Project mulberry begins

In my latest adventures in frugal gardening, I scavenged some mulberry tree cuttings via Facebook (thanks Deb & Udo!) to try growing a new tree. This is an experiment for me as I have never really ventured down the propagation path much in gardening.  I’m sure based on these photographs, seasoned experts at this sort of thing will chortle heartily at my technique in trying to create a new plant life from an old one. Mulberry trees are apparently very easy to grow from cuttings, and although it’s a slower method to receiving fruit from the tree, there is always the delight of being able to keep silkworms.

However, this experiment strikes me as a really cool learning experience for my little 4.5 year old sponge-brained daughter. We’ve grown plenty of stuff from seed so she is aware of how plants grow, and that trees drop seeds, but when some trees drop branches, new life can begin too, and I don’t think I’ve ever mention this to her. So I explained what we were going to do and said I needed her help.

I explained what we doing in terms of creating ‘children’ from the ‘parent tree’ and that it was a bit like Stick Man and the family tree. (Stick Man is one of our favourite stories – an excellent book by Julia Donaldson of Gruffalo fame).

She filled the pots with soil and helped me decide which branches to cut off.

She then dipped them in water, dipped them into rooting powder and stuck them into the pots.

Here they are (no laughing seasoned experts!) We only did 5, as little nearly-one-year old has a limited patience with anything he can’t eat, but I plan to do more over the coming days, maybe with a few different techniques to see what works. Sprouting in a bowl of water before planting could be one option.

 

 

Tree planting day

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Update- June 2008
Plans are underway in my head to organise a planting this year to add grasses and ground covers to the site. The trees that were planted are looking really great and I’ll add a photograph here very soon to show their growth in the last two years.

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Update- April 2007
Even with the harsh meanness of this past summer, we have estimated roughly a 50% survival rate of the tree plantings without any supplemental watering. This is really very very good and shows how well all our helpers planted them.
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Richard and Angela’s tree planting day

Saturday 12th August 2006

Saturday 12th August turned out be a beautiful sunny spring day, perfect for releasing some trees into the wild.

Our faithful volunteers arrived, shovels in hands probably wondering why we had chosen not to mention that the planting site was just short of Himalayan altitudes, as hinted at below.

Ok, so it’s wasn’t that bad, but after 3.5 hours I was glad the sun was setting and we could get onto flat ground. It looks like we planted about 120 trees which is brilliant.

It was really cool to see something happen so quickly on the farm. Usually, Richard and I work for hours and see nothing. Having some friends mad enough to give up their Saturday for an afternoon on the slopes with shovel in hand and a fair bit of crawling around was fantastic. It is truly humbling.

Surely Richard and I owe them all a day of hard gardening at their places in return, so thanks go out to: Roxanne, Sarah, Zoe, Craig and Graham for all their hard work and for giving up their Saturday.

Molly and Elf also flap and ear and wave a paw in friendly greetings to Molly & Stanley, their new dog friends.

We finished off the evening with a campfire at which a few family and friends with handy excuses to pop in after the planting arrived, but that was nice. We know Saturdays are really precious so we are even more humbled that people sacrificed theirs for the sake of planting some trees or coming up for the campfire. As I’m writing, there is a good downpour of rain outside so I think all will be well in the new forest.

The only energetic task of the night was leaving the fire to rummage around in the dark for adequate toasting sticks. My favourite quote overhead on the night was “Marshmallows are a food group”. See, it’s true, campfires always bring out the inner philospher in people. Rumour was that a certain folk band might turn up to play a tune or two, but this was not to be, so since everyone was too weary to object, it seemed only right to subject everyone to my crappy compilation cd’s, who needs a subwoofer when you have a steel barn to amplify your tunes!

Reports from my sources suggest that the campfire was a particularly well stoked one, its smokey molecules lingering on fibre and hair for days. Hmmm….

But … surely that’s what farm life is all about, getting dirty and smelly and eating charcoal for dinner.

The sky is falling…

“Well, it’s been a while since I…”  –> this a phrase I’m overly familiar with at the moment, but indeed it has been a while since I wrote.

I can’t complain though, it’s a beautiful but time consuming role of mothering a 7 and a half month old that keeps me busy, but I still find time for the animals – just not as much as they were accustomed to.

We have just returned home having been overseas on 5 week UK jaunt. As no one would be staying at the farm this time, deciding what to do with all our animals was a major feat of planning. We decided the only quick way to handle our flock of chickens was sadly to sell them – including Rajiv our handsome rooster.  We did however, decide to keep Rose, the Sussex Hen.  Rose, along with the dogs Molly and Elf, seven cows and a goat all went to our friends place. Imagine releasing such a menagarie on your friends!!  Incredibly, they still want to be our friends after 5 weeks with our mad animals.  Apparently all were well behaved!!

Gandalf looked after the farm and had visits from my mum.

We were able to bring Rose and the dogs home on our first weekend back, but ass you can imagine, transporting a goat and seven cows requires a little more organisation, so we’ll be bringing them home soon. The farm is eerily quiet.

I’ve also been worried about Rose this past week, as she’s been a lone chicken with no little friends to scratch around with. So today, I bought two little brown hens to be her friends.  Fionna helped pick them out (I think).  Richard has called his Betty and I’ve named the other ‘Henny Penny’ (“Goodness gracious me! The sky is falling”) – so that I can read the book to Fionna.

Mood: Sad. Merlin has gone to the wild roads …

Merlin has left this world.

When I moved to the UK in 1998 to live with Richard, I endured three months without a pet (the first time in my life without an animal) before we finally decided to adopt a cat. Merlin would be Richard’s first pet.

I had always wanted a black cat and had reams of Arthurian and Celtic names lined up. In my family we always adopted animals from animal shelters, so I knew not to expect the exactly the criteria I was looking for -  I would happily compromise on my ultimate cat because of the overwhelming desire to give a loving home to a cat who needed it. Any cat, not matter what age, colour or temperament would have been ok and I knew it was likely that we would come with a cat that day.

We walked into the cat home in Bedfordshire where there were lots of other hopeful adopters – and I probably gasped out loud. There in a cage, sad a beautiful proud black cat called, 3 years old called Merlin. I could not believe it! My heart was pounding as I was convinced that other people in the room were about to adopt him and I would miss him by a whisker. I was whispering to Richard “this one, this one” and Richard was of course browsing around at the other cats. I knew Merlin was for us, but didn’t want to draw attention to him, fearful that the families hovering around would see how warm and friendly this mass of shiny black fur was. I hoped Merlin had some sort of cloak of invisibility so that I was the only one who could see him.

I think Richard went up to the cage, and Merlin nuzzled his finger. This was the winning act of communication and Richard was hooked too. I knew Merlin was for us and it became apparent that most people in the room were after younger kittens anyway – my heart didn’t stop pounding until we signed the adoption papers – he was ours – perfect age, perfect colour, perfect name.

That was the start of our life with Merlin. He moved with us from Bedfordshire, to a rented cottage in Lancashire, then again to our cottage in an idyllic little hamlet in Lancashire where he had the most amazing life – chasing trout in the stream, leaving catprints in the snow, curling up by the open fire in winter, lazing in the sun in the stone circle on a warm summer day, stalking rabbits in the green grassy fields – he was such an adventurer. He had the devotion of a dog and would sit by our sides in the garden and follow us everywhere.

In an epic show of ultimate cat love, when we moved to Australia, Merlin came too, at great cost and endured two more house moves until he finally had his own farm. He was the king of calm and could handle anything life threw at him, adaptable and sweet with it, always offering up a wet nose when you needed an emotional lift, or a comedy leap if you needed a giggle. He was a classy cat even though there was nothing remotely pedigree about him. He was incredibly affectionate and a champion mouser – although sometimes he went a little too far and once brought a mole into the house. At this point Merlin got given one of his only rules – we came to an agreement that Wind in the Willows creatures were absolutely not to be killed.

About a year ago, age started to catch up with Merlin and he began to decline. There was always a bit of cheeky Merlyness around, but it was fading as his body started to get weary and battle with his spirit. A year ago we had a conversation with the vet as his kidneys were not good, and he rallied over the winter in 2007 and seemed stronger. However, this summer came and more recently this terrible heatwave and he became even worse, his back legs started to give, he could not cope with infections and he has been deterioating in body and spirit. It got the point where it was clear that Merlin was no longer happy on this earth. We made the dreaded appointment that we knew he would not return from after 10 years with us and 13 years of life on earth.

And there ends Merlin’s story … except…

There is a beautiful book called The Wild Road by Gabriel King that every cat lover should read. In fact, I think I’m going to read it again soon. That’s where I like to think Merlin is. On the Wild Road with all the other cat spirits.

Goatee oatee

Fionna is finally interacting with the animals and vice versa.

Mostly this is good.

She’s had a one minute long giggle at the dogs, Molly & Elf and she’s seen her first kangaroo.  Merlin has had his tail pulled and Gandalf has had his ear yanked.

Also, a mouse has visited her room and a white-tipped spider made it to within 30 cms of her and Merlin hid under our bed one night and was later caught sleeping next to Fionna her in her cot.  Hmmmm….back to the good interactions perhaps…

Her favourite four-legged friend is definitely Tara the goat though – probably because everytime we see her I sing: “My highland goaty-oatee-oatee-oatee-oat” etc… he he  good thing our neighbours aren’t too close with my singing.

Potato paradiso

On Christmas Day we harvested the first of our heirloom potatoes and were bombarded by lovely potatoey flavours. The first batch were grown in straw and we need to harvest and store (in hessian or calico bags) the rest of these this weekend, shortly followed by the other ones grown in soil. Planting in straw has been successful but it’s noticeable that the potatoes planted in soil grew with more vigour and overtook those planted in straw. Whether or not this makes a difference in the actual potato flavour remains to be seen when we unearth those in the next few weeks.

Quince and melons

Over the weekend we added a quince tree to the orchard that Richard picked up for a bargain at the local charity auction.

I must admit to not knowing too much about the humble ancient quince, but after doing a bit of research I’m quite excited about it’s future fruiting and potential jars of home grown marmalade and other quincey things.

I also received some free melon seeds from Diggers late last week. The thought of the water it might take to grow large melons had meant I’d never really considered them for our place as we have to be a little careful being just on rainwater. However I was excited to find out that these are small heirloom melons called Hao-gen, originating from Hungary. They are sometimes called Israeli melons because of the popularity of them there.  Sometimes the chance to grow something new just comes from the opportunity of pure availability like this – so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens.

We just harvested our first few delicious snow peas today too —mmmmmm.

This week I will be trying to get a few trays of seeds started for spring;  lettuces,  heirloom capsicum, coriander, dragon tongue beans, rainbow silverbeet and I’ll give okra another go this year. I’d really like it grow as it seems impossible to buy it anywhere.

The spuds before Christmas …

‘Twas the night before Christmas and in the vegetable plot,
Spuds were ripe for picking, and there were rather a lot …

We finally planted some of our heirloom/gourmet potato seeds from Diggers. The timing couldn’t have been better as this means that this batch should be ready to pick days before Christmas. We’ll put the rest in sometime later in September to spread the yield out a little. In fact, there will probably be so many potatoes that relatives and friends of ours may find potatoes under their Christmas trees this year from us.

Varieties planted

• Sapphire (a purple potato)
• Kipfler (a knobbly potato)
• Nicola (buttery flavour)
• Red Star (pinkish skin)
• Pink Fir Apple (pink skin, finger shaped, nutty flavour)
• King Edward (the classic heirloom – god of roast potatoes)

Planting methods – traditional & permaculture

We tried two methods of planting this year.

First we put some in the existing vegetable patch where we still have a small amount of room. Then, next to the vegetable patch, Richard mowed the grass down and we have tried the permaculture no-dig method, which is growing potatoes under straw.

The no-dig method is different from the traditional way of digging little trenches in the soil for your spuds. Funnily enough though, the only bit I actually managed to help out physically with was the trench digging. By getting on all fours and dragging my pregnant belly along the soil, massive trenches were rendered easily for the spuds. No? Ok, I used a trowel! I thought this was still rather impressive four weeks out from giving birth and makes me feel like I can cut it as a potato farmer if I ever need a career change.

I must admit that it was nice to get my hands dirty for a bit because Richard had to do all the hard work on the permaculture patch because by the end of my trench effort I was exhausted. I’m not good at being hands-off so I appreciate Richard’s efforts while I sat around in the sun like a sloth, reading out the planting techniques.

Permaculture is still experimental territory for us but I’m learning more and more. See the photographs below for how we did it. Warning- we are new to this technique – this is how we did it and we’ll let you know the results in about 4 months!

How to plant under straw – a first attempt

Will we have created gourmet potatoey eating ecstasy, or green toxic hand grenades?

1. Assemble your potato planting team – in this case my lovely husband and trusty cat, Gandalf. Mark out your area (mow if you need to) and put a layer of manure directly on top of the mown grass. We used chicken manure because we have a good supply. Wet the manured area.
   

   

2. Put down some thick newspaper on top of this to suppress the weeds. Wet the newspaper so that it doesn’t blow away.

   

3. Put your seed potatoes directly on top of the layer of wet newspaper about 30-40 cms apart.
   

   

4. Add a thick generous layer of straw (we used pea straw) to cover the potatoes. Imagine the seeds as little vampires – you have to make sure that they never see the light of day, otherwise you will end up with green poisonous potatoes – so don’t skimp with the straw. (We used one large bale of pea straw for the patch.) Continue to build up the layerwith manure, blood and bone and anything else organic that you have available. We had some freshly bought mushroom compost and some home-made compost/manure.

   

5. Finish off with a final layer of straw as shown below and water well. You should aim for a total layer of about 40 cms deep. As the plants grow you just need to ensure that you add more straw or organic materials (e.g. grass clippings) to keep the light away from the potatoes as they grow. As we have quite a windswept location, we also pegged out a bit of plastic to keep the pea-straw in situ.

   

6. Keep the pea straw moist so that it can rot down and feed the lovely manures down to the potatoes in their dark seedy underworld. Harvesting the spuds is apparently very easy as you can just rummage around under the straw and manure and find those hidden ‘apples of the earth’ beneath.

 

 

 

And then there were 7

Three new tiny extra tiny calves arrived today, two black heifers and a red hereford/dexter steer. I got home after dark and so have only seen them in these photographs. We’ve named one of them already, the red and white steer who we’ve called Perky – short for “per kilo”. I know. How can we? Well, I really don’t know if we will eat him, but that was supposed to be part of the plan. However, I hadn’t planned on our “chosen one” for eating being so … distinctively cute. I’ve never seen a face like it.

Hmmm…problem number 1 – I am already in completely in love with him.

Perky is the one on the right below …

Super-furry animals

The most important survival skill for a furry animal surviving in a human-dominated wilderness is to know where to get extra warmth to sustain you through winter evenings.

Example 1 – Molly and Elf demonstrate here that they have adapted well.

Example 2 – Merlin understands the basic concepts of fire too.

Gandalf, however, grapples to understand the concept of the fire and has been  on what can only be described as an endless quest for a source of warmth…

Quest 1: sock basket

Gandalf’s conclusion:  grumpy and still cold, in trouble from humans for making hairy socks

Quest 2: wet washing

Gandalf’s conclusion:  Grumpier and even colder – also in trouble from humans for making hairy washing

Quest 3: baby belly

Gandalf’s conclusion: warm but grumpy, can’t sleep,  got kicked in head by thing within, humans laughing.