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.

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.

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.