Back in the garden - Bus life on hold

After over 12 months on the road, living and working from our motorhome (#forkthebus - that's a whole story in itself that you can find on our facebook Finchys Australia page if interested,) we find ourselves living in the driveway at my parents house.

Not far from where we lived at our permaculture property, they have good soil, good rainfall and a temperate climate, although going into Winter now after chasing the sun for the last year feels like the South Pole.
However, mid to late Covid-19 Autumn is a perfect time to get in the garden and plant winter crops.
My dad, (Johnno) and I refurbished and extended his vegie patch.

In southern Australia it's time to plant winter greens and root vegetables. We are planting by the moon and running with a 4 bed rotation system. So we planted vegetables that grow above the ground in the New Moon Phase (1).

Bed 2 is our Brassica's bed which includes leafy greens, silverbeet and spinach etc.

We planted Broccoli, Silverbeet, Perpetual Spinach, Rocket, Mesclun Salad Mix and Baby Spinach.
This bed needs manure and blood and bone turned into before planting. Chicken manure is ideal but needs to be old, anything fresh will burn the new plants. Our new load of soil we had delivered had poultry manure in it already, mostly duck shit, so is ideal for these crops.

In the First Quarter Moon Phase (2) plant above the ground again. We planted into Bed 1.
Bed 1 is our Legumes Bed or peas and beans. We planted Dwarf Peas, Climbing Peas, Climbing Snap Peas and Broad Beans.

The tags I use are old venetian blinds cut up. Write on them with pencil and then rub it off and re-use.
I write the date planted P, the date to harvest H, and any other details that will jolt my memory about their care as they grow. The legume bed only likes organic matter, potash but no nitrogen.

Let it be

After 18 months of not doing anything in my garden, it is flourishing.
Due to many factors affecting my ability to put the regular time into my garden, I have done virtually nothing to it for the past 18 months.

Yet it has still provided fruit, herbs, minimal veg and plenty of habitat for the insects birds and occasional blue tongue lizard.

All the self seeding greens, herbs and even parsnips have provided wonderful habitat for the hoverflies and other small pollinators.

ADD:
A month after this post we sold our property. We had a massive garage sale and sold, gave away or donated all our belongings and began life living in a bus full time on the road travelling Australia.
Our nomad lifestyle website is:  www.finchysaustralia.com

I do miss my beautiful abundant permaculture garden  but still have the opportunity to garden when house-sitting around the country. Our new life on the road is a big adventure and just another chapter.
I am forever grateful for the knowledge I gained from doing a PDC with the Food Forest in Adelaide in 2005 before we built our property. Hands on learning and being creative are two of my all time favourite things to do.

The Garden Gate

I'd left quite a gap when the fence was put up for a decent gate.  A new farm gate costs around a hundred bucks here in South Australia and I thought thats a bit much for a vegie patch.

I have an area in my garden for  "inherited" items that can be repurposed or "upcycled" ! Really, its just a pile of junk but it always comes in handy. I'm sure I inherited this trait from from grandad who in later years "tied it up with wire" or surrounded it with shadecloth.

You may not recognise it but my garden gate was a trampoline in a past life. Made to measure, and with a wheel to take the weight, my garden gate serves several purposes.

1. Its a gate. It keeps things out and keeps things in.  It keeps the roos and rabbits out and keeps the dog in when the chooks are out.

2. It allows me great access with a wheelbarrow or cart. I can pull my car right up to it and unload chook food or a trailer load of sheep manure.

3. With the timber slats it stops the strong southerly winds from over the hill into the garden while still allowing a good breeze through for air flow.

4. I sometimes use it as a dying rack and hook or hang herbs etc over it.

Good bugs I have in the garden

The Hover fly is a good insect to have in my garden.
Adults “hover” to find a place to lay their eggs like around aphid colonies. This is so when the eggs hatch they have an immediate food source.

They are very predacious and love soft bodied insects, such as aphids.
To attract Hover Flies to my garden, I have flowers in the garden all year round, as well as native vegetation in the surrounding gardens.
I don’t use any sprays at all in my garden as I don’t want to harm the “good guys”.

Another good guy we have is the Ladybird. We are very lucky as there is an annual hatchery close by and they hatch in the millions.
Both the adult and larva are predators.
Ladybird larva is quite a ferocious grub and has relatively large legs.
They are greyish black in colour with orange or yellow markings that go across the body and may also be covered in spines or white fluffy material.
They love anything soft bodied including moth eggs, mites, aphids and leaf hoppers. I watched this little fellow on a garden stake enjoying the afternoon sun.

Blue Banded Bees visit

The blue-banded bee is an Australian native bee that has recently begun visiting my garden.

They use a process called "buzz pollination " that involves clinging onto flowers by clamping their legs onto the anther of the flower and contracting their flight muscles so vigorously that the pollen is released. This type of pollination is really useful on crops such as tomatoes, blueberries, cranberries, kiwi fruit, eggplants and chillies. I took this photo of this bee about to buzz one of my hollyhocks.

Blue-banded bees can sting, but are not as aggressive as other bees and are solitary creatures.  Female Blue-banded bees tend to nest in burrows in dried-up river banks, old clay homes, and mortar between bricks, but may also burrow in soft sandstone. We have lots of this type of rock and it can become riddled with bee tunnels. Males don’t build nests, they cling to plant stems to roost for the night.

In Australia the majority of these bees collect their nectar from blue flowers, but they also feed on some non-blue flowers such as the white salvia, tomato and eggplant flowers. They also like my fuschia flowers.

Adult blue banded bees fly only in warm months of the year (October to April) and die before the winter. Immature bees remain sealed in their cells inside the nests during the winter. They develop into adults and emerge when the warm weather returns. Cells at the end contain an egg and food (pollen and nectar) for the larvae when it emerges.

cherry slugs for the first time

I noticed cherry slugs on my cherry and pear tree for the first time last week. As i don't use any chemicals (or even homemade organic mixtures much) i decided to try something else - i sprinkled wood ash over my small trees.  I keep some wood ash in a bucket in my garden shed which i put a cup full into a small empty pot and then used it like a sifter to shake the ash over my trees.

The cherry slugs sit on top of the leaves, unlike other bugs and caterpillars that hang underneath.  It worked, the next morning the slugs had died and most of the ash had blown off. I shook the rest off and today it rained so i know the little that remained won't burn the leaves

Don't ringbark my trees

In my garden I have a small orchard. It is an enclosed area with a corrigated iron fence that also is my chook run and my bunny exercise yard. Unfortunately the bunnies like the apple trees and nibble on them. I have tried many things to deter them, mostly small fences and netting or shade cloth surrounds to deter them.

Over winter I have not done much weeding and many stinging nettles have grown up inside the wire cages at the bottom of my trees. This has also kept the rabbits from touching the trees. Now all my fruit trees have stinging nettles growing at their base.

A trial of a bed of lettuce with nettles around it also proved successful. Just before the nettles flower I put them in my compost. Some compost bays  and bins I let the chook's scratch in and some I like to keep them out awhile, so throwing nettles on top of the bays, stops the chook's as well. I recently made soup with stinging nettles in it. They don't sting when cooked and have good nutritional value.

perfect Pears

My pear was pruned originally by removing the central leader and hanging small pots weighted with rocks to keep the branches low and horizontal. Now my fruit is very easy to reach . I keep all my fruit trees short as I am only short too and I don't need a ladder to pick any fruit . This pear shown is a  3 year old Williams.

The Bunny House

This is about the "Taj Mahal" of Bunny Houses. It is made from recycled materials, like the rest of my garden. It is a 3x3m shed with North facing windows for winter warmth and sunshine. it has a 400mm wide verandah for summer shade on the north. 

The southern side (in the photo below) has a large mesh window area to let the cooling summer breezes in. The bunny house inside is split level as the garden is also split level. 1) the upper vegetable area ; 2) the lower fruit area and chook/bunny run. 

Two feeding chutes made from old plumbing poly pipe can be seen just above Bella, my dog. The larger one is for food and the smaller one on the right is for water. The food goes down the chute easily, saving me from going through the gate and down into the lower part of the garden and opening the large bunny house door, where the bunnies love to rush out for their exercise.

The bunnies come out to play once a week usually and run around the fruit garden, eating the rosemary, and harassing the chooks. To get them to go back into the house, I put some food down their chute and they run back in, except Brownie, who I have had the longest, he's a bit more relaxed about going back in.

In the Taj Mahal, the bunny's have a large old cupboard on its side, that they go into or can sit on, to look out either window. This gives them a chance to exercise and jump inside the house as well.  They also have an old microwave oven with its door and cord removed, which is buried into the bank like a burrow with a brick tunnel leading to it.

Brownie (proud dad) and two babies in the entrance to the "microwave" burrow.

Thunder and Tubs- two bunnies that I adopted from friends.

   

Sunny (RIP) hiding in the cupboard above the "burrow".

A baby bunny.

Pigs protect fruit from birds

Protecting fruit from birds is difficult. I have tried the usual deterrents but have turned to rodents recently with great success. 

In my orchard I have a variety of fruit trees, all of which the birds enjoy eating the fruit when they can. I run my chook's under the fruit trees which helps with bugs, grubs and fertilising, however my latest experiment of running my guinea pigs under the trees too has worked a treat.

The guinea pigs attract the birds of prey, which then deter the fruit eating smaller birds. We have Wedge-tail Eagles, Nangkeen Kestrels, Black-shouldered Kites and Kookaburra’s near our house and garden regularly. The larger birds circle or hover over head and the parrots and smaller birds stay away.

The guinea pigs have plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in, and houses and tunnels throughout the garden for their safety. After the guinea pigs started to chew the trees themselves, I made small-gauge wire guards at the base of the trees for protection.

The guinea pigs and chooks get on fine together and my “sacrificial” pigs are safe. The circle of wire on the left of the photo is where I put treats for the guinea pigs so the chooks cant eat the food and the pigs are safe from the birds.

White moths on brassica's

TRIAL / SUCCESS : Experiment beats white cabbage butterflies/moths.

This photo shows my young broccoli plants recovering well from previous attacks by white cabbage butterflies.

This success is due to my new experiment this winter of "sprinkling" herbs and other shredded leaves over my growing seedlings. I used rosemary  to begin with - I separated the fresh leaves from the stem and tossed them evenly over the young seedlings. Then I noticed other plants nearby that haven't been eaten, so I pulled some leaves off of those as well and shredded them and tossed them in and around and the seedlings too. These were: potato leaves, spearmint leaves and rocket leaves. 

1st of July Oranges

It’s the first of July tomorrow and mid winter in South Australia. Today I gave the Washington navel oranges a gently twist each and 3 of them came off the tree without any force. They are medium size, seedless, easy to peel and sweet and juicy.

The tree is only young and has about twenty oranges drooping from its slender branches. Currently standing about 6 foot tall and 3 -4 foot wide, it is planted in the chook yard in a sheltered position.

TRIAL/SUCCESS : As another one of my experiments, I only prune my fruit trees during the warmer months. This year I pruned my young citrus trees in summer, shaping them so they will grow to umbrella shapes for easy picking from underneath while providing shade and shelter for the chooks and chickens.
My reasoning for summer pruning is the sap flows more freely and the cuts heal much faster. I believe they are then less inclined to getting disease. 

The garden shed

MULTI PURPOSE: My 8m by 3m shed is made from recycled materials. It faces North and is bermed into the slope with the soil 600ml up the back. 

PURPOSE 1 : The right third of the shed is a chook house. It is basically passive solar for the chooks, allowing warm winter sunshine in through the perspex (laserlite sheeting) from the North and then the cooling summer breezes from the south, which actually blow in around the hill behind it from the east. The western window is an old shower screen run horizontally, that lets a lovely late afternoon winter sun in from the north west. Shrubs planted outside the garden prevent the summer sun entering from its south west evening angle. This photo was taken in early Spring showing the 400ml wide verandah starting to provide shade on the walls.

PURPOSE 2 : The front of the shed is a great place to start off seedlings in Autumn and Winter in the old cement laundry tubs. They get the warmth of the sun, and shelter from the cold south winds, but also being up off the ground and under the small verandah, it keeps the frost off them.

New Silkie chicks arrive

Just before our Winter Solstice in June, my white Silkie bantam hen hatched 8 chicks in the old duck house. The ducks are long gone but the big old wooden potato box was her nesting spot of choice. Not wanting to disturb her, I brought the brooding box (on the left) and placed it up against the entrance of the spud box and added the small circular fence to keep them enclosed. The spud box has a corrugated iron roof and is sheltered on two sides by the garden fence and a rainwater tank on the third.

This small enclosed area is a North facing sun trap and my spot for growing citrus. It is approx 6m square and is terraced into a north facing slope. Our climate is temperate/Mediterranean  with cool wet winters and hot dry summers.

GROWING CITRUS: I was told by a 96 year old lady that citrus grow better when they can touch each other.

The small tree in the photo is a mandarin, which will one day touch the Washington navel orange and a Meyer lemon.  The chooks travel through this area from their chook house to the larger orchard. The blue tree guard serves to 1). stop the chooks scratching the citrus tree's roots which are close to the surface and 2). provides a catchment for watering during the summer as I hand water the whole garden.

Permaculture course - 2005

In 2005, I completed a Permaculture course in Adelaide and designed the small property we now live on in the Limestone Coast in South Australia. I love to learn,design,create and share what I am passionate about and what I discover.

I have been fortunate to have worked with many elderly people during my life that have shared their gardening tips and tricks with me.

My garden is an experiment as much as anything. We have 5 acres of land which was once a quarry. The site is on a slope and half of it has been scalped by machinery. It has a combination of soils and surfaces spread over it including sand, clay, limestone, bedrock and the lovely red terra rosa dirt.

My main experiment is to grow the gardens and revegetate it only on rainfall. 

We are fortunate to average 750ml a year, but that is an average since 1923. In 2006, we only had 485ml, and was the year I began planting.  I have hedged my bets and planted shrubs and trees in the well draining areas that only need 200-400ml per year, similar to Adelaide; and indigenous species and vegetable gardens and orchard where the soil is richer and deeper. 

Looking down the hill in the photo, the red terra rossa soil is now the vegetable garden. The house sits on higher ground to the left. The vegetable garden is watered from its own rainwater tank which gravity fills from the overflow of the two rainwater tanks for the house.