Autumn Rain

The start of autumn has been very warm, with a couple of days around 35 degrees. Around 5th March it cooled down slightly (29 degrees) but it is feeling very humid.
Early March we had some heavy rain (63mm overnight).The creek overflowed over and around the little road down the valley, flattening grass. I will need to mark out this top level to aid in planting as I plan to start regenerating the creek area.


March is almost over and it has been raining on most days. Most of summer has been fairly dry, so it seems the wet season has been crammed into March. From what I hear, "autumn rains" are a fairly regular event. The ground has been so saturated that it has been impossible to do much gardening. Certainly digging holes and planting trees is a no-no (ruins the soil structure), so progress has been frustratingly slow.
Even at the end of March the temperatures have been around 30 degrees, and stiflingly humid.

Wind has been another feature of March - mostly Southerlies and South-Easterlies.

The okra is starting to feel the overnight coolness (around 18 degrees) but is still producing. Most other veggies have finished, but that's partly due to the poor veggie patch we have, methinks. The Panama Berry trees have found their groove and have been producing consistently for a few months now (only planted them about 6 months ago). Around 3 per day. They need to be eaten quickly, within 24 hours, otherwise they wrinkle and start to go off. They are delicious, but the skin is tough and bitter so it is best to peel them (a tricky process) or just use the hole where the stalk was attached and suck out the insides. They are super sweet. The chickens love them too.

We wanted to clean up the veggie patch by getting the chickens (Isa-Browns) in there. But this breed seems almost useless for anything but laying. They escape the veggie patch and try to go home to their coop, and even if they don't, they don't do much scratching around. When they escape, if our dog is around he chases them, catches them, and starts to pull their rear feathers off or bites their wings. So far we've always been there so he isn't a chicken-killer just yet.

Planted a pomegranate in the bed close to the house - this soil is generally super well-drained so should be a good spot for the pomegranate. We took out a globe artichoke that wasn't doing very well. After digging the hole I discovered it wasn't as well-drained as I thought, and this, as well as the unsuitable climate, may have contributed to the poor performance of the artichoke. I added lots of compost so hopefully the pomegranate will be ok.

In most places on the property (outside of the garden beds around the house) I've discovered that planting trees in holes doesn't work well. Everything needs to be raised, and high! That means large berms, "avocanoes" for the avos, and my most recent trick, a quartet of straw bales (lucerne, actually) surrounding a space filled with compost and potting mix. The theory is that the straw bales will gradually break down and feed the plant, and they can either be replaced with new bales or alternatively just left to decompose, hopefully leaving a high mount. So far I've tried this latter technique with a banana and a muscadine grape.

I planted some macadamias just before the rainy season (i.e. end of Feb) but they don't seem too happy with the amount of rain. Hopefully they'll pull through. The peanut tree, planted at the same time, seems to be doing much better (Sterculia quadrifida).

Late Summer

This summer we planted a number of trees and plants.

1. Swale
I made a mini swale, hand-dug, on the South paddock that faces North and leads down to the dam. This is the site for the bamboo plantation (which currently has 4 x Dendrocalamus asper) but while digging it was discovered that the soil near the bottom of the slope was rich and deep, so fruit trees would grow well here. I've planted on the berm:
- jackfruit (seedling)
- 2 x avocado (Reed, seedling)
- true licorice as an NFT and berm stabiliser
- pigeon peas
- garlic (Glenlarge)
- garlic chives
- sweet potato (kumara)
- okinawa spinach
- moringa

2. Chestnuts
Planted 3 chestnut seedlings in the paddocks destined for the alpacas. One was planted about 2 months ago and is leafing up nicely. Another planted at the same time has not grown at all and is now developing brown spots. It was planted right next to a moringa (at the same time), so not sure that is related. I suspect it is more due to a poorly draining hole, even though it was prepared well in advance. Another has just been planted in a hole prepared about 6 weeks ago. One more chestnut, this a grafted one (Winchester) has also just been planted.

3. Bush Tucker Area
- Walking Stick Palm
- Peanut tree
- Macadamia A16
- Macadamia Bushnut x 2
- Davidson Plum NSW (D.jersiana)
- Plum Pine (Podocarpus elatus) x 1 (to join the other two already planted)
- Musk mallow (Abelmoschus moschatus tuberosus)

4. More Bamboo
The planting of Gombong batu is ongoing and taking a lot of time. Still many more to go.


I planted 2 x Gigantochloa sp. Hitam Hijau by the main dam.


MORINGA
I've grown a lot of these from seed but most a growing slowly and are quite unhappy. There is one exception which was planted in the site that previous saw composting taking place. It has grown at about 5x the rate of others. Even this one, however, has been developing yellow leaves - I am not sure if this is due to lack of water or too much water or poorly drained subsoil. I suspect the first.
So it seems they need a well-draining soil with plenty of organic matter and frequent watering.

VEGGIES
Vege patch has been consumed by sweet potato and beans so is less productive now and needs a renovation.
Original okinawa spinach has almost died - their pot was invaded by ants. Luckily I took plenty of cuttings (they are easy to grow from cuttings - root them in water then pot them up).

COWS
We are looking after the neighbours cows for a month while they are away. In the first paddock they did quite a bit of damage to the young wattles (trampling and breaking them) and ate most of the leaves and branches off the casuarinas. They were then moved accidentally to the wrong paddock (Land for Wildlife area) and despite being there for only one day have done significant damage. The sandpaper fig (birds eye) has been stripped of the majority of its leaves and the main stem has been broken, the Blue Quandong has also been eaten (about 1/3 of it), and the Black Beans have been broken. Acacia victoriae was small and has disappeared, no doubt trampled. The only untouched tree was another Blue Quandong which has a hornet's nest on it (I got stung yesterday on the hand checking it out - it stings for a few minutes and there was a big welt on my hand for about half an hour, but it seems to have had no lasting effect apart from a small red mark that is here the next day). UPDATE: Welt came back with a vengeance a day later and was crazy itchy. Added lots of betamethasone cream and had a Telfast which seems to have helped.