We’ve had problems with fruit fly in the past, ruining peaches, tomatoes and capsicums- now that we’ve got several fruit trees we want to ensure we actually get the fruit minus the grubs. So gross discovering fruit filled with squirmy, undulating maggots. And they are so sneaky too-fruit can look perfectly fine on the outside but still be full of grubs! I was looking for a product that would kill the grubs if they got into the fruit-but it looks like these sorts of sprays have been discontinued. The products available for battling fruit fly seem to be attractant type sprays designed to lure in the adult flies and poison them. They are applied as a spot sprays around the garden, or used in traps. The traps available looked a bit ugly-like plastic kitchen jars, so I decided to get some glass bud vases to try these out instead-they seem to be similar to the fly traps with only small holes at the top for entry. They look a bit nicer hanging around the garden-so hopefully they’ll be effective. I’ve filled them with Yates Natures Way Fruit Fly Control, so far they don’t look to have caught any flies-but maybe we don’t have any in the area yet, there’s been no grubs in the passionfruit and mandarins that are ripening. I also got some exclusion bags from Green Harvest for extra protection-they are meant to stop the flies from laying eggs in the fruit. They suggest the bags may also help protect fruit from birds too which would be very handy. I only have a bag on one of the blueberry bushes for now-protecting our bumper crop of just two fruits. We finally got our first blossom after the cold snap this week! We’d started thinking we wouldn’t get any because winter had been so warm. It’s on the peach tree-and there seems to be lots more buds getting ready to open. Hopefully the cold will stick around for a bit and the buds will develop into fruit. I’ll try out the exclusion bags on these if they do start fruiting because fruit fly and birds LOVE stone fruit. We’d had four little figs on our fig tree when we got it-two fell off, not sure why, maybe just because of transplanting. The last two fell off this week with the help of a certain big puppies tail-dogs are so helpful in the garden! It’ll probably be better for the tree settling in without the fruit on it, but bit disappointing we won’t get to try a fresh fig. I've never actually had fresh fig before-but they look pretty.
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My seeds are shooting! Seeds are a bit hit and miss for me. They are a very economical way to get new plants, and provide the means to do successional planting so you can extend harvest times on veges. But that’s when they actually shoot. Seeds don’t always come up at the expected times when I plant them. I had roma tomato plants grow in a bed last year and was telling Shane we hadn’t bought any roma tomatoes to grow. He then remembered I’d planted seeds there the year before. They’d never come up and I’d forgotten all about them. It probably doesn’t help I’m not very patient with them. I plant seeds and am out there the very next day checking if anything is happening-even knowing it’s waaaay too soon I have to check. So when shoots appear from seeds I’ve planted in just a week I’m very excited! I’m having some luck at the moment-my leek seeds have come up, planted among some leek seedlings we bought it should mean we’ll get fresh leek for weeks. The flower seeds I planted have also come up. I planted seeds around the fruit trees (for attracting bees) and they came up…and have been getting trampled by the puppies since. The lovely ring of seeds I had around each plant has been stamped into a few surviving seedlings. So this latest lot of flower seeds I planted in some pots. Hopefully that will protect them from the puppies. I might see if my luck continues on some more seeds. Some of my bulbs are also coming up. I don't think we've had enough cold weather this winter for most of them, but the freesias are coming up as they do every year and I also discovered bluebell bulbs shooting-I really hope they flower! Citrus plants are hard to tell apart when they don't have fruit on them. As are stone fruit when they don't have any leaves. I realised this as I was looking at our new plants trying to figure out which one I'd planted where. I'd removed the labels so I could take them inside to look up more details about the plants-handy! Thankfully I had taken photos and labelled these with the plant names, so I was able to figure it out. To avoid any confusion in future I decided to make some labels (something a bit nicer looking than the planting tags). Looking up ideas on Pinterest I settled on a stamped clay style, I had both clay and letter stamps and they weren’t too gaudy to go on the plants. When Shane saw the first one hung up he thought I’d gone mad and had named our plants (Irwin is the type of mango-not a name I’ve given it). We ate our first mandarin for the year-it didn’t go very far being shared out between Shane & I and the 3 puppies, but there’s more ripening on the tree that we’ll hopefully get to eat soon. Shane added a diversion to the grey water hose so we can now have two sprinklers running at once, it's enough to water the whole flower garden. We'll look at burying the hose under the pathway-but no rush, it's been sitting out for years so we hardly notice it anymore! The diversion means I should be able to plant some more in the beds to fill in the gaps. Not sure what yet-I want flowers to attract bees for the fruit trees and to use as cut flowers. I also want the plants to stay looking nice year round, to balance out the plants we have that disappear. They should be drought tolerant too as they'll only be getting the grey water a couple times a week. Hmmmm The new bed has been built ready for the sweet potato. I took some cuttings off our existing vine to see if we can get them to root in water before planting out in the new bed. The plan is to let them grow year round in the bed-our current plants seem to want to keep spreading and spreading, but are limited in the space.
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![]() "And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." William Shakespeare Archives
February 2017
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