We have a couple of apple trees in our garden; a green apple which is a Granny Smith plus a red variety which is a Jonathon. So far we have had a fairly good harvest of apples this year. The Jonathon apples were ready in late February and it was great eating them straight from the tree on a summers evening. They are all gone now! The Granny Smith (green apple) matures a bit later so that tree is loaded with fruit at the moment. We have had it covered with bird netting for the last few weeks … [Read more...]
Humming Tape for Fruit Trees
Keeping the birds away from your fruit trees over summer can be a big job! I find it helpful to use a combination of nets, shiny objects, and humming tape. If you have fruit trees in your garden then you probably have had to worry about birds getting your fruit before you can! Often the birds don’t even eat all the fruit, they just peck holes in it to test to see if it is ripe. This is an annual battle in my garden! A couple of years ago I shared a post which suggested ways to try to … [Read more...]
November Gardening Plus What’s Going on in My Garden
Wow where has the year gone? Now that the days are getting longer and the weather is warming up it feels like Christmas and the end of the year are approaching fast! I can’t believe that October is behind us and it’s already time to get stuck into the November gardening jobs! While the daytime temperature here these last few weeks has definitely increased we have still had a few really cold nights. Just when we think that we have used our wood heater for the last time the overnight … [Read more...]
October Gardening Plus What’s Going on in My Garden
Now that we are well and truly into spring there is a lot happening in the garden. Plants that were dormant over winter seem to be able to sense that the weather has changed and they are coming to life. Our apple trees are blossoming now and the other fruit trees have all got their new leaves. With everything coming back to life it is great being out in the garden and I am looking forward to getting stuck into my October gardening jobs! We are hoping that most of the really cold weather is … [Read more...]
September Gardening Plus What’s Going on in My Garden
The weather has been so lovely over the last few days which has really made it feel like it is spring already. The nice weather is not going to last for long though because they are forecasting rain and cooler weather from tomorrow. Regardless of the weather, it is great to be planning for our September gardening jobs because it means that spring is just around the corner! Earlier this month we had some quite chilly nights and mornings, it got down to -3 and -4 °C for a few nights in a row … [Read more...]
Treating Fungal Growth on Fruit Trees
Recently I shared a list of the July gardening jobs that I plan to tackle this month. And while I have made a start on this list I have realised that I forgot to mention one job. It is not something that I have been doing for years but treating fungal growth on fruit trees is now one of my winter jobs! Over the last couple of years we began noticing orange fungus growing on some of our fruit trees. It didn’t seem to be affecting the health of the trees but we were a bit worried anyway. It was … [Read more...]
February Gardening 2014: What’s Going on in My Garden
Oh my goodness it has been hot these last few weeks! A week or so ago we had a run of 5 days over 40 °C and the last few days have been really hot too. It has been so hot lately it has been hard to think about what February gardening jobs might need doing besides watering the plants! We reached 41 yesterday, 42 today and we have another hot day tomorrow coming up before we get a much needed cool change. We have basically been spending our days indoors because it has been just too hot to work … [Read more...]
January Gardening 2014: What’s Going on in My Garden
Now that Christmas has been and gone for another year and the New Year is upon us it’s time to turn our attention to January gardening tasks! January and February tend to be the hottest months of summer here in Victoria. So this month we will be focusing on keeping our garden as cool and well watered as we can. We have had a couple of days here and there where the temperature has been over 35 °C and some plants have struggled a bit. But it will only get hotter over the next couple of months … [Read more...]