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.
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