Child of the Planet

Bit of a mixed bag this year. Plenty of plants but the quality ranged from decent bulbs to quite a few that were under developed.       Bee popped by to investigate. I sorted everything into big/small and how infected with rust the plants were. The garage roof seems to be a good place to store the produce.

This years garlic has been under cover since planting. The aim is to protect it from the winter westerlies, and to see if it has an effect on rust. A few plants have ended up growing outside the cover and I'm using these as a 'control' to see if there is any difference.     When I took the covers off, the first thing I noticed was that the plants have been bent by the cover. I'm thinking of buying taller frames for next year. There is a bad patch of rust halfway down the bed. Planted here was a small group of stiff neck variety. Each year that I've grown garlic, the rust mainly hits in December, so it doesn't have a big impact on the growth of the garlic. None of the garlic that was outside the cover was effected by rust. The rest of the crop is looking good, but the rust is spreading out from that small patch in the middle.    I pruned off infected leaves and burnt them.    

Spring has hit the berm and it's covered with flowers. One of the aims of planting the berm is to provide some wind protection for the garden behind. I've been told that flax are good for breaking up the wind so I've been re-planted a couple of plants here. A few manuka are hanging in there. I planted some sunflower seeds but they don't seem to have germinated.  

The grapes are still doing much better then last year. Fruit has started to appear and the main stems are thickening up. We've had a lot of alternating sun and rain this year and everything in the garden seems to be pumping along..    Of the three grapes verities planted out along the patio, the one in the middle is not doing as well as the other two       

The olives that I planted ( read about it here ) seem to be doing well. This week planted a pollinator. I've been on the lookout for a frantoio. While shopping for a wet-suit at the sales, I stumbled upon one in the nursery section of the Warehouse.

 Spring growth has started to emerge. Time to clean up the lemon hedge. I'm hoping that dousing this poor fella in copper during the past winter will allow it to have a good run this summer. There are lots of little purple leaf shoots all over the branches. Also noticed as I was watering the other day, that most of the water was running down the shallow slope. Will look into some sort of landscaping to hold the water back. I'm getting some decent sized lemons finally. I'm curious to see how thick the skins are. I usually rip out the weeds but this year I'm laying down cardboard with mulch piled on top to hold it down.     

The cabbages I planted in the winter ( read about it here ) all bolted to seed. I've decided to cut my losses and pivot to a small tomato patch, maybe some cucumbers too. I crushed most of the cabbage down Threw on a layer of grass clippings. Then a layer of leaves. And finally a huge pile of mulch.  I'm not expecting this lot to disappear into the soil, but the pile keeps the birds out, and gives me somewhere to store part of a huge mulch windfall I scored. I'll scrape off the pile mid-December and start planting it out.

This week I scored another massive windfall ( read about previous ). I have a friend who had a huge invasive bamboo patch that they finally got rid of. The chipped pile was too large for their yard and they offered me some of the mulch. I took several loads and now it's spread over most of the property. I've had a couple of comments along the lines of "but what about seeds?" so I looked it up. Bamboo flowers every 150 years (give or take) so I reckon there is a good chance that there is no bamboo seeds in there. The shredded bamboo I applied a couple of years back has had no issues with random sprouts.         A posting on the FB gardening forum reckons bamboo encourages micro organisms.   

Both the garlic and the garlic chives are looking pretty good at this point.

I'm very very pleased with the grapes this year.  There are lots of flowers emerging this year. I've started terminating any vines bearing flowers, leaving a few leafs before the cut. There are little sucker vines appearing on these vines which also need to go. I want the plant to direct all its energise into fruit   .

Looking good so far with no rust that I can see. Might apply fertiliser more regularly.

I've been growing things pretty much continuously in the front beds so it's probably time to give at least one of them a bit of a rest. Started by growing mustard during the winter... I kept a few plants for seed and the rest all went under a layer of cardboard held down with horse manure. Next a layer of bamboo mulch, which was waste left over from a neighbour removing an overgrown patch in the bottom of their garden. Finally a layer of ash from the stove.  The theory is that I want to capture the nitrogen in the roots. If you let the mustard mature, it uses the nitrogen in the flowers.

Time has come to clean up and fertilise the fruit trees. First up, I threw down some seaweed and a handful of Roc solid fertiliser, over which I've laid down cardboard to kill off the grass. Horse shit on top to hold everything down.     First buds have appeared on the Granny and the Braeburn     The holes in between the trees have already been filled with friends green-waste and now I'll spread mulch over the top when I have it. My aim for this year is to keep as much moisture in the soil as possible.