worm poo power

I decided to harvest out my first lot of worm castings from the worm farm.  They've been fattening up on newspaper shreddings and lots of fruit - my worms are picky, they don't seem to care for veggies and prefer fruit.  Here's my first pile of castings.  It's hard to avoid picking out some worms when you dig the castings out of the worm farm so I borrowed this technique.  You make a pile of the castings and the worms instinctively go to the center where it's darkest.  Then you pull away the outer layers of castings a few times, giving them time to run away in between, until you're left with a little pile of mostly worms, which you put back in the farm to keep fattening up. 

The castings are wonderfully rich, like very soft clay, and no they don't smell like poo they just smell like dirt.  It's a pure, super-injection of moisture-retaining organic life.  You can put it as-is into the ground when you plant things, or it dissolves really easily in water into a kind of slurry, which is good for rejuvenating tired potting mix.  Some of my beds are a thin layer of good soil over a dense layer of inorganic builder's rubble, which makes it hard to enrich the deeper layers without disturbing plant roots.  But this liquid slurry should be able to seep down into the poor soil and help bring it to life.  I'm looking forward to seeing how worm poo power improves my garden!

big little twig

My designer twig continues to power on with another set of new growth coming in now.  It's come so far since it was delivered in December 2008!  But as you can see, it's starting to look a bit too large for its pot.  The problem is I don't have a lot of room for another big pot!  It's pretty much at the point where it would want a half-wine-barrel sized pot but I don't think one would even fit on the porch.

Luckily at about the same time I was looking to dig out an old stump.  Along the front path (at the end of the row of birches and plums) there used to be a big hebe bush.  We cut it down last year because it was growing out into the path.  And I finally got tired of looking at the stump and wasting the space.  So I started to dig around it and hacking through a mat of roots ... before I got this surprise!

Whoever planted the hebe didn't even bother to take it out of the pot.  Now you might do that for something like a fig tree if you wanted to keep the size under control.  But for something like a hebe I can't imagine it was anything but laziness.

Add to that the horrible quality of the soil.  Starting from the surface, there's a layer of organic matter from decomposed leaves, then a thick mat of roots (since the hebe roots had nowhere to go but up and out!).  Under that mat the soil was bone-dry (despite decent rains in the last month) and builder's-dust-dead.  There were chunks of brick, concrete, glass, rusted metal, bits of tile and the occasional nail.

The plastic pot was a blessing in disguise because once I cut the roots I was able to leverage the pot out of the ground.  Notice how the roots weren't able to grow out from the bottom, perhaps because the soil down that far was so rubbish.  You can just see how at the top of the photo the soil's fairly dark and "living" but at the bottom it's pale and dry.

In any case, I still think this is the best new home for my designer twig.  I've piled on rich black compost and some of the soil I bought a few weeks ago and dug it in.  In a week or two I'll put the twig in its new home and hope it thrives!

winter plans

I've been thinking hard about two places in the garden that need work.  The first is the big square bed that used to be the fish pond, pictured here.  After filling it in last year I've spent the year growing vegetables in it whilst I decide what to do in the long-term.  Vegetables aren't a good long-term solution because only the bottom left corner gets enough sun, which is an awful waste of the other 3/4 of the bed.

So I've spent over a year considering what to plant instead.  I really wanted to plant a fruit tree of some kind but I just don't think it'll work.  Most are too big - citrus would want more sun - most smaller fruit trees need pollinators.  So then I moved to considering small ornamental trees like a crepe myrtle.  I want something that will grow a few metres and spread out in a pleasant umbrella shape.  I think this part of the garden would appreciate some proper "dappled shade".  It's a funny mix of boiling-hot sun and deep shade with not a lot in between, and the left-hand bed gets a lot more sun than the right-hand bed.  A spreading tree of summer shade will even this out, letting me plant shadier plants on both sides.  I have dreams of Japanese windflowers to replace the Statice some day (as it's a sun-lover), and probably some more hellebore since it seems to be doing pretty well in the other bed.  A small spreading tree would also be a nice compliment to the oakleaf hydrangea, which will read a decent size in time.  Wouldn't want anything too small or it would be dwarfed by the hydrangeas.

But to be honest I'm not crazy about crepe myrtles and again there's a slight concern it wouldn't get enough sun.  Then finally, a wonderful suggestion from the OzGrow forum, a small tree I've never heard of before called Vitex agnus-castus.  Like the crepe myrtle it's a small deciduous shrub or tree, but instead of white or pink flowers it makes long crazy spikes of purple.  Purple suits me much better, and all the other flowers in that corner are either purple or orange/yellow.  Vitex also tolerates shade better than crepe myrtle.  Hopefully it'll look like this.

The other tough spot is behind the house where the camellias used to be.  I've considered a number of option but I think I'll go with Murraya paniculata, also known as mock orange or orange jasmine.  It's a member of the citrus family, tough and not fussy, but I was sold on it when I walked past a hedge in flower.  It has the most heavenly scent of orange blossom you can imagine, it actually stopped me in my tracks.

After a bit of deliberation I decided to save the last two pine bushes even though I really don't particularly like them.  Hedges aren't cheap and leaving them means I can buy two less Murraya than otherwise.

But before I undergo either project I need to top up those beds.  I've learned that soil tends to sink quite a bit after a while so it's important I fill up the beds as much as I can.  Which meant a call to Fulton's garden supplies for a big pile of dirt and another of barkdust.

I only ordered a cubit metre of soil and a half-metre of barkdust but I reckon I got a lot more than I paid for!  Just like last year I now have a big pile of dirt in the driveway.  It's a lovely soil called a "three-way" mix of two soils and horse manure.  It's quite light and friable and full of organic matter which is just the thing for my beds.  I have so much extra I'll probably spread the love into some of the beds with really inorganic "builder's rubble".

I've filled up a fair bit now as you can see, hopefully some of the dirt will settle and I can pile on some more.  I've certainly got plenty of time, winter's the best time to plant deciduous trees. 

Exciting times ahead for this winter!

soils ain't soils

After rescuing one bed of geraniums I found the other bed was also looking tatty and unhealthy.  I decided it needed the same TLC of compost and clay pellets as the other bed because the soil there is the same horrible "builder's dust" that rings the house.  It got me thinking I should show you the different types of soils I have to work with in my little garden.  You would think in such a small garden it would all be the same but no - I've got three very different soils to work with.

A few garden beds were obviously part of the old garden beds, back when the property was someone's backyard.  The soil is relatively rich but more importantly, it has a beautiful texture.  Dark, loamy, just a bit of clay, it holds moisture really well.  You can see it in the bottom left of the photo.

The raised brick garden beds were filled with sandy loam.  Apparently it's a common soil for filling new garden beds.  It looks nice and probably has good drainage, but it's actually fairly crap - too much sand, not enough organic matter or clay.  Dries out pretty quickly.  It's the top blotch in the photo.

Around the house is what I call "builder's dust."  I'm not even sure what it's made from, it's not sandy, it's not clay, there's almost nothing organic in it.  I think it might be sub-soil that got dug up when they built the house.  The best description is "powdery", it dries out incredibly quickly into dust.  You can see it in the bottom left.

All three of these soils got about the same amount of rainfall when I sampled them, but by then the builder's dust was bone-dry, the sandy loam was a bit moist and the dark loam was still beautifully moist.  The reason the picture looks wet is because I wanted to demonstrate the water-holding qualities of the three soils. I dripped a few drops on each one.  For the dark, rich loam the water soaked straight in so you can see the glisten but nowater around it.  For the other two, the drops rolled straight off the soil and formed a puddle in between the two.  This is called "hydrophobic soil" - not only does it not hold onto water well, when you water the soil it just puddles on top at first.

The only solution for builder's dust and sandy loam is more, and more, and more organic matter (and maybe some pellets of clay).  It'll take a few years to get it as rich as the dark loam, but it'll be so worth it.

Edit: Update!  The above photo is pretty awful so I recently decided to take a few better snaps.  It rained only 2 days ago so you can really see the difference in how these soils hold the water.

Here's the horrible "builder's dust".  Notice that it's already almost bone dry.

Here's the sandy loam in the raised beds.  Still a bit moist but very crumbly.

And here's the beautiful soil in the older beds, a wonderful mix of loam and clay.  It's the only one that holds a shape when I squeeze it (from the clay) and it's still lovely and moist.

the summer's begun

We've had a run of record hot weather - days in a row over 30 and several over 34 is not normal for early November.  I'm already having to keep an eye on the garden and figure out what isn't handling the heat.  The young oakleaf hydrangeas are doing OK - the one in the hot sun is a bit singed but it'll be fine.  However the geraniums on the sunny side of the house are already suffering.

Granted it's a very hot spot - afternoon sun and the hot house brick reflecting the heat.  But mostly I blame the rubbish soil.  It's practically dust, that lifeless fill dirt they put around foundations.  It dries out incredibly easily and once dry, water just pools on top leaving huge pockets of dust below.  I added some compost last summer but you wouldn't know it.  What I should have been doing was adding more and more all winter long and letting the worms and bugs slowly turn it into decent soil. 

So now I'm trying to make up for lost time.  You can see in this photo how shriveled the leaves are from the heat.  I started by brushing back the mulch and scattering some "Saturaid" (some kind of commercial soil additive that's meant to retain moisture; just looks like coir powder to me).  On top of that went a few handfuls of clay kitty litter, that white stuff.  From what I understand it's one of the quickest ways to get more clay into your soil to retain moisture.  You just have to be careful not to let it cake up into a glob when it first gets wet.

So the moisture-retaining agents were important, but more important is to get some more organic matter into the soil.  For this I went to the compost heap.  My heap has four sides but the back is pretty close to the fence so this was the first time I'd tried to squeeze my hands back there to shovel some compost from the back.  And what compost!  Because it'd been sitting there for almost a full year, it was black, crumbly, and full of goodness.  Just look at all those worms!  Unfortunately it was also full of earwigs who like to nibble young growth, so there was much squashing.

After that each plant got a good dose of water with some seaweed solution to help them get over the heat shock.  No fertilizer though, the last thing they need right now is to put out more tender new growth to get burned in the sun.  Hopefully the compost will help the soil hold more moisture, and I'll be sure to keep topping it up every month or so until I'm happy with the soil in that bed.

no more rhodies

I gave up the battle to save my rhodies.  Two of them died outright and the other two are pathetic.  I couldn't stand the thought of another summer of desperately pampering them through the heat.  So I pulled them all out.

Interestingly, compare the roots systems of these two.  The one on the right was one of the first to die, notice how its roots are pretty much in the same ball they were in the pot.  The one on the left was in the corner with the "magic fungus" mycchoriza.  The one on the left was by far the healthiest of the four.  I just hope that magic fungus keeps thriving!

It took me this long to pull out the rhodies because I was trying to decide what to replace them with.  It's a real puzzle because I have to find a shrub that will work in two beds, one of which is in a lot of shade and one gets hot sun for several hours in the summer.  I finally decided on oakleaf hydrangea, "Hydrangea quercifolia".  They take the dry, heat and sun a lot better than normal hydrangeas and certainly better than rhodies.  They'll need a bit of water in the hottest months but I think they'll thrive. 

Supposedly they have "four seasons of interest" - fresh dark foliage in the spring, long spikes of white flowers in the summer, dark wine-red leaves almost until spring and interesting bark in between.  At the moment they have these lovely dark leaves.

I topped up the garden beds even more as the soil level was pretty low and planted them this weekend.  They'll have all winter to settle in and hopefully spread out some strong roots before the summer heat.  You can hardly see the little guys in this photo but I assure you after a few years they'll grow right into those beds, maybe even too big but hopefully the size of the bed will restrict their size a little.

I'm also planning another trick to help them along.  The bed on the left is the one that gets some hot sun in the summer, which also heats up the brick and the soil.  I'm planning on planting some Dichondra "silver falls" along the front, it's a silvery trailing plant with small leaves that loves the heat.  It should grow over the front and shade the brick, keeping the soil cooler in the summer.  Look here for what it should look like eventually.

Oh and I almost forgot.  I was happy to get rid of some more of my dirt pile to top up the beds.  It's up against some brick that edges a lawn.  Turns out worms in the lawn had figured out a way through the brick and into the bottom of the dirt pile.  Look at them all!  They made a fine addition to my garden beds.