Ghastly Moments in Gardening V: Red in Beak and Claw

Yesterday, the boys came rushing in to tell me that there was a mouse in the chook food bucket.  The bucket was nearly empty and the poor mouse, not a very large one, was unable to jump out.  I roused on the boys for leaving the lid off overnight and took the bucket outside.

There we were as I tipped the bucket slowly sideways to let the mouse out: the Geek, the Twig, the Sprig and the chooks wandering near us.  The mouse finally leapt out and bolted between my husband's feet, looking for safety in the grass nearby.

But too late!  One of our chooks saw the movement and tore after it.  To my surprise, she was able to snatch the mouse up in her beak -- it shrieked! -- and then all the chooks were after her.  The poor mouse was dropped and snatched up several times before one of the girls triumphantly carried off the now-lifeless body to a corner of the back yard.

I had no idea chickens would attack an animal as big as a mouse!

How Annoying!

It appears that the camera batteries are dead, so I can't take photos of my garden for you today. I'll have to leave you with a verbal snapshot:

• I poured boiling water on some bindies today. Yes, they do prefer compacted ground, so they've been easy to spot. Various other weeds are also colonising our patches of clay. Unfortunately, we've had some Cobbler's Pegs come in. Under the Hill's hoist. Of course.
• Our cool damp spring has even encouraged some grasses to begin sprouting.
• This year's vegetable patch will primarily be in my new herb bed. I have tomatoes, cucumber, and pumpkin in already with the herbs, and planted some beans today.
• My tomato seedlings (three colours of Zebra tomatoes, and 'Reisentraube' and 'Broad Ripple Yellow Currant') are up, but not yet the chillies, eggplant or capsicum.
• The choko has not been as aggressive as hoped -- yet. Nor have my 'Brandywine' tomatoes really taken off. I'm a bit worried as they won't set fruit once it gets very hot.
• Lizzie has been laying reliably.
• The guinea pigs have escaped and are living wild in the long grass at the end of the back yard. They appear quite happy until they see humans, whereupon they look noticeably guilty.
• The 'Iceberg' rose is flowering its heart out.
• We finally concreted in our new letterbox today. A pity the front yard is a disaster area!

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.

I Have Foreseen It.

Right on cue, straight after Christmas...


Yes, this is a female Queensland Fruit Fly, which I swatted as she laid eggs in this quince. Yep, those are her guts hanging out. Sorry if you have just eaten.

This is a big fly, about 8mm long. She is a maroon colour with oval yellow markings, and has a wasp-waist.

Notice that she was laying the eggs into a crease in the fruit, to make the 'sting' less obvious?

Bah.

I bagged about a dozen quinces in those nice white veils, but pulled off at least 20 other fruit -- the smaller and less shapely ones -- and solarised them. The remaining quinces should grow bigger -- assuming that QFF haven't already struck them!

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.