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Spring 2010: a second page for the garden |
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In the orchard At the end of November the fruit trees are bearing very well. Even our apricot tree carries fruit this year. It had been struggling the previous year and we cut it back severely to get rid of leaf curl. Most of our fruit trees are grafted on dwarf root stock. Some are not, among them plums and cherries. Many of these are now four years old and the trunks and branches have become quite sturdy. What a difference dwarf root stock makes! The trees on dwarf root fit nicely under our bird netting, but the plums and cherries grow much taller than we like. We cut them back again and again. Unfortunately we left this a little late. As the photo with Torsten shows these trees develop bare trunks and try to carry their fruit much higher up than trees on dwarf root stock. Next winter we will cut them back to half a metre above ground level to force them to develop branches further down. Let's see how that will work. |
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In the vegetable garden |
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Potatoes We planted the early Pink Eye potatoes at the middle of August but early spring rains soaked the beds and they rotted. Lesson learned: plant early potatoes on raised beds! We re-planted with Dutch Cream after the Hobart Show Day (as the locals suggest you should!) and they took very well. The beds where the Pink Eyes had rotted were re-planted too. Left: a few surviving Pink Eyes at the back tower above the Dutch Cream planted in late October. |
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Beans In the past we had a lot of problems with snails and slugs in the vegie garden. Two years ago they ate all the leaves of the young beans as soon as they emerged from the ground. After we re-planted, we went out to the vegie garden at night and picked slugs and snails. This year it's very different! There is hardly any damage to the beans. We had let the ducks into the vegie garden all through winter and they cleaned up any slugs and snails they could find! I worked! Even though we had a lot of spring rain and the ground is moist ,there are hardly any snails and slugs left. |
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Tomatoes We tried out a lot of different ways of staking tomatoes, but this one is by far the best: a thin bamboo stake in the middle for the young plant and a ring of sheep fencing mesh on the outside as support. Cabbages |
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Squash and zucchini Squash and zucchini grow very well and have started to fruit by the end of November. |
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Onions
Left: spring onions ready to be harvested Right: red, brown and white onions and spring onions |
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) A gooseberry companion-planted with herbs and flowers |
) Herbs and flowers with salad greens and spinach (above and right) |
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) a row of sweet corn |
) our jungle of carrots |
 over-wintering red cabbages in the greenhouse |
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