Hey laaaa, Hey laaaa, the bees are back!

They've been gone for  such a long time now...hey la, hey la
But now they're back everythin will be fine... hey la  .. hey laa
yeah - they'll  be  a-pollinating
yeah - my efforts much abatin

So after a small appearance last week, there are bees a plenty all over the pumpkin patch.
I'll have barrow loads of jap pumpkins in the months to come aswell as butternuts and ironbark pumpkins for winter eating. The watermelons are sort of getting swamped by the pumpkins although we have got a few. There are a few Israeli rock melons on the go after a stuttering start. This is because rabbits are partial to rockmelon vines but not it seems to other crawling cucurbits.

One strange happening in the garden in our Lanes Navel orange has decided to have another go at flowering and its lovely to have the smell of Orange blosson in the morning.  I think it was the heavy rain and total soil saturation that gave it a shock and probably a boost of nutrients. Meanwhile another orange is dropping its fruit because it may not be geting quite enough water.

My stubborn Olive tree has now been in the ground about 5 years and has still not shown any sign of fruiting. Maybe i need to strees it more? It is a Manzallo and we got it as a wedding gift.

Transplanted lots of purple cherokee tomatoes to larger pots.

My jujube seed have germinated and are looking good - below

curry plants are doing well - below

Jambolans have germinated. - no photo - kind of boring ayway

Grasshopper news

I'm in the process of getting hold of an organic grasshopper control. It's called GREENGUARD and it is a fungus developed by the csiro. It was originally discoverd by a farmer wo picked up  fungus coverd dead grasshopper. This was many years ago and after a lot of development and testing  it is finally available to the average Jo Blogg. I've made some enquiries with Elders who are aparrently one of the distributers. It only effects grasshpper and the fungus burrows into the cuticle of the insect, invading its whole body. Exciting Huh?

Planted some Red Nigeian eggplant seedlings amongst the gourds and other things

The Mozambique maize is growing well. planted at the beginning of January

Out on the range

I’m a serial gardener. I have my home garden, a plot at a friends place in the rural area and a couple of rows at the Steiner school full of flowers and easy pickings for the kids. And yes it does tend to dominate the weekends.
The plot out at Anna and Johns house is a cooperative set up. My friend Tracey and I do all of the work and Anna pays for the infrastructure and water. We split the vegies 3 ways depending on who can use the produce. Tracey and I only go out to the plot once a week, and while this is good most of the time it does have its disadvantages when certain vegies need to be picked frequently.

We usually put in a couple of hours every weekend but never seem to get all the jobs done. The cpmost heap days usually require a bit more time.

Dwarf beans with dried peas in the background

At the moment the “all seasons” carrots are nearly at eating stage while our afgan yellow and blue carrots are flowering and seeding.

Afgan carrots, flowering

We have manged to grow realy nice crops of all seasons carrots here during the summer – they don’t bolt to seed.
Tomatoes (Gwens wilt free from Darwin) are fruiting but still green. We just pulled up the sno-pea plants and put them aside for gathering the seed at a later date (away from the mice). Cucumbers are fruiting, dwarf beans are just coming in. The wild rabbits are nibbling a few things otherwise we would have had zucchinis by now. We finally got around to putting some wire around the things we are wanting to grow.

Tomatoes with ethioppian cabbage seeding

The melons are growing well. We have butternet squash, jap punkin and ironbark pumkin as well as watermelons and rock melon. We can save seed from all of these as they will not cross with each other.
The Ethiopian cabbage is seeding and has a huge crop and the diakon radishes also have a big crop of seed.

Wom bok cabbage