My goals were to maintain my espalier tree garden and other fruit trees, get a flower garden growing out the front, convert a large old rusted out and full of holes water tank into a large compost bin and fill it with the mess that was my compost pile which, started as a 2m x 4m pile that was my head height and grew to become 18m long! So how far did I get with all that?
Maintaining my espalier tree garden and other fruit trees turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. The first problem I had was my dog. He decided that digging was lots of fun, and so was pulling down the wires the trees are meant to grow on, so I had to stop him from doing that, so now all my trees and garden areas are surrounded with chicken wire and whatever else I could find, which doesn't look nice, but it looks better than lots of holes and dead plants. I still haven't found any remains of the little banana tree he dug up and vanished on me, thus I'm still convinced he ate it. The second problem was once the marigolds I'd planted between the tree planters ended their season, died, and were removed, before I got a chance to put anything else there, the area was overtaken by weeds. In removing the weeds, I found some new little marigold plants had popped up from self-seeding, so that's pretty. I'm considering planting something different there for spring but haven't decided what yet. Meanwhile, most of my trees have gone dormant, though some of the apple trees are being quite resistant to that until just this past few days. It's been a strange winter, still too cold for human comfort, but it's been unusually warm overall, we haven't had the frosty mornings and cold days we normally have at this time of year yet, so I don't know if it's going to be cold enough for the trees this year to set fruit, but oh well. I don't mind having apple trees that don't grow apples every year, so long as they do it some years when the winters have been cold enough for them.
Once dog vs tree problems were under control, I got stuck into landscaping a large garden bed in the front yard, in which to grow flowers. Sure, I'd love to just grow food there too, but I need something to draw a larger variety of pollinators to the yard and cottage garden flowers are great for that. It was supposed to be a job complete within a month or two, but weather, other responsibilities, excessive weed growth, pandemic related dramas, and my own personal 'demic of minor illnesses and infections kept delaying everything. But I'm nearly done, just need to add a bit more compost, moopoo, and mulch to the far end of it, add some more seeds and bulbs, and then I can sit back and let it grow, but I'll have to wait until early spring before I can get into doing any more planting. The plants, bulbs and seeds that were planted at the end of autumn have been doing well though. This project involved breaking up and removing a significant amount of old concrete, arguing with the dog about filling in the trenches I'd dug for the edging instead of helping me dig the trenches until I chicken wire fenced him out of the front yard as well much to his dismay. Digging the area within the garden bed down deeper because it's not a high bed and everything underneath was worthless sand and rocks of all sizes including some that needed extra people to move for being so large and heavy. Then back-filling up the garden bed with a blend of sifted really cruddy bad dirt and sand from the yard, mixed with huge amount of compost and moopoo, and of course covering it in mulch. My dog still stalks the front garden area from the other side of the chicken wire fence and has broken though it a few times, hence the more solid old coro-iron sheet additions.
As I was doing all this, a random pumpkin vine that I have no responsibility for appeared in the dirt area that isn't garden bed and has produced 2 little pumpkins. It's not doing well, I admit I haven't looked after it, never expected it to be popping out pumpkins at this time of year, but I let it grow just to see in curiosity what a random pumpkin vine of unknown type and origin would try to do so out of season in this area.
Meanwhile, after a family friend cut the top, bottom, and section of side away from the old water tank, I rolled it where I wanted it and started filling it up with the disaster that was my compost pile, as well as all the weeds I'd been digging out from all over the yard. This compost drum has a 2m diameter and is as tall as I am (1.64m). I filled it to the very top, let it break down until it was down to the top of the open side, rinsed and repeated that process 5 times before it wouldn't break down quite so low anymore, so I just kept topping it up every time there's been any space on top, and as of today it looks like this...
Most of it is brown matter, but we've had rain and in the dry spells between rain I'll sometimes hose it down, the extra wetness has been breaking down that dry brown mess quite quickly without any need for lots of fresh green stuff. Everything that can go into a compost pile goes in there.
My newest food garden additions have been two pink lemon trees - the trees aren't pink, the inside of the lemons that grow on them are pink, but the leaves are variegated which is interesting and pretty - and a miniature mandarin tree that grows super sweet miniature mandarins. I've got one lemon tree in a large tree planter in the back yard, and one in a pot on the front veranda as a back-up lest something goes wrong like my dog decides to eat it. They're not easy to get hold of in Australia, I waited almost 2 years to get hold of one, so when I had the chance I got two as I didn't want to wait another two years to replace a tree if something went wrong. The mandarin tree is also in a pot on the front veranda at the moment, but it'll be moved into the back yard some time suitable next year.
Maintaining my espalier tree garden and other fruit trees turned out to be more of a challenge than I anticipated. The first problem I had was my dog. He decided that digging was lots of fun, and so was pulling down the wires the trees are meant to grow on, so I had to stop him from doing that, so now all my trees and garden areas are surrounded with chicken wire and whatever else I could find, which doesn't look nice, but it looks better than lots of holes and dead plants. I still haven't found any remains of the little banana tree he dug up and vanished on me, thus I'm still convinced he ate it. The second problem was once the marigolds I'd planted between the tree planters ended their season, died, and were removed, before I got a chance to put anything else there, the area was overtaken by weeds. In removing the weeds, I found some new little marigold plants had popped up from self-seeding, so that's pretty. I'm considering planting something different there for spring but haven't decided what yet. Meanwhile, most of my trees have gone dormant, though some of the apple trees are being quite resistant to that until just this past few days. It's been a strange winter, still too cold for human comfort, but it's been unusually warm overall, we haven't had the frosty mornings and cold days we normally have at this time of year yet, so I don't know if it's going to be cold enough for the trees this year to set fruit, but oh well. I don't mind having apple trees that don't grow apples every year, so long as they do it some years when the winters have been cold enough for them.
Once dog vs tree problems were under control, I got stuck into landscaping a large garden bed in the front yard, in which to grow flowers. Sure, I'd love to just grow food there too, but I need something to draw a larger variety of pollinators to the yard and cottage garden flowers are great for that. It was supposed to be a job complete within a month or two, but weather, other responsibilities, excessive weed growth, pandemic related dramas, and my own personal 'demic of minor illnesses and infections kept delaying everything. But I'm nearly done, just need to add a bit more compost, moopoo, and mulch to the far end of it, add some more seeds and bulbs, and then I can sit back and let it grow, but I'll have to wait until early spring before I can get into doing any more planting. The plants, bulbs and seeds that were planted at the end of autumn have been doing well though. This project involved breaking up and removing a significant amount of old concrete, arguing with the dog about filling in the trenches I'd dug for the edging instead of helping me dig the trenches until I chicken wire fenced him out of the front yard as well much to his dismay. Digging the area within the garden bed down deeper because it's not a high bed and everything underneath was worthless sand and rocks of all sizes including some that needed extra people to move for being so large and heavy. Then back-filling up the garden bed with a blend of sifted really cruddy bad dirt and sand from the yard, mixed with huge amount of compost and moopoo, and of course covering it in mulch. My dog still stalks the front garden area from the other side of the chicken wire fence and has broken though it a few times, hence the more solid old coro-iron sheet additions.
As I was doing all this, a random pumpkin vine that I have no responsibility for appeared in the dirt area that isn't garden bed and has produced 2 little pumpkins. It's not doing well, I admit I haven't looked after it, never expected it to be popping out pumpkins at this time of year, but I let it grow just to see in curiosity what a random pumpkin vine of unknown type and origin would try to do so out of season in this area.
Meanwhile, after a family friend cut the top, bottom, and section of side away from the old water tank, I rolled it where I wanted it and started filling it up with the disaster that was my compost pile, as well as all the weeds I'd been digging out from all over the yard. This compost drum has a 2m diameter and is as tall as I am (1.64m). I filled it to the very top, let it break down until it was down to the top of the open side, rinsed and repeated that process 5 times before it wouldn't break down quite so low anymore, so I just kept topping it up every time there's been any space on top, and as of today it looks like this...
Most of it is brown matter, but we've had rain and in the dry spells between rain I'll sometimes hose it down, the extra wetness has been breaking down that dry brown mess quite quickly without any need for lots of fresh green stuff. Everything that can go into a compost pile goes in there.
My newest food garden additions have been two pink lemon trees - the trees aren't pink, the inside of the lemons that grow on them are pink, but the leaves are variegated which is interesting and pretty - and a miniature mandarin tree that grows super sweet miniature mandarins. I've got one lemon tree in a large tree planter in the back yard, and one in a pot on the front veranda as a back-up lest something goes wrong like my dog decides to eat it. They're not easy to get hold of in Australia, I waited almost 2 years to get hold of one, so when I had the chance I got two as I didn't want to wait another two years to replace a tree if something went wrong. The mandarin tree is also in a pot on the front veranda at the moment, but it'll be moved into the back yard some time suitable next year.
