After the Rain

I popped into Bunnings the other day and grabbed a few little things to add to my garden:


Then it started to rain, which stopped me from planting them. By this morning we had an ankle-deep pond in the back yard, but the rain is still pouring down. I'm thinking about an ark.


There were a few moments of sunshine, however, so out I went to see what I could see.










Mysteriously, the tomatoes are starting to flower. In April!


I hope I get better results than I did with this Brandywine. Ugh!

March Garden Update

It hasn't been a good summer for a gardener, and I'm a bit disheartened at the dreadful state of my garden (not helped by a number of family crises which reduced my gardening and blogging time considerably!). Here's a quick tour.

These are some of the few tomato flowers I've seen, on a "Broad Ripple Yellow Currant" that I planted in January. In November I planted "Brandywine" tomatoes and now there are two large but green fruits on one plant. That is all.


I've had a few cucumbers, but not anywhere near the number I expected. Hoping there are some still to come.


The frequent rain has kept my banana suckers happy, though!


The chicky-babes have grown up a lot. This was how they looked in mid-March, at a month old.


Ages ago I planted some Swamp Foxtail grass down the back of my garden, but it was overshadowed by a grevillea. Now the grevillea is senescent, we can finally see the grass which marks the end of the bed.

The Chickies Have Landed

We took a trip out to the western edge of Sydney today and came back with some new friends for our remaining chook, Lizzie. Annie, our White Leghorn, had been in declining health for some time and finally died two weeks ago.


These chicks are about five days old, and you can see their feathers are already growing in. Three are Rhode Island Reds; the others are Australorps. The latter are a distinct breed descended from the Black Orpington and other breeds, sturdy backyard birds known as great layers (250 eggs per year). The Rhode Island Red lays about 200 eggs per year and is also a hardy bird.


A the moment, they like to spend a fair bit of time in the feed bowl. One of the Rhodies seems very dominant, pecking all the others.

The Sprig is thrilled about the chicks and has taken charge of them. The Twig is on crutches after a soccer injury and can't do much at the moment.

Now for a moan abut the weather. This has been the Year Without a Summer as far as we are concerned, with only one beach trip taken during the entire summer holidays. We have had rain, rain, and more rain, including a thunderstorm today. Even though the kids are back at school, normally a precise sign of sunny days, only one day could be called swimming weather, and gardening has been near impossible on my waterlogged clay soil. Corn and bean seeds have just rotted, and I haven't had a single tomato! Woe is me!

Month	Mean Rainfall	Actual Rainfall	Mean Rain Days	Actual Rain Days
December 2011	68.2	133.2	7.2	12
January 2012	90.8	159.2	8.2	12
February 2012	106.4	83.4 (so far)	8.1	7 (so far)

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Preparing for a Bog Garden

We had only 45 minutes of sunshine in Sydney last week.  The local rain gauge says we've had 137mm since the start of the month, more than one-and-a-half times the average.  That's La Nina for you!

There's a new garden bed between my newly-concreted driveway and path.  Well, there would be if I had added any soil to it -- it's just clay and a few weeds.  And 137mm of rainwater.

Our builders came back this week to deal with a few issues and The Geek was solemnly warned that this reservoir so close to the house was a Bad Thing, because the house is downslope. Initial excavations today have revealed some thin concrete inside the bed, which may have reduced the speed at which this water drains into the subsoil.  I am not hopeful that we can keep the area dry in the long term.

 This water is runoff from the driveway.  We are going to have a recurring problem here.  The subsoil is clay and if the soil is saturated, the excess water has nowhere to go.  If I were to mound up a garden bed on top of it, either the soil would wash away or the plants would drown.  I am going to have to allow for temporary flooding but want the excess water to be taken up by plants.  Now how does a frog habitat sound? 

What do frogs need?

• Most common frogs don't require standing water; temporary ponds are enough
• If there is a pond, it should have gently sloping sides as not all frogs can climb
• Frogs need plenty of cover: shrubs, logs, tussock plants and so on
• They frequent moist, shaded areas and can roam some distance from water sources

 What do tadpoles need?

• Tadpoles do need some water
• Tadpoles need water that isn't entirely shaded -- they eat algae, which grows in sunlit water
• Tadpoles need oxygenated water.  Duckweed and Azolla tend to decrease oxygen levels and will need to be removed.
• Tadpoles also eat the fungi and bacteria from decomposing plants
• Tadpoles are sensitive to manure

What do people need?

• Not to have frogs singing under their bedroom windows.  This location is away from our bedrooms and not too close to the neighbours' bedrooms either.

My plan is to create a dished depression in the middle of the triangle, add some leaf-litter and shelter, then plant the whole area with bog plants.    I imagine clumps of sedges at each corner as markers for people using the paths.  Nobody wants to fall into a bog, garden or not!

 The Australian Association of Bush Regenerators has put together a list of Frog-friendly Sydney plants here. I am particularly interested in these ones, as they are known to grow in my area:

• Hydrocotyle peduncularis (Native Pennywort)
• Persicaria decipiens (Knotweed)
• Knobby Club-Rush (Isolepis nodosa)
• Common Rush (Juncus usitatus)
• Mat Rush (Lomandra longifolia)

Stay tuned!
If you are interested in encouraging frogs into your garden, I can recommend the following websites:

• FATS, the Frog And Tadpole Study Group of NSW
• The Frogs Australia Network has plenty of information for Australians about frogs. 
• The Backyard Buddies programme helps children identify andd conserve local wildlife of all sizes.

Is it Spring?

After a quite staggering amount of rain over the last few weeks, today was everything a sunny winter's day should be. Except that I think we might have turned the corner to spring!

Pouring the Slabs

There is nothing more fun than watching a concrete mixer being unloaded!


The mixer is dropping its load into the hopper of a concrete pump, and the pipe runs down our driveway to these guys:



They were pouring the slab for a future herb bed. Love the use of a whipper-snipper motor on the concrete poker (for getting the air bubbles out). The wizard's staff in the background is for use with a laser leveller.


The bolt cutters are for cutting the reo, then there is a trowel machine and the last item is a bullfloat (I believe).


It looked like this when they had finished: the slabs had been laid for the garden bed (foreground), garage (at left) and a special coloured slab for our family room.

But over the weekend, it's been raining. I love the reflections here.


Here's our Honey Mustard slab. The aggregate is 10mm river stone -- quartz and some other stones in white, yellows and browns. You'll see it later!

We worked out a new method of ingress when we were told the concreters were coming.


It's important to be able to feed the chooks!

But in my garden?

While I have been regaling you with photos of Victoria, not a lot has happened here in the garden. It has proved difficult to plant warm-weather crops as the last few months in Sydney have been extraordinarily wet; in fact it's raining right now.

Month	Average (mm)	Actual (mm)
September	52.7	69.8
October	64.9	85.2
November	72.9	108.0 (so far)

This is due to a fairly strong La Nina effect which is expected to remain all summer. Our summers are when we receive most rainfall anyway, but we'll probably have longer rainy periods rather than storms. I will also be expecting more moderate temperatures. While that's good for the vegetable garden, the humidity won't lift so often (generally the humidity drops when we get over about 30C), which tends to mean problems with mildew.

The trip to Melbourne, enjoyable as it was, put a hole in my vegetable planting programme. Since then, it's been hard to find time when the soil is dry enough to allow planting. This weekend, fortunately, gave me both moist (not puggy) soil and time. And now my new plantings are being watered in!

Yesterday, in went my six 'Brandywine' tomato seedlings. I am hoping that temperatures will stay cool long enough for them to grow and set fruit; they should have been in the garden at least a month ago! I am planning a second planting of 'Brandywine' for autumn tomatoes -- in fact, I should plant the seeds this afternoon so that they fruit in March.

The tomatoes are now surrounded by basil, 'Mini' cabbages, 'Flame' lettuce and some 'Mini White' cucumbers, and a row of 'Stringless Pioneer' beans.

Today I planted a block of Sweet Corn 'True Gold' underplanted with Cucumber 'Lebanese Mini Muncher' and 'Sugar Baby' watermelons.

Yesterday, I also put in my heirloom beetroot seedlings, and radish 'French Breakfast' near the bolting Florence fennel and 'Tuscan Black' kale. Found that my leeks had survived, which was rather a surprise. They are sheltered by a sorrel clump and a bolting parsnip, and so should cope when it gets hotter.

My quince tree is laden with small quinces. I need remove a lot of them, then bag the rest against fruit fly. Underneath it, however, are some impressive volunteer tomatoes, which also need bagging. I hope I don't damage too many of them!

By all reasonable measures (that is, non-calendar ones), it's summer:

• The jacarandas across Sydney have passed their peak of bloom
• Blowflies and mosquitoes have appeared
• We have heard Greengrocer cicadas in the trees
• The Ashes have started
• The air-conditioning at my workplace broke down
• The shops are full of Christmas things
• Our Christmas tree went up this afternoon
  

And I'm off to prepare my Christmas cake fruit right now: it has to macerate in brandy overnight before I bake the cake tomorrow. See you later!