the weekend’s pumpkin seeds and dried olives to prepare for snacks, and a ‘leftovers soup’ to make while clearing the fridge and tidying the kitchen.

when is a weed not a weed?

Been busy looking into weeds as part of a Cert III competency 'Using Weedy Plants in a Permaculture System'. A bit disappointing to discover, reading the details of this competency, that it seems far more focussed on eradication than use!

lovely lovely gums

Our block includes a few introduced gums, presumably planted as ornamentals. These have flowered through much of winter, and are a joy to have. In permaculture terms, they serve a number of functions, including providing bird habitat (the wattlebirds, particularly, love them) and pollen (if not nectar) for bees at a time when food is quite scarce.

the ‘drying day’ and permaculture principles

For a notoriously unhousewifely person, I’ll admit to one unmitigated housework pleasure – drying laundry on a good old-fashioned clothes hoist. Watch it effortlessly harness wind and solar energy! Towels are drying well with winter sunshine and a bit of breeze.

neglect, forgetfulness and pleasant surprise

Despite best efforts to record and document garden developments this year, I’m rather glad some things have escaped me. Let's call them uncontrolled experiments and pleasant surprises ... Daffodils have appeared between feijoas in the first orchard bed, and broad beans in one of the beds further back.

winter’s mushrooms

Mushrooms are growing all over the grove and lower area of the property. Why so heavy here, I’m not sure. But they’ve sprung up throughout, everything from scatterings of fairy-sized knobbly orange buttons to dense, wrestling clumps of heavy, leathery, soil-encrusted brown wads that break open seams in the damp earth.

drying pumpkin seeds

Successfully dried and lightly toasted pumpkin seeds following the method discovered a couple of months ago. So simple, I'm kicking myself for only discovering this now. A great way to make use of something usually discarded, a free version of something I usually buy, tastier - if I say so myself! 

beautiful tools for a better job?

Does a beautiful tool do a better job?

And is it completely irrational to invest emotion in the tools we use?

the most valuable animal in a permaculture system

Pictured in its winter plumage is the most valuable animal in the permaculture system: the spouse. This particular spouse variety (Fryerstown Fox, common name 'Chris') can be observed clearing away any sticks, stones or other debris, and forming mounds of soil.

class at claudia's

Spent an afternoon at claudia's with permaculture class. Claudia is our sample 'client' for a site assessment activity. Beautiful mudbrick house in bushy block above a creek gully.

the nostalgic fruitgrower

Looking at my most recent plantings, and thinking of the things I've regretted not being able to grow, or secretly dreamed of growing, has started me wondering why fruit trees, more than any other plants, seem so deeply nostalgic.

fruit trees are go!

Big day in the yard Sunday (July 11) as the long-awaited fruit trees were picked up from Katie of Mt Alexander Fruit Gardens at Wesley Hill Market on Saturday morning, and all planted out on Sunday. Only 13 trees, but that was tricky enough, especially doing them alone!

a stitch in time?

Slowly building up beds, planting holes and planting mounds to take fruit trees. First lot are due as bare-rooted trees shortly. Others to be ordered for spring planting. Lessons from past failures have been learnt.

tools, love ’em or leave ’em?

With the husband determined to help out with yard work, he took the big decision to buy an angle grinder, with a view to turning some of the discarded corrie around the place into garden bed retainers. And we both figured it was a tool we’d find more jobs to turn it to once we’d made the commitment. One cut-in-half piece of corrie later, and the angle grinder’s going back to the shop. Refusing to start again!

winter’s depths

Ice on the car windows, ice in the dog bowl, even a layer of ice on the shallow puddle that passes for a dam. If the days have been intermittently bright, and mild, the nights have dropped decisively below zero (-4 in Bendigo last night).

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.

first winter musings

Winter’s well and truly here, and with it the best and worst of life in Fryerstown. I love winter but the house here is so, so cold and so hard to warm up, and this first burst always brings dread at the three or four months of denying discomfort that’s to come – if I won Tattslotto it would be a designed-from-scratch passive solar house for me. So much for the charms of our relocated suburban 40s weatherboard!

pumpkin seeds - what not to do ...

Read somewhere about all the things we unnecessarily throw out, like pumpkin seeds cleaned from pumpkins. Good point!

preserving our olives

Have finally picked this season's small harvest of olives, all from the tree near the causeway, and by now very ripe, some even starting to shrivel. And they've been in a bucket for a couple of days now and are looking a bit sorry and bruised.

late autumn observations

After periods of steady rain in the past few weeks, the ground is soft, mushrooms and other fungi are pushing up from under the leaf mould, and the frogs are croaking. Everything looks green - even if much of that is moss or germinating weeds.