Cumquats, bugs and blogging.

Let's face it, I'm pretty hopeless at blogging.

And by that I mean, I just don't do it.

So from now on I'm going to try to blog more. They'll be short, sharp and not perfect blogs. It's going to be a more of a 'I've-just- come-in-from-the-garden-take-me-how-I-am' kind of blog.

And this is why I am going to tell you about bugs. Stink bugs, or bronze orange bug -Musgraveia sulciventris to be exact.

This afternoon I was wandering around the garden when I spied several orange cumquats ready for picking on my little tree. Very exciting. I do love a good cumquat marmalade. Tangy, zesty..... but I digress.

A few cumquats ready for picking

As I went to pick the cumquat, something moved. I knew what it was before I saw it, or rather them, properly. The chemically, awful smell is unmistakable. Bronze orange (stink) bugs!!

Bloody disgusting, evil, creepy critters. Green when they are young so you can barely notice them against the foliage. But they are still all the while sucking the sap out of the tree's foliage and damaging the young shoots and fruit.  Then they turn orangey and get stinkier.  The adult looks a bit more like a spiny cockroach. Apparently the chemical they emit can burn your eyes if they manage to squirt it in there. In this instance, nature is truly, wondrously, revolting. (I do say that in awe.)

Stink bug nymph in action. You can even see the dead shoots .

Last season they had inundated my lemon tree so I read up on them. Had me pretty much terrified by the time I had to deal with them. I donned gloves and goggles and had to hold my breath as I picked the suckers (literally) off the tree and put them in a container of hot water. Worked like a charm apart from the fact I had to actually touch the little bastards.

I'm sure I read month or so ago on a horticulturalist's Facebook page, about just using pyrethrum spray (organic spray) to kill them. But you actually have to hit each bug with the spray. It's sounding more trouble than it's worth, and by that time I could have them pulled off by hand and drowning in my plastic container of death :-) And here's a little picture to illustrate my point.

The water container of death. (Excuse the old paint on the bottom.)

Sadly, we don't have smell-a-net or smell-a-blogs or I could also share with you the foul stench they have left on my garden gloves. Probably lucky, really. It is indeed, disgusting.

On the plus side, these evil sap suckers got me inspecting all my citrus trees closely, and I noticed that my baby lemonade tree
was flowering and growing much better than before. My Tahitian lime has heaps of fruit coming, and apparently it loved its recent pruning and fertilising with Organic Xtra fertiliser pellets. If you want to know more about this  click here, but suffice to say I love the stuff, as do my plants. It is easy and convenient to apply, it's organic and made in Queensland.What's not to love? It's a match made in heaven really. And not at all like me and stink bugs.

My little lemonade tree with flowers and new growth.

Tahitian lime with baby fruit after a good prune and fertilising.

And the cumquats? Well, these days I am being very clever. I used to pick six or so and keep them in the fridge, where they would eventually go rotten before I had enough to make marmalade. So now I am cutting them up ready and freezing them until I have enough. Today I added four to my cumquat stash. Genius gardening I reckon.

Ready for the freezer

The freezer stash of cumquats.

Pleasure or pain?

Recently a friend of mine remarked on a photo of one of my very weedy vegie patches, saying how much work it must be to maintain my garden. It started me thinking.

My neglected, weedy, vegie patch.

Currently I do have a lot to do to return the Bountiful Backyard to its former glory of being both productive and aesthetically pleasing. Still, I can’t actually remember when I last made a significant effort in the garden, apart from mowing lawns and trimming edges.  

It’s been nearly three months I think, as evidenced by the über long break between my blogs. That's really quite a long time. If I left my housework for three months you can imagine the state the house would be in! Probably much worse than the current state of my garden. And let's face it, doing housework doesn't actually produce or create anything. At least working in the Bountiful Backyard means food; cheaper, tastier food, as well as an additional 'living area' that makes my incredibly small house bearable.

Thankfully, the weather has really cooled down, and the humidity has also backed off. With four days over the Easter long weekend, it's time to recover the Bountiful Backyard. 

My strategy is pretty well always the same:  focus on one area, clear it or weed it, save what's good, replant and mulch immediately.

I'm working on this overgrown bed today.

Today I'm focusing on a bed that is over run with lemon mint or lemon bee balm. Although it can be a hardy and pretty ground cover with purple flowers, and used in meat stuffings or salads, it is now really out of control and choking other plants that are more desirable. 

First, I remove all the leafy vegetation on the top of the bed, pulling some of the stringy, spaghetti like roots out with it if I can. It's reasonably easy but there are many intertwined roots sitting close to the surface, that will grow again if not removed. 

I remove the surface vegetation.

Intertwined roots that will grow again.

As I pull away the vegetation I am delighted to find plants I had long forgotten about! Some struggling blueberry plants and some strawberries that were reasonably productive last year. How wonderful!  I promise them silently I will give them some TLC , which includes a good dose of Seasol, some new mulch and access to more light. Maybe then I will get some more blueberries this year.

I stand back to check out my progress, and as I do so I spy an odd red shape, like a fat chilli amongst the weeds against the fence. Could it be? I shriek with delight, as I realise, that yes, yes, it really is my first ever finger lime!!  I can’t wait. I run inside and cut it open and squeeze the little caviar-like, citrus pearls into my mouth. They’re hard, and then they pop, like miniature juicy, lemony explosions. Seriously yum.

My first finger lime.

I get back to forking over the ground where the lemon mint roots lie, picking out any curl grubs and roots as I go. It's only a small patch I've done, but I'm following some advice I got at an emotional energy seminar last year. Instead of forcing myself to finish digging over the whole lot, I'm moving to what I feel like doing, which is of course to planting up! 

I fork the ground to remove hidden roots.

I rescue my blueberries and transplant some strawberry runners. Hell, the freshly dug soil looks so good I throw in some flower seeds of cosmos and poppies. I feel reckless. I am the Thelma, or maybe the Louise, of gardening, whichever. It's exhilarating! I water everything in with seaweed solution, throw some sugar cane mulch around and hey presto, look at that! 

Strawberries and blueberries and flower seeds planted in weeded bed.

This bed's not finished of course but I'm feeling a sense of achievement regardless. A pretty good start I reckon, and an enjoyable and rewarding day. It's definitely time for a cup of Earl Grey tea and to sit back and admire my handiwork some more.  Perhaps I should grow tea, I muse. Hmmmm. Can I grow tea here in south east  Queensland?? Surely I could try? "C’mon Special K, let’s go inside… I need to google if we can grow tea in our backyard…"

A fowl state of play

So after a weekend in bed with the dreaded lurgy, my Bountiful Backyard is looking less than beautiful. In fact, like me, it is looking somewhat dishevelled this evening.

The recent rainfall from the summer storms have made everything grow exponentially, and sadly, the weeds are no exception! Momentarily I feel gripped with fear. The fear of weeds taking my garden beds, as they did last summer. You may laugh, but at the time it became quite overwhelming! I remind myself that was mainly a result of mulching with lucerne that was obviously full of weed seed heads. Since then I've gone back to using compressed sugar cane mulch. It's local, affordable and easier to use than the large unruly bales of lucerne I used a year ago.  I tend to use Organic Extra pellets and Searles organic 5 in 1 for added nutrients and nitrogen, as well as topping up my garden beds with my home made compost, which is full of chicken manure.

Eeeek! Don't let the weeds flower!

I grimace, and roll my eyes at the long lawn. It's only been a week since it was mown, but in addition to regular mulching to keep the weeds down, I rely on keeping my lawn trimmed. This prevents any weeds in the lawn from bearing their ugly heads with flowers and subsequently spreading their seeds throughout my garden. It also means less spreading of weeds into other patches of lawn.
I feel quietly confident where this is concerned, however. Since last summer I have managed to halve the amount of lawn by enlarging garden beds and putting in pathways over winter and spring. Surely this year, keeping on top of the grass and weeds will be a piece of cake!

My trusty water timer

The hot sun of recent days is also taking its toll on my leafy greens. The tatsoi and what is left of my silverbeet are seriously flagging. Hmmm... I could erect a shade cloth, but of course I won't have a chance to do this until next weekend. In the meantime I set the timer for my sprinkler to give them a much needed drink. For $15 this timer has been a fabulous asset to my garden, and although I try to be as water wise as possible, I have to admit the sprinkler has also been a great time saver. The reality is growing food requires water. I also catch water from my shower and from my kitchen sink to use on my garden, and I'm currently saving up for a slimline tank.

Lindsay, Paris and Brittney, my chickens, are cluck clucking in the evening sea breeze. I remember that they've been locked out of their coop for the day: Lindsay is broody. And channelling the Exorcist.
I'm new to 'managing broodiness', and when I realised what was happening a few days ago, I tried to move her off the nest. At this point she puffed up to about three times her size, spun her head 180 degrees and began to aggressively peck at me. Needless to say I had to pluck my thick garden gloves and courage from the garden shed before I returned. (Pun intended.)

Lindsay barely leaves the nest to drink or eat!

Apparently one way to snap a broody hen out of their 'mood' is to keep them away from their laying area. I've done that for two days now, and she doesn't seem to be returning to normal. I've also heard that plunging the chicken into a pail of cool water brings their body temperature down and shocks them out of said broodiness.  I might have to give this method a go before work tomorrow, because Lindsay really is out of control! Paris and Brittney get stressed because they've got nowhere to lay, and Lindsay barely gets off the nest to eat or drink, which in this heat is obviously not good. Not to mention she has stopped earning her keep.

Well, one thing is for sure; life is never dull here in my Bountiful Backyard, nor will I run out of things to keep me occupied!

Tell me why I don't like Sunday (night)s...

So it's Sunday night and I'm restless and tired. Why is it that I dread Sunday nights? Well, the weekend is nearly over and I'm cranky.

Cranky that I didn't finish weeding the whole vegie patch, cranky that I didn’t whipper snip the edges of my garden beds, cranky that I haven't mulched my newest no-dig garden and cranky that I haven't transplanted the multiplying mini mondo grass from between my vegie patch pavers to a new spot to flourish. The weekend always goes by so quickly.

It seems my endless list of jobs is rarely done, and my backyard is never, well for want of a better word; perfect. But I have to remind myself that that’s the point really. A garden is never ‘finished’ or 'completed', it’s a perpetual cycle of growing and evolving, a perfect mixture of nature and human effort intertwined.

These days I’m trying to follow a gardening philosophy of less effort and more nature, that is, something of a permaculture flavour. This idea of working with nature rather than against it, lends itself well in my opinion, to the busy lifestyle many of us seem to find ourselves occupying. For example, rather than struggling to mow and manicure lawns, I’ve done away with most of mine and replaced it with garden beds and paths so that the precious time I do have can be spent growing food rather than watching grass grow.

less lawn = less maintenance & more space for growing food

Seriously, one summer about two years ago I remember being nearly finished the boring weekly task of mowing my 640m block when I ran out of petrol. It was late in the day on a Saturday, so I decided to leave finishing the job until the next morning. After a quick trip to the service station, I had the mower revving back to life, only to find the small square left to cut was now lower than the rest of the grass. Yep, in less than 24 hours, my lawn had perceptibly grown, and it was at that point I realized how ridiculously futile the idea of a manicured lawn actually is.

newly mulched garden bed

Like many things in life, it is the sum of many small actions in the garden that add up to being something great. So as I look agitatedly at the wall clock edging closer to Sunday bedtime, I try to remind myself of all the small garden things I’ve managed to fit in amongst my weekend of household chores. Like the three sections of vegie patch that I did finish weeding, like mulching the little garden bed leading into the chook pen, like picking off Bronze Orange Bugs (Musgraveia sulciventris) from my citrus trees and also planting out my little corn seedlings into their new garden patch.

Musgraveia sulciventris

I also managed to help a friend beautify her courtyard this weekend. Let’s face it; everyone should be able to enjoy a pretty garden. It’s just plain nice to have aesthetically pleasing things around us, and in the same way it’s enjoyable to have a pleasantly and personally decorated living room, it’s a pleasure to have an attractive garden that reflects your personality too. So with some assistance with plant selection and placement, some shoveling of soil and a small amount of hard yakka to dig out an unwanted bird of paradise plant, and hey presto chango a garden transformation had taken place!! Not bad for a half day’s work now that I think about it.

So maybe, upon reflection of the weekend's little achievements, Sunday nights aren’t so bad after all….And hey, if I set my alarm just a bit earlier for the morning, (assuming the crane is operational) perhaps I could transplant my zucchini or rosella seedlings out from their seed trays before work; another small but significant contribution towards having a Bountiful Backyard.

Weekend garden surprises

cardamom flowers in Brisbane

Working full time generally means only a cursory glance at my plants, as I run out to feed the chickens in my pyjamas, before heading off to work. If I'm lucky, and the crane that gets me out of bed on time is operational, I might even fit in dog-poo-pickup before I have to jump in the shower. Yes, you guessed it: I'm not a morning person.

The silver lining to this, is that by the time the weekend has come around, some magical transformations have taken place in the backyard during the week and I am rewarded with some lovely surprises on a Saturday morning. This weekend just gone was no exception. In between the washing, vacuuming and other chores, I took some time to smell the roses. (Ok, so that's really just a metaphor. Roses are lovely, and I did grow up in Victoria, but I now live in the subtropics and mainly grow edible plants!)
My first revelation over the weekend was discovering my cardamom was flowering, which I've read in Brisbane, is a rare delight. I believe it's even more unlikely for the seeds to set, but I live in hope; cardamom is such a beautifully fragrant spice!

This Arabica coffee tree deserves a medal

It's the first time I've ever grown cardamom, in fact, it's the first time I've grown many of the plants I now have in my backyard. I guess that's what makes all the new developments so exciting. New shoots, new flowers, new seed pods, new tastes. They're all part of the wonder I experience weekly in my own backyard. And just when you think you know what's going on, another surprise...

To my amazement I noticed my arabica coffee trees now have a reasonable quantity of buds! On several branches, on each tree!! Just when I thought they weren't doing well enough against my fence line and I was mentally gearing up to move them into a sunnier position, away from the environmental weeds (Chinese Elm) that border my non green-thumbed neighbour.

I cannot wait to harvest this small but worthwhile quantity of beans. What's probably most noteworthy however, is that one of the three of my Arabica coffee trees has quite a history. It really should get a medal for bravery.

This coffee tree lived with me in a former life at a rental property and was hastily and brutally dug up, under my instruction, by an ex-boyfriend when I moved. It had been growing under a large Eucalyptus and to survive it had developed a long, single root, supposedly to try to compete for water. Unfortunately, during the assault that was the digging up process, this single root was cut off in order to extricate it.

The poor thing then spent about a week out of the ground, because I was too busy unpacking, and once planted, lost every single leaf and stood for 12 months as a bare bunch of sticks. I kid you not. A good 12 months. Bare. Alone. Not one leaf. And then one day, you guessed it: SURPRISE! Leaves, new growth and the rest is history.... and now buds.


The last and perhaps sweetest marvel from my garden this weekend was the realisation that my espaliered peach tree had some decent sized fruit on it. At first I wasn't that excited, it'd had fruit before, but always with little wiggly larvae inside, which I'm guessing belong to the fruit fly. But let's face it, I don't really know. It's something Google and I will have to spend a bit more time on. (After all, fruit fly are not something you worry about climbing fruit trees in Victoria as a kid.....) 

peaches in the subtropics

But no! No larvae and only the sweet, sweet taste of homegrown produce. Who knew I could grow my own peaches?! And not just from any old tree, but one I have haphazardly shaped into a reasonable first attempt of espaliering. And how did I do that? Well,  weekend by weekend really.... but I'll tell you about that after I get home from work.