November has been a sort of slow month in some ways – I pulled a muscle in my ribs which put me out of action for a couple of weeks and then we went to Adelaide for 4 days and Port Augusta twice… so much driving.
We have had some progress though, and we welcomed a new WWOOFer who we picked up in Adelaide. This month the main things that have been done are digging the holes for our header tank stand, tiling a part of the kitchen bench, trenching a pipe across the driveway and putting together a fair amount of IKEA furniture. Little steps to making life more comfortable.
Being the end of the month I spent some time in the garden today checking in on all the plants to see how many losses we have had and how well other ones are going so it’s time to report back.
We have lost 3 Berry Bushes, 1 Fruiting vine and 23 Natives. That leaves us with a current success rate of 89.95%, which given that we had all our losses before this time last year and only had a success rate of 4% is very encouraging! We have also had 9 native plants with a bushy habit that have grown to a size where they needed their tree guards removed as well as some trees that are well and truly out of the top of their guards. Some of them are bigger than the surviving plants from last year!
A lush, bushy Fragrant Saltbush free of it’s guard for two weeks now. It’s survived through a couple of hot days so I think it might be good 🙂
Some gigantic trees on the inside curve of the west hill. I don’t know quite why they are going so well… but, yay!
We are having some success with the orchard under-story planting as well, with watermelons, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchini, artichokes and various beneficial bug attracting and green mulch plants starting to grow nicely. Hopefully by the end of summer this zone will be looking super lush.
An apple tree planted just this year and some potatoes and watermelon starting to do their thing, shaded by the bamboo wall in the afternoon.
we’ve also started to propagate the seedlings for next year, with 6 boxes (of up to 60 seedlings) already sprouting happily.
Acacia Papryocarpa (Western Myall) babies just starting to pop up.
So, things are moving on… even though the weather is warming up and productive time is decreasing… Hopefully we can keep the trees alive and get some other projects finished in the coming months.
Casa Indomitus 