Child of the Planet

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.