Yeah.....but then when you start painting or staining things ......you have to keep doing it every so often and as I am basically lazy......haha, it would start looking alittle ratty again. It should get a nice slivery glow to it all on its own given time. Got the second 'wall' of the scratch yard up yesterday, it feels narrower than I thought it would but the area is bigger than the minimum requirement for the amount of chooks I am allowed to keep, about right for what I have (once my brother collects his 2 girls). The grapefruit tree got moved again.....I promise this is its last move. It was in the way of where the water tank is going, now its down along the back fenceline. I thank the godess that it started raining just after I moved it today. I dont think I m going to be able to move the mandarin tree though, I think it is too old. I've noticed that all the citrus trees have a black mold growing on their leaves, including the mandarin, so I am assuming that this has not been caused by them being moved around the yard. Anyone know what I should do about it? I have run out of ideas as to what I should call my next chapter of my garden blog. I start a new thread every year, for the new growing season, so I can tell which year is which. In someways I wish I had just added the year to my original name-thought it was quite catchy, anyway.....somebody please come up with a good idea, its spring now and I need to get started again. I no longer have a 'Mandala' garden, as pretty as it looks on paper and worked in other climates, it just wasnt working here. I have been examining different ideas over winter and am going to attempt something along the lines of what John Jeavons does is his 'How to grow more vegetables' book. On another subject, I was talking with neighbour Dave today and learned that they had to cut down their two mature Feijoa trees after it was discovered that these and a couple other mature fruit trees had been attacked and ruined by some black beetle that had eaten the middle of the trees completely out. He said they looked like scarab or dung beetles and was worried they may have spread to our fruit trees. I havent had a chance to go round and check them all yet,....its raining, but havent seen the symptoms he described, so far Has anyone heard of this before? Joyous Spring everybody!!!
I was going to paint the fence at my place and 3 years later it is still au natural - along with the chook house I was going to paint too! Sooty mould is what you have. You'll have an underlying insect issue. There's a cheap easy treatment option here. Think about your pest management approaches. I don't know if you can get hold of it where you are but I have dogs bane planted under all my citrus. The local permies have found that it helps keep insect pests off citrus. I have a few that have some sooty hold but they are ones that I have neglected a bit and too much shade has built up around them. Otherwise I reckon the dogs bane works and even if it doesn't the flowers are very pretty! "Mischief makes a mistake" - that could be the next years entry!
I was thinking of the 'It's only a mistake if you don't learn from it' quote in your signature! It wasn't a judgement on your gardening ability.....
Sorry eco, I wasnt getting antsy, I just wish there werent so many booboo's...when am I gunna learn? I think I am judgemental enough all on my lonesome....I see a ways to go towards perfection. Actually, I do try to be brutally honest about what I have got going with regards to the garden and my aiming for 'The'Perfect' game plan. Sometimes I feel like running away and hiding when things dont turn out how I thought they should, so maybe thats not so much of a misnomer after all....I was kinda looking for something little more positive to inspire myself, propel myself onwards and upwards. Here are the goals for this next new season- my New Years' resolutions. 1.Get the water tank installed. 2. Get it connected, both to the roof And the house/garden.( yes, I have found that I need to be That specific). 3.Finish the chooks 4 rotation yard pen, including planting it out with things they like to eat as well as a range of different fruit for all of us....almost done on the structural stuff. 4.Grow a years supply of sweet corn for us and the rest of the family-when its harvested it going into the freezer. 5.Grow a years supply of black turtle beans for my son in law (and us). 6.Trial sorghum, amaranth, chia, quinoa, barley, rye. The naked oats we planted are looking really good so far. 7.No empty garden beds this year, no matter what! 8. Grow enough soy beans to make some miso. 9.Harvest the Christmas Plums and have a go at making Umeboshi. (10.....shhh! grow some tobacco plants. Why waste money buying it if you can grow it?) 11.Finish building the woodshed, once the water tank is installed. 12.Butternuts, for the whole family. 13. Eat fresh veg and herbs from the garden-everyday. 14, Espalier the new Pear trees I just planted. 15. Put some sort of cover over the new seating area so the clematis has something interesting to grow over. did I miss anything? 16. Cut down the two really tall black wattles for firewood- that should be interesting cos they are sort of bent around each other. 17. Save seed for next year. I'd like to get back into my cheese making, but if I am having to run up and down the countryside this year, thats not going to be happening, we'll have to wait and see.
I dont know bout the feral plants. I got my seed from Kings seeds (NZ). I'm told the flowers are gorgeous and smell nice, so I might put some out along the top of the rock wall by the road,instead of sunflowers this year. I was talking about this at work and one of the girls said an Aunt grows theirs, dries it and put a leaf through the blender to process it. Sounded like an odd way of doing it, but I'll give it a go. I finally got my nerve up to prune the baby Pear trees in readiness for their new life as espaliers. I kept the cut off bits, one I heeled in in the garden and the other I left in a bucket of rainwater to see which will set roots first. I wasnt too happy to see one of the plants had already started to flower, I dont think that is a good sign at all, but it could be doing that because the graft has been taken from a mature tree. Those got pinched off, I want good roots not fruit for now. The wires that they will be trained along got put up, I have a couple that I need to do again. I didnt notice at the time that I had them alittle too low at one end. I was going to leave it, but those branches would just annoy me looking wrong. While I was putting in the staples on the posts, the rep from the local earth moving company turned up. Finally, I have organised for the parking area to be graveled. They are going to level the area, lay down the gravel and roll it for us. This person goes over to LA in their slow season-winter, and looks after a property over there for a couple who are right into organic eating. He has been trying to get them to use compost on the property for years and decided to just put a small one in. They were not happy and thought that this would attract unwelcome rodents and other pests. I find it odd that on one hand they know the benefits of eating good organic food but dont see that their property would like to do the same. What they normally do is get rid of all waste and then buy in fertiliser. He pointed to the garden and asked what we were doing and could he take a look...."Sure, but it isnt looking like much at the moment....." I told him about how we used the dome and how that system worked, why we had finally decided to stop using it, showed him the girls new home and explained the idea behind having the 4 rotation forage yards. He was very interested in the naked Oats experiment. When I told him that we found that we dont eat as much with an organic diet and wanted to grow more of things we do eat, like the oats for muesli, he seemed quite surprised that somebody else had noticed this and talked very enthusiatically about organic food and diets. I have a feeling he may be mentioning the grain growing thing next time he heads off to LA.
COOL! you could have a major influence on a Californian family just because of an afternoon wander in the garden! Have you looked at Linda Woodrow's blog - the Witches Kitchen? She isn't using the domes any more. Might be worth poking around looking at her new system to see if there's anything you can use.
I had forgotten that. I thought she had gone on to something else due to a rampant possum population though. I might check her out again. I still think I might need to look at cooler climate ways of doing things. I was leaning towards rectangular wide beds like I used to use, with set plants times-spring, summer, autumn.... .....yeh, I might have started a new ' Naked Oats Is it!!' thing. They do say that sex sells, who am I to point out their misunderstanding.
'Naked Oats. The new superfood.' There. You can be rich now! A scantily clad blonde eating oats for breakfast on a sunny verandah and you have the whole advertising campaign sorted.
