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.