Cato Garden Farm

What was once a lovely tall she-oak tree is currently being chopped and chipped up after the strong winds yesterday. We now have space for a few more fruit trees at the bottom of the garden. And only a month after we’d relocated the straw shed to take advantage of the shelter the tree offered from the prevailing rain direction. Ah well, at least we won’t have to buy the batch of mulch we had planned. 2013 was an odd year, very little really happened in the garden for a bunch of reasons. My garden plans for 2014 are nebulous so far, just a few ideas about converting more of the veg garden areas over to perennial plantings. It’s nice to be back writing here.

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We are cheating by doing our apricot picking and summer pruning at the same time. trimming a branch and picking the fruit off. The fruit on this tree is a lot firmer (Trevatt or Tilton?), but we know when it is ripe because the wattlebirds start crashing around in the tall branches. This apricot tree used to sit next to the old chook shed, so it has a legacy of rich soil (we moved the chooks not the tree). Each year it tries to double it’s size. So it is a good thing it is easy to climb. We’ve picked over 10 kilos of fruit this weekend, some is bottled already, with more waiting for preserving tomorrow. And I think I’ve eaten about 5 kilos of the fruit in the past two weeks. While the rest of the vegies are...

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I’d cast a spell for rain if I could. Deep soaking rain to seep into the subsoil. This morning I disturbed a wallaby actually in our backyard. Before I realised it was a total fire ban I’d turned on a sprinkler in the front yard and noticed some wallaby poo. Not too unusual given we sometimes leave our front gate open, and the wallabies are becoming more frequent visitors to the nature strips. Most unusual was the wallaby poo near the water tap in the backyard. Which is when I started looking around. Milly cat and I spooked the poor wallaby under the natives at the side of the house and I decided to open the front gates and hope it headed that way. Zac snapped a photo near some of the fruit trees before it left us. It was...

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Finally got back to the Aquaponics system after a intense time of weeding and planting.   Lawn mowing and animal shed cleaning didn’t get done because of this.  It took longer than what I expected.  I’ve decided siphon are “fussy” and that is reason most aquaponics systems have grow beds that drain to tanks directly underneath. Other stuff that happened this weekend: Lost an third of the top Apricot tree in the wind .. we expected this to happen 10 years ago. It was Zac's 1st week working with Stuart @ the Farms Market breakfast stall.  The bircher muesli is serious good. Kirsty having trouble walking again because of the "stupid knees" Maybe next weekend we might be water into pond.

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