Callatya's Backyard Farm-thingy

Callatya · **Posted:** Sat Feb 09, 2013 2:29 pm

Well, it has been a while, but I've just returned with a car full of soil and stakes. It is much too hot to be outside right now so I thought I'd update a little.

The tomato situation is a bit grim. I think I like them in hanging pots, but they don't do well upside down in coir. Right way up with a bowl in the base was great, but I couldn't stake them well. Next year I'm going to try a high trough and see how that goes. I did get quite a few fruits off each plant though, and black russians are still my favourite ;-)

I have been gifted a tahitian lime, so the potted citrus count is now at 3 (tahitian lime, ruby red grapefruit, meyer lemon) and I think I can easily fit 5 or 6 more in that alleyway without a problem. I am so very happy someone suggested potting them up like that, it makes such good use of the space! No fruit this year - I have left 2 or 3 on the lemon and the lime (the limes were big when I got it and I'm impatient to know what a meyer lemon tastes like) but the rest have been clipped off. The grapefruit had some sort of limpet pest on it that the ants were doting on, but that seems to have gone away.

The spinach is going CRAZY. Best buy ever!

I harvested all of the stevia (it went really leggy and kept dropping branches) and some of the basil and mint on Monday. There are plenty more herbs that need trimming and preserving but there are more pressing needs. I just have my harvests in baggies in the freezer for now but I am trying to decide between freezing in oil or in water. Thoughts?

Catmint seems to be the favourite of the local blue bummed bee. He is there every day buzzing around the little flowers. I am still considering native stingless bees, but I am also wondering if perhaps I should just build a more supportive bee environment for the existing locals.

I have partially reconstructed an old hydroponic system from when I was a kid. It needs some work, but I'm hoping it might at least let me do fun things with strawberries and seedlings. Need to find a decent place for it though as it is a bit bigger than I recall.

I sweet-talked the local aquarium and they gave me about 8 of their air transport shipping boxes, which are thick polystyrene, waterproof, and fabulous! I've got one working well, one that I failed to ad drainage to, and 3 set up as sort-of wicking troughs (no pipe down, just ye olde self-watering pot style) that are being planted up today. Kiwi fruit (x4), chickory, chard, lovage, and whatever I can find seeds for :-)

My choko is having issues. It doesn't like being touched. every time I touch it, it seems to decide that particular tendril or vine section needs to wither and die. Is this normal or am I particularly choko-offensive?

Lots of chilies. Habeneros are fabulous.

Still being over-run by grass, but I have been ignoring the issue so I guess that is my own fault. Lawn looks fabulous though, and will look even better once I get my mower blades sharpened ;-)

Callatya · **Posted:** Mon Aug 19, 2013 5:10 pm

So, it has been a while :-) I'm still here, still slowly plugging away at my little accidental jungle.

Things have slipped a little over winter but now the weather is changing again I'm back out there. The wind is slowing me down a little as I can't weed effectively with the dirt flying in my face and i can't safely spray either. All that being said, I'm still making moves ;-)

I put my first passionfruit in the ground yesterday. It is in an unusual spot, in the garden edging between the fence and the paving. It is very close to where I hacked the flowering passionfruit down so I'm guessing it'll do fine. I have a grafted black and a grafted gold to go in too, but they were attacked by snail babies over winter so they are just sticks. I thought I'd wait a few weeks to see if they wanted to grow or stay stick-like.
I actually wanted red passionfruit, but the bananas are cheaper and bushier and I need those fences covered fast before summer to try and pull the temperature down a little. Besides, I'd not be worried if all the fences were covered in fruiting vines.

The stubborn rootstock of the nectarine or peach or whatever that had the graft fail has been cut down to ground level and the plum has been pruned so it won't bean people with falling fruit. I have a very fancy fruit fly trap thing ($30 *dies* that is a new tree!) that will hopefully mean I get to eat some of the crop this year. 7 crops full of flies. This year I'm going to beat them!

Still no livestock, but I'm becoming more and more convinced the back area is perfect for chooks.

I had two tahitian limes and two meyer lemons this year, which were fabulous. The lemon is giving me some trouble as I think the graft is a bit high and there is a branch from the rootstock. I can cut it off, but is there a way to stop it getting more ideas of sprouting? How close can I safely cut it?
I think the citrus pots are working fairly well :-) The next on the list is a finger lime. After that, maybe kaffir lime. Maybe a blood orange? I don't want to grow something ordinary that I can buy cheaply or that others in my area might already have, I want the weird or expensive so the effort put in will be worth it :-)

Tomato seedlings have been purchased and I think they'll be going in the poly tubs. Those are getting wooden box surrounds this year too, because poly boxes are rather ugly and I've established they will work so well worth some construction :-) Two plants have survived from last year so I'll probably move those over too. They are woody in places but *shrug* might give me something fun :-)

Pea and bean seeds are going in this week too, so hopefully they'll pop up shortly. I'm tired of limp snow peas.

piccies soon :-)

Simo · **Posted:** Wed Aug 21, 2013 4:51 pm

You should cut the root stock sucker off right up against the trunk, as to stopping more suckers you could try this

"The best way to protect the young trunk from herbicide damage and, at the same time, to prevent sprouts along the trunk is to crimp an 8-inch by 18-inch piece of heavy duty aluminum foil around the trunk from the ground to the scaffold limbs. Fold the foil lengthwise, bring the long edges past the trunk on both sides, crimp the two edges together and lightly squeeze the foil around the trunk"

Taken from here: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/citrus/lemons.htm

Callatya · **Posted:** Fri Aug 30, 2013 2:36 am

Cheers Simo :-) done. Nice and easy!

I put in some flowering ornamentals last week as I realised my bee food was not really enough after the trees go green, so purple daisies and rock daisies and lavender - oh my :-) hopefully that should keep the bees hanging around a bit more.

Um. I also seem to have gained a bunny. It might be feral or it might be can escapee. Either way it isn't destroying anything yet so I am trying to keep it hanging around so we stand a chance of catching it in a few weeks when there are more bodies on hand. If we don't, it will become a whippet plaything and that is best avoided. I am too slow these days and nobody rents traps else i would have done it myself. Weird really. Wondering if new local development has moved critters around. We have kookaburras now, which is new. The bats are also hanging around earlier than usual.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

Simo · **Posted:** Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:18 am

Wascally wabbits are warmits in my opinion and have a nasty habit of ring barking young fruit trees even if there is plenty of other food around for them.

If terminal eradication is not to your tastes then I recommend excluding them from your plants, the al-foil around the trunks should stop the ring barking too.

I have a heap of rabbits and no realistic way of permanently getting rid of them so I just cage the bottom foot of each new tree with chicken wire and leave them the grass to eat.

Callatya · **Posted:** Fri Aug 30, 2013 9:04 pm

Picture time! Picture time! :-)

Parsley & violas away from the snails :-) No more upside down pots, they are too tricky over summer :-(

The first box of the season - sorrel, parsley and rainbow chard (from the tail of last season, but it is finally doing something so it can stay)

The fruit trees - tamarillo (not sure it is happy, but it is alive, at least) ginger, lime, lemon, & grapefruit. Thinking maybe I should opt for drawf stone fruits down here. It gets stinking hot too, so maybe partial shadecloth? Tricky wasted area.

The other option is to put this down there. Yes? No?

Spinach is doing well (OMG its a triffid!) but my dirt has vanished! I expected it to settle but um, yeah. I think my log rotted away a bit too quickly under all of that. Is it possible to left the spinach, make it a wicking bed, then put the spinach back? Would it cope? (took pic before I watered as things are too sparkly otherwise)

A strange place for it, but it is where the other flowering passionfruit has been thriving (and not really fruiting anything edible) for the last 8 years or so. Hopefully it can do something with the sad amount of dirt there.

Happier on a fence or in here, do you think? Box has an overflowso I can at least keep the liquids up to them in here. I am down a female from my kiwi group. Two good males and one good female. I priced replacements and *cough* yeah, no.

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