How to Remove a Banana Grove

Last week I started my first renovation of my poor mangled garden. Our grove of bananas is poorly placed, so it was time to chop the bigger trees down and move the suckers (the babies) to a better spot. I had about eight trees to remove: 

Before you start, there are a couple of things to know. The first is that bananas are pretty easy to chop down by just shoving a spade into the trunk repeatedly. More importantly, they are full of sap which stains your clothes irretrievably. Never wear clothes you care about when either harvesting or felling bananas! Look at the copious sap here:


Leave the felled banana plants somewhere out of the way to dry out. I'm planning to use the dry leaves on my potato bed later.

Bananas produce suckers rather like succulents produce pups, so you just have to split them off from the parent with your spade and try not to pull off all the roots when you dig them up.


Try not to plant them too deeply; you'll see a bulge where the soil level ought to be.


As with any transplants, water them in well but do not fertilise. I gave them some seaweed tea this morning; it's thought to reduce transplant shock. Time will tell whether the 35-degree day has beaten the seaweed tea. Fortunately, our next few days should be more comfortable.


I'll probably remove the tea-tree and a bottle-brush a bit later.   At right is a curry-leaf tree, Murraya koenigii, which will probably stay put.  Behind is my potato bed, part of my new vegetable garden.

How to Prune a Quince Tree and How to Treat Scale

The quince, like many fruit trees, puts out lots of branches that shoot skyward. It also likes shooting from the base -- its natural form is more a thicket than a tree. While quite picturesque, a tall thicket isn't easy to collect fruit from, so growers tend to prune to a vase shape. The vase shape allows air circulation through the middle of the tree, which reduces some diseases, and makes it easier to deal with the fruit. Quince trees should be pruned in autumn or winter, when they are dormant. I decided to wait until most of the leaves were gone from my tree before I started, last weekend.

I grew up with plum trees and feel confident to prune them, but quinces, being pome fruit like apples and pears, are a little trickier. They fruit on year-old spurs, which you have to be careful not to cut off. Fortunately, these spurs are quite distinctive. They are 10-15 cm long, somewhat flattened, and the tip is broader than the rest of the twig. You can see one in the photo of scale below, pointing to the right. Branches, of course, taper to the tip.

For the last few years, I have been (roughly) following pruning instructions from the Gardening Australia article about quinces. Here is my version of that pruning method:

Year One

1. Plant your sapling. We'd do this in autumn to allow the tree to develop a good root system ahead of the summer heat. I'd prune it fairly hard, but not so hard that I can't tell whether it's survived!
2. In late winter, prune to a single short trunk. While the orchardist in the article gives his trees a very short trunk, 60cm, he probably isn't picking up footballs, chickens or anything else from under his trees. I think 1m or more is a better trunk height for a tree in a home garden, but it depends a bit on your height and what you expect to be seeking under your tree, as well as how high you can reach to pick the fruit.

Year Two

There should be 3-5 healthy branches growing near the top of the trunk. Prune off all the rest, then shorten these framework branches to 50cm, with an outward-facing bud at the top of each. This should give the plant a Y-shape when you look at it from the side, and this is your vase shape.

Subsequent Years

1. Don't cut off the stubby little fruiting spurs!
2. Remove any diseased or dead wood.
3. Remove all of the upright branches inside the vase at their base.
4. Prune any side branches that have developed on the trunk or base of the tree.
5. Remove any branches that cross others.
6. Shorten the remaining branches to 50 cm.

That looks better, doesn't it? Though I feel I can take a bit more off, now I've had a good look at this picture -- I think the tree is starting to look splayed. Quinces are heavy fruit and a good crop (which is still unlikely on my tree, I fear) could cause branches to break.

This year, I've found I could remove an older framework branch as a new branch had grown in the exact spot I wanted. The older branch had zigzagged.

My tree has had another problem this year: scale, caught from the next door neighbour's fig tree. Scale are sap-sucking insects that live on the branches, and for protection cover themselves with a hard shell, which makes them look like limpets. They are farmed by ants for the honeydew they secrete, which also has the side-effect of feeding sooty mould. Neither the scale nor the mould have really affected the tree's production or health, as far as I can tell, but over time they would.

The commercial treatment for scale is White Oil, which is a petrochemical you use diluted. Mum tells me that her Dad used the washing water from the washing machine on his fruit trees. Probably any oil or soap will work, but here is my recipe, cut down from this one:

In a 500ml spray bottle, put 8ml vegetable oil and 2ml dish-washing liquid. Pour in 500ml water and shake to mix. Spray liberally on scale. The oil and detergent apparently smother the scale insect's breathing apparatus, and it's a useful recipe to try on any sap-sucking insect.

Chook Dome Maintenance

After its five years of service, it was time to have a really good look at the chook dome. The UV-stabilised plastic twine I had used for bracing (following the original instructions in Linda Woodrow's book) had not worked well, as the chooks often tripped on it, and now it was starting to shred. When I untied it, I found that a couple of the joints had lost their wiring, so that was my first job. An intact joint is shown below.


The cross-bracing didn't seem to me to be necessary with my small-diameter dome, so I decided to just strengthen the upper joints with the good sections of twine.


I couldn't cover the lower joints without removing the netting, which seemed a bit much, as I wanted to move the girls in to their dome the same day.

What was the rush? I'd seen Annie sitting on wet ground. They only do this when they are afflicted with mites, to cool down their itchy undersides. While the girls had been mite-free for months, I think the butcher-bird I saw stealing their scraps a fortnight ago might have left them a return gift. After I had caught each girl and subjected her to the indignity of the spray-on parasite treatment, she was popped into the restored dome and set to work in my garden.


For more information on the structure and purpose of my chook dome, see this earlier post.

However, I am not the only creator of structures in the back yard. I suspect this is an artillery bunker, but the information is Classified.

How to Deal with a Broody Chook

Lizzie has gone broody again. She has taken to fluffing herself up and holding her wings out, so she looks like a big clucky chestnut ball. If not pushed out, she sits in the 'nesting box' all day and growls when you get too close (yes, a growling chicken is as funny as you think). She has even pecked the Geek. Yesterday I heard a weird squawking. I think Annie had managed to lay an egg, proclaimed this feat in the usual manner, and Lizzie had immediately hopped up to boot her out!

The current nesting box is the top of a bag of sugar cane mulch.

In nature, a chook lays a clutch of eggs, then sits on them (the eggs will stay in suspended animation until she starts sitting). She will sit as long as it takes for the eggs to hatch, with only the odd trip to forage, drink and poo, neglecting her own health in the process. She won't lay during this time, either, and in due course the brood of chicks will hatch.

Humans alter this process a bit to suit themselves. If you remove your hen's eggs every day, she never gets a clutch together to sit on. Many breeds are less inclined to broodiness, because we don't need it and we prefer our hens to put their energies into laying most of the year rather than sitting.

Broodiness ought to be discouraged when there are no fertilised eggs to sit on. Hens aren't very bright, and they will sit until they get a result. They can starve themselves or attract parasites, and of course they don't lay while brooding. In our case, the weather can be very hot, and I'm worried about dehydration. You can see that Lizzie is panting in the picture; it's not even 25 C today.

The solution is to isolate the broody hen in an airy, cool spot with no nesting site or material available. In our case, it's the chook dome, as it's not in use at the moment. We've put it under a shady tree and Lizzie is sulking inside it. Poor Annie, bereft of a companion, hangs disconsolately around nearby.

Lizzie had an attack of broodiness in early December and it only took a few days to break the habit. Unfortunately, she's becoming better at getting around the shadecloth door on the dome... not a good habit for her to have!

Is It a Wedding?

Well, they're veiled in white...
And blushing...


Unfortunately, the only romantic thing is that these are my tomatoes, and they're starting to ripen!

Those white 'veils' are fruit-fly exclusion bags. I thought I saw a fruit-fly and acted about a week before Christmas to cover the fruit.

Queensland Fruit Fly is a serious pest for both commercial fruit growers and home gardeners. In Sydney, the fly is active after Christmas -- it likes the warm, humid conditions. It lays its eggs in a whole range of garden fruits, but particularly likes stone fruit, and tomatoes and capsicums. QFF doesn't attack cucurbits, but a bad infestation will see them in almost everything else. Home gardeners normally see them in tomatoes, though cherry tomatoes are rarely affected.

I should mention that the tiny flies commonly seen hovering over those grapes you forgot to eat, or in the less reputable fruit shops, are vinegar flies (Drosophila), not Queensland Fruit Fly.

The fly usually lays its eggs near the calyx, making the 'sting mark' less obvious (though in a bad infestation you will see sting marks everywhere!). Its maggots then eat the fruit from the inside. When they're ready to pupate, they will have eaten enough of the fruit's insides for it to fall to the ground. The maggots burrow into the soil to pupate before hatching out as adult flies (a bit smaller than a house-fly). In ideal conditions it takes about a month for a fly to go from egg to sexual maturity, and they lay eggs for weeks afterwards...

Thus everyone who has grown up with home-grown tomatoes here has also grown up with the sight and stench of rotting tomatoes, and the sound of cranky gardeners calling down curses upon Bactrocera tryoni.

How do we control it? Well, the most important thing is to practice good hygiene. Firstly, fruit trees should be looked after so they do not shelter fruit flies (there is a legal requirement that I strip my quince tree of fruit at the end of April to prevent fruit fly over-wintering in them). Make sure the tree is not too tall to check the fruit. Fallen or infected fruit should be either solarised or frozen. My Dad's preferred method was to add the fruit to his 44-gallon drum of compost tea!

To be truthful, the best control of fruit fly is through regular spraying of systemic insecticide. I'm a busy person with children, and I like the other minibeasts in my garden, so there are a host of reasons I don't want to spray. My contacts with other gardeners have led me to believe that baits and lures are not terribly effective, so I am going with barriers instead.

We have had dry summers for the last few years, which have reduced the numbers of QFF in Sydney. I am concerned that this year, as vegetable gardening has been booming in popularity, and there are many novice tomato growers around, we will see QFF in plague proportions.

Note: Your Department of Agriculture or Primary Industries will have a fact sheet about Queensland Fruit Fly for your area. Please read it and follow its directions. Be especially careful to follow the local regulations if you are travelling into a fruit fly exclusion zone this summer.

How to Get Rid of Cabbage White Caterpillars

Gavin posted today at Simple Green Frugal Co-op on his adventures in dealing with Cabbage White caterpillars in his garden. I thought I'd put together all I know about the Cabbage White and what has worked for me.

Know Your Enemy

The Cabbage White butterfly, Pieris rapae, seems to be one of the commonest garden pests worldwide. The caterpillars feed on crucifers/brassicas, and have a particular liking for cabbage and broccoli. The caterpillars hatch from single eggs on the underside of a leaf, and stay on the underside until they become large, when they move to the top. They work their way from outer plant leaves to inner ones. Early signs of their presence are pinholes on outer leaves, which quickly become larger until leaves are skeletonised. Green frass (chunky caterpillar poo!) is sometimes visible. Once the caterpillars are in the cabbage heart or into the broccoli head, they cannot be eradicated without chemical use.

In Sydney, the butterflies are more common in the warmer months, and you can expect to see caterpillar damage once daytime maximums move past about 20 C (that is, more than half the year!). The lifespan of the insect is about a month, with the last generation over-wintering in cocoons. The butterflies find each other -- and egg-laying sites -- by sight.


Eradication

Forget it. Unless your country is killing Cabbage Whites as part of a Four Pests Campaign.


Prevention

A lot of people overlook prevention, but insect plagues don't just happen. They occur when there is a confluence of favourable conditions. Here are some ways to make the lives of Cabbage Whites more difficult:

• Encourage insectivorous birds. These tend to be smaller birds, so provide dense (even prickly) bushes for habitat, and compost your cat. Provide a bird-bath. If you have chooks, consider tractoring them in your vegie patch so that they can eat any caterpillars they find.
• Encourage predatory insects. Stop spraying general insecticides in your garden, and don't kill wasps unless you really have to (when they have inconveniently-located nests). Wasps feed the caterpillars to their young. If your brassicas support braconid wasp pupae, don't pull the plants out till the wasps hatch. Remember the bird-bath -- most predatory insects need water to drink.
• Hide the cabbages. Interplant them with other vegetables. Patches and lines of identical plants are too easy for passing butterflies to see.
• Look populated. Scatter white half-eggshells around your brassicas. Apparently, the butterflies perceive these as other butterflies, and head off to lay their eggs in a less populated area. The calcium from the eggshells is good for your garden.
• Get real. If you insist on growing brassicas in warmer weather, you will get caterpillars on them. Not only are the butterflies multiplying, the brassicas themselves are not as healthy as they are in cooler weather, and therefore attract more pests. As evidence, I give you the photo below of one of my winter-grown broccoli, which is entirely unmarked.
  

But I Want to Kill Them!

Go out in the early morning and you will find the caterpillars sitting on top of the leaves, usually near the ribs. Pick them off and feed them to your chooks, or throw them onto the lawn for the magpies as Gavin does.


That's Yucky! I Want a Nice Civilised Pesticide!

Probably the most appropriate pesticide to use is Bacillus thuringiensis, sold as B.t. or Dipel. These bacteria attack caterpillars only, nothing else, and Dipel is therefore permitted in most organic certification systems. According to the MSDS, it's about as safe as you can get with a pesticide. Now go away and get over yourself.

How to Move a Chook Dome

It was time to move the chook dome today. Here's a step-by step guide:

1. Check new site and remove anything you want to keep or eat yourself.
2. Remove feed and water containers.
3. Remove eggs.
4. Remove laying box (ie, old mower-catcher). It's a good time to clean it well and dry it in the sun.
5. Step inside dome.
6. Take perch out of its loops and leave on ground.
7. Grab two opposing ribs and lift the dome about 15cm off the ground. This is low enough to keep the chooks in but high enough to clear small obstacles. Make use of any handy children to shoo the chooks in the right direction.
8. Move dome to the new location (ideally, right next to the previous one -- no need to exhaust yourself!). Lift the side if necessary to clear any large obstacles.
9. Place dome on new site and step out.
10. Check that there are no hollows where a chook might escape under the dome. Bricks are useful to cover any gaps.
11. Replace feed and water containers, perch, nesting box.

Gosh, that was a tiring ten minutes, wasn't it?


Actually, my move took a bit longer than that, because I spent extra time at step 1. Here's the harvest from the new site right before moving the chooks in:

650g beetroot (one large, the rest small)
550g parsnips
handful dill
2 small heads celery
1 head silver beet

I was astonished by the number of snails I found, but the girls were pretty pleased. The rest of the bed is mainly warrigal greens and flowering chervil.

Last week's Good Living had a recipe (not online) that is actually useful right now: a salad of grilled goat's cheese-on-toast, roast beetroot, hazelnuts and broad beans. My garden has supplied me with the fresh young broad beans as well as the beetroot, so I made it for dinner. Rather fiddly for a weeknight, and not exactly frugal, but it tasted great.

No Zucchini, Thanks! Four Tips for Avoiding Garden Gluts

This photo was taken in May. How many different vegetables can you see? (Click to enlarge.)

I thought I'd write some tips about gluts after several posters asked Rhonda Jean of Down to Earth how she dealt with them. Now deliberate creation of a glut can be useful, if you like (or need) to preserve your own food. If all your cooking tomatoes are ripe at the same time, it's easy to make passata. But I can't spare the time to do preserving, nor is my vegie patch large enough to provide us with all the passata we'd need in a year. So I don't want gluts. Here is how I avoid them:

1. Keep an eye out for long-cropping varieties. Some plants, especially tomatoes, have been bred to suit commercial growers; they produce their crop in a short space of time. For the home gardener, a tomato plant that gives you two tomatoes a week for eight weeks is an asset. One that gives you 16 tomatoes in a week and promptly carks it is... not quite so useful. Heirloom varieties tend to be longer croppers, but check the documentation before you buy.
2. Stagger your plantings through the entire growing season. In Sydney, I can plant peas any time between March and July and they will crop in about two months. Now I could plant all my peas in March and be sick of them by June, or I could plant a section of trellis in March, a section in April, and so on, and have peas over the whole winter. Which sounds better to you? Of course this does mean that gastronomy beats aesthetics -- no serried ranks of uniform vines any more. Not a problem for me as I use guild planting anyway. An advantage is that early and late plantings tend to attract fewer pests; pest numbers aren't as high as at the peak of the season.
   
3. Don't plant what you don't like. Zucchini grow easily here in summer and crop well. They can be cooked in many different ways. There's only one problem. My family aren't keen on zucchini. So I don't plant them... not even one. I have therefore saved myself a square metre of garden bed and that whole Sneaking Zucchini thing I've been hearing about.
4. Don't plant more than you will eat. OK, there is no such thing as too much asparagus, or tomatoes, or cucumbers. But how many cabbages can you manage in a year? My family would probably only manage to eat through a cabbage a month. If we allow for some losses, that's all of 18 seedlings planted out in a year. I raise them from seed, so I'd only sow about three punnet-cells with cabbage seed a month. If you know you won't eat a lot, don't plant a lot, even if you don't want to calculate it as precisely as this.

(The photo shows lettuce, broccoli, pumpkin, beetroot, celery, pak choy, eggplant, and silverbeet. I can also see a parsnip leaf.)

How To Grow Vegetables from Seed: After Germination

Here are the two pak choy punnets. The one on the left is the forgotten punnet, a few weeks old, and the other was planted last week. Isn't it wonderful to see tiny plants appearing in your punnets?

They had dried out a bit this morning, so I gave them water with a soluble fertiliser. Don't use soluble fertilisers on seeds: seeds have enough nutrient for germination, and too much nutrient does more harm than good. Appropriate warmth and light are more important than fertiliser, anyway.

The next step is to thin the punnets so that you have one healthy seedling in each cell. Planting several seeds in each cell allows us to choose the best.

Make sure the growing medium is moist. If it isn't, you may find too much medium -- or even the wrong plants! -- comes out when you pull the unwanted seedlings. Moisture also minimises root damage and shock to the plant you want to keep.

I use my fingers to thin seedlings, but you might prefer tweezers. I press a finger into the seed raising mix when I uproot a seedling, to prevent too much root damage to the others.

Any that are sickly-looking should go. Check for any plants which have stems thinning near the base and pull them. Look for a sturdy, upright stem. If you still have a choice, leave the one that is nearest the middle of the cell.

Feed the thinnings to your guinea pigs, chooks, worms or compost heap. Actually, you could even eat these ones yourself, though I suggest washing them first...

Here is the final result of thinning, with a single healthy seedling left in each cell. You might notice that one cell contains no healthy seedlings; that is the price of neglect. Now, I need to wait for the seedlings to grow to planting-out size.

Previous posts in this series are Ingredients and Method and Mistakes.

How To Grow Vegetables from Seed: Method and Mistakes

Start by filling your punnet almost all the way to the top. Tap the punnet to level the seed raising mix. Press a finger lightly into each cell to make a hollow for seeds to sit in. In larger punnets, you can make grooves -- otherwise, the seeds tend to roll to the edges of the punnet.


I'm right-handed, and I sow seeds like this: pour seeds into the palm of your left hand. Pinch a small number of them between your right finger and thumb. Roll your fingers over a punnet cells, enabling 3-6 seeds to drop into each cell. Why so many seeds? Some won't be viable, and some won't produce strong plants. Later on, you'll pick out the seedlings you don't want, and just keep the strongest ones. Unlike seedlings, seeds are cheap, and you get lots in a packet! How many broccoli seeds can you see in this punnet cell?



Mistake 1: Burial. One of the commonest mistakes is to cover your seeds too deeply. The little seeds we put into punnets are generally the kind that land on the ground in vast numbers near the parent plant. They don't need, nor want, a heavy blanket on their heads. Sprinkle some seed raising mix to cover the seeds up, but no more than you need.


I planted up a punnet of snapdragons yesterday. The seed was like dust, and the packet said to just sprinkle the seed on the surface. Even seed raising mix can be too heavy for such tiny seeds.

Mistake 2: Drowning. I stand my punnets in trays, and water from below. When the surface of the punnet is dry, I add water to the tray. It is OK for the punnets to stand in water for a few days at the start. When seedlings emerge, however, they are susceptible to mould ("damping off"), so make sure you only water seedlings when the seed raising mix is starting to dry out.

Now for some recent mistakes of mine:

Mistake 3: Invoking Phil. These beetroot seedlings only get morning light, and that's not a big problem -- the sun is terribly strong here at this time of year. The problem is that I haven't turned the punnet around to keep the seedlings upright, so they're all lopsided. (After I took the photo, I turned them around, and they look fine today.)


Mistake 4. Complete Forgetfulness. I really truly thought I'd taken all the planted-up punnets out of the shed last week and put them on my porch...


These are pak choy. The residual moisture in my rather dry seed raising mix was enough to get them going. Good germination rate, you may notice. The seedlings have reeeeeally long stems because the only light source in my shed is the east-facing window... across from the bench!

The previous post in this series is Ingredients and the next one is After Germination.

How To Grow Vegetables from Seed: Ingredients

As we enter autumn planting season in Australia, and as Northern Hemisphere gardeners approach spring, growing vegetables seems to have come back into fashion. It's partly due to the global financial crisis, I suppose, but also due to the quiet, long-term influence of the green movement. Long may it continue!

Most of us start gardening with plants in punnets from a nursery, or with the large, easy seeds that can be sown directly where they are to grow, like sweet corn and beans. Growing plants from seed in punnets is the next step. Below are the things you'll need:

Seed raising mix. This isn't potting mix; it's much finer in texture. Buy a smaller rather than a larger bag. The mix should feel damp, but not wet. If you need to rehydrate the mix, put a few scoops of it into a bucket, add water (say two cups) and stir. If you can, let the mix sit overnight to absorb. It is easier to handle if it's damp rather than sopping wet.

Empty punnets. You do have some in your garden shed, don't you? Left over from the seedlings you bought last time? I have the kind that are divided into individual cells as well as the older kind where all the seeds bunk in together. I use the cell kind for larger plants, where I have specific numbers in mind. The older style are good for lettuces, leeks, spring onions and other vegetables that don't take up much space or where you don't really care how many you have. I also use plain punnets for out-of-date seeds, which I sprinkle thickly, as germination rates are much lower.

Seeds. For most gardeners, this is the fun part, where we tend to get carried away. My preference is for heirloom seeds, which are better suited to home gardeners. Heirlooms tend to crop over longer periods, while modern varieties tend to be produced for farming, where an all-at-one-go harvest is preferred as it lowers production costs. Besides, the heirlooms have interesting names and stories and are sold by interesting people.

A place to keep sown punnets. I stand punnets in shallow trays, usually saucers from big pots. In winter, I use a mini-greenhouse to start off my warm-weather crops, but my climate is mild enough that it is unnecessary most of the year. The punnets usually stay on my back porch, which has a north-easterly aspect. The gentler morning sun won't cook them. Your climate and hemisphere may vary. The basic requirements are: morning sun, close to your house (you need to talk to them every morning and keep an eye on their water needs), not in anyone's way, and not too cold, hot, light or dark. 20-25 C is the temperature you want: most vegetable seeds will germinate and grow optimally there.

A workspace. I use the potting bench in my garden. I have a tray where I fill the punnets, which makes clean-up much easier. There's also room for my other gear...

Something to store your seeds in. The metal biscuit tin is traditional. I have an old rectangular ice-cream container: it is wide enough to allow my seed packets to stand upright.

Identification tags and a pen or pencil, and storage for them. You can buy blank tags, or just cut up a plastic container. Permanent marker is always legible, but a good gardener's pencil lives in my shed in a jar with all the unused tags; you can reuse tags for new things. Always tag your punnets, preferably with cultivar name as well as plant name -- you quickly find out which plants will and won't work in your garden, and re-buying a dud variety is terribly frustrating!

I think I've mentioned everything, but if I haven't, please comment!

The subsequent posts in this series are Method and Mistakes and After Germination.