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.