A little bit of maintenance

Better late than never, right? A couple days ago, I noticed one of the espalier limes was heavily infested with red scale and swarming with ants. Seemed like the ants were farming the scale from their nest around the roots of the lime tree, waterproofing the rootball in the process (I HATE ANTS!). So I knew the lime trees were stressed, what with the heatwave and the poor soil, but this infestation is an indicator of really bad, stress, I guess, and if the lime dies I will be sad, but I am firm in my committment not to prop up the enchanted orchard with frequent watering. I pruned some of the worst affected branches. Maybe that will stress it more and push it over the edge, but those branches were so heavily encrusted I just couldn't picture them being healthy again. I gave both limes a seasol watering. Then, today I petroleum-oiled what was left and spread ant sand around the base. Good luck, little lime trees. ($30 for the ant sand and pestoil).

Twenty Kilograms of Apples

It's March and the Enchanted Orchard is looking rather grim.

I'm too sad to post pictures of my blueberry bush, which, after giving two or three punnets-worth of blueberries over summer, was killed by the February heat wave in which a week of over-forty-degree maximum temps took a serious toll on the garden.

I still don't water the front garden. It's survival of the fittest. Apparently blueberry was not sufficiently fit.

So I console myself remembering the 20kg of small, perfect, crisp apples that I harvested in early December:



Next time I will be more stringent about not only pinching off all but 3 or 4 fruit in a cluster: The weight of the apples on this branch broke it off, sadly:

If we price apples at $5 a kilo, I guess we can then subtract $100 from the running tally. Also, 250g of pink finger limes, retail value $10, and the blueberries worth about $15.

The mandarins remain small, hard and green, but show no sign of dropping off the tree, despite the heatwave. Hopefully they will ripen at some stage!

Pestguard

Pestguard, which can be purchased from Green Harvest by internet or mail order:

http://www.greenharvest.com.au/pestcontrol/fruit_fly_info.html

...is intended to keep out fruit fly, codling moth, birds, fruit bats and, with any lucks, small children. Action Man knocked up a frame for it:



Apparently only 17% of the sunlight is blocked.



And here are some golden dorsetts, looking enormous compared to last week:



*rubs hands together with glee*

Cost of Pestguard: $160.

I'll add that to the total when the lunch isn't burning.

Spring

The enchanted orchard sees its first spring!

The Australian Finger Lime has unusual yet quite beautiful blossoms:



Petite native bees are constantly busy over it, tempted away from the tea trees (the only plants put in by the original owners that we left untouched).

One of the apple trees (the Daleys one, in case you wondered) flowered, but none of the others did, so my hopes of pollination are very slim:



And the weeping crab apple is just a font of joy. I can't wait til it gets bigger and even more gorgeous.

The cost of all these trees was fairly standard, I think. The Australian Finger Limes I've already added to the total. The other citrus (2 tahitian limes, 1 honey murcott mandarin) were $35 each. The maples and one of the blueberries, I already had. The weeping crab apple was $150 and the second blueberry bush was $12. Add another $150 worth of potting mix and clay breaker, plus a new shovel for $65 (the old one finally got too bent by me forcing it into clay), brings the grand running total to a scary $1291.

Espalier and Logs

Inspired by this post at Jamie's Amateur Gardener blog:

http://gardenamateur.blogspot.com/2008/11/squeezing-lime.html

...I've decided to espalier the tahitian lime trees and apple trees in my Enchanted Orchard. It will make the best use of the north-facing aspect and look tidy to boot. For supports, I could use just any old timber, but to complement the theme, I'm going to use logs.

HEEEEERE LOGGY LOGGY LOGGY...

Ideally, they would be gnarly old logs with the bark still on, but in light of the Evil Termite Threat, it has to be treated pine. Which is cool. They come in 20cm diameter thicknesses and a range of lengths. Hopefully they will weather nicely and add to the atmosphere of haunty goodness. I'll even put some ent-like faces on them.

The Wizard of Oz meets Lord of the Rings.

Cost: To have the logs delivered ($70 delivery charge) from the big landscape supplier in the next town 50km away, it will be close to $480. Additionally, we took a trip to Bunnings on Thursday night and purched such items as a new stainless steel shovel ($40), more gypsum clay-breaker ($10), wire and turnbuckles to connect the logs ($80), yellow grass marking paint ($12) and a 200mm diameter auger (hole-diggy thingie) ($65).

That gives a whopping $687 spent on the garden this weekend. Yikes! I budgeted two grand overall for the setup, and at $809 already, we're getting perilously close to half way.

More Stumpy Success

Action Man ignored his doctor's advice and took the oleander stump out today. That big steel bar? Apparently it's a fencing bar. Yeah, he just used that, like he was uprooting a turnip.

Meanwhile, I carted away 6 wheelbarrows full of rocks from around the stump of the spiny palm tree and patiently began digging my encircling trench. When it was about a foot deep, the heavens opened. I abandoned the job. The stump will still be there next week! Maybe wet clay will be easier to chip through than dry clay.

Shopping: Spent some more cash. Jute twine. Garden wire. 4L of Seasol. A watering can. Total: $31. That brings our running total to $122.

I seasol-ed the finger lime and the mandarin trees. Someone remind me to do it again in a fortnight, OK?

Maybe I need a gardening calendar. Would that make me a total garden nerd, then?

Honey Murcott Mandarin

Yesterday, I managed to get the stump of the pencil pine out of the ground.

It was TOUGH. The soil was compacted clay; I felt like I was chipping away at a glacier with an ice pick as I tunnelled my trench around it. Then, the roots were too thick to just cut them with the blade of the mattock. I isolated each one and washed the clay off it. Then, in the absence of functional pruning saw, Action Man unpacked a perfectly good wood saw for me to use. Once seperated from the tentacles that snaked under the house foundations, I was able to work Pointy, Heavy Metal Bar (Action Man: Does it have a real name?) under the stump and use all my weight to lever it out.

I cackled in an evil hag type way when I finally kicked it over.

Anyway, the search for HM Mandarin came to a happy conclusion about forty kilometres from the local nursery ("we don't have any...are you sure you don't want Imperial?"), and the very helpful lady there also gave me a bag of gypsum with which to try and break up the clay soil.

If I'm keeping score of the cost of setting up this garden versus the value of the (distant, eventual) produce, I might as well mention now that it was $26 for the tree, plus another $25 odd for gypsum, citrus planting compost and a bag of pine bark. Adding the $40 spent on the two finger limes, total out of pocket so far is $91.