Note to self, garlic planted with back of clove to east or west sees leaves growing north and south
These are the ever reliable Turban, Monaro Purple.
These are the white skinned Turban which I refer to as Traf White simply because I don't know it's variety name. Smaller plant off to the side is one half of the clove that I sliced after seeing the two shoots come out of it. Doing well, along with its mate, but naturally smaller than those that didn't get disturbed.

Have also been busy planting a few citrus trees. Not sure how well they will do here, but only one way to find out.

From the west

Seminole Tangello
Lane's Late Navel Orange
Marsh Grapefruit
Emperor Mandarin
Ruby Red Grapefruit
Tahitian Lime
Cara Cara Blood Orange
Lemonade Lemon
Imperial Mandarin
Meyer Lemon

May look at adding a limequat and cumquat as well.

Never heard of a Lemonade’ lemon!

@PlainJane, the Lemonade Lemon is a low acid lemon of unknown parentage with a mild lemon flavour, according to "Citrus for Everyone" by Bruce Morphett and Ian Tolle, two South Australians, released through the Botanic Gardens of Adelaide in 1999, which serves as my citrus growing bible.

Use as per any other lemon, just milder flavour

I love lemonade made properly with fresh lemons with the zest and the lemons left in.
The frozen concentrate is garbage in my humble opinion.

When we get the bees back on here after all the machine works are done, we will most likely be hosting 8 hives overwinter.

Concrete is booked in for 9 am Thursday morning looking forward to that

The concrete mixing plants are all busy and we could only get a small truck, 4 cubic metres worth today instead of the hoped for 6 and a bit, top up not possible either. A good start with the path along the veggie bed done and a bit on the one towards the house started.
The fellows got the concrete leveled, then we had a few showers move through, eventually managed to get the concrete at the green stage and the boys stippled the top for traction when wet before covering with hessian for the night

I hope you don’t have too long a wait until the next pour.

PlainJane wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 5:56 am I hope you don’t have too long a wait until the next pour.

So do I @PlainJane , not sure when that will be though, it seems like everyone is trying to do the last minute pre winter pour here. The local mixing plants are flat out

Managed to get the last of the garlic in after the concrete was poured and while it was starting to cure
47 varieties in total. Will get around to adding more photos to the garlic down under thread and a full list in either or both threads

Compost Bins

For a couple of years mow I have made do with only 1 bin, but this was rectified with the concrete pours that have been going on lately. On the day of the last pour, I managed to get the back wall of the bins built and locked in place
Existing bin is on the right, back wall, one end pallet on the left and boards in front for spacing purposes.

Got stuck into the construction today, which was really just a matter of screwing things together. Plastic pallets used as bin dividers and ends as everything else I have used gets composted to quickly for my liking.
Plastic pallets joined top to toe so that I can get more screws in the join to stop them moving if only one side has compost in it.

Finished off by attaching upright boards to the north ends of the pallets and screwing retaining wall Iron (H profile) to the ends. This means that I can just drop in/lift out the front boards as required.
Completed bins with spare front boards stacked in front of each bin at this stage. It appears that I have utilized too many of these boards from my stack elsewhere for the full 20 required here. in reality I am unlikely to need all at the one time so no great issue.

That will make composting so much easier.

Managed to get the blueberry/Chilean guava bed 3/4 finished today. Have some 6.05 m boards that will go across the front of the bed, cut one in half and two full ones will fit with only minor tweaking of the board ends

Is your soul naturally acidic or do you amend ph?

PlainJane wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 6:36 am Is your soul naturally acidic or do you amend ph?

Well, he seems to be a pretty mild mannered fellow to me.

PlainJane wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 6:36 am Is your soul naturally acidic or do you amend ph?

Our native soil is a naturally acidic silt, the black sand which I purchase seems to be a bit variable, now wether that is do to it being modified by the handlers or natural I don't know. Need to do a bit more testing to check how some are ageing. pH amendments around here are normally done with a lime.

Whwoz wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 8:55 am Bogatyr Maslov

Some nice big fruit on these two plants, this one not fully ripe but well ahead of the rest on the plants here, everything is late this season due to the weather. just over a pound.

Bogatyr Maslov (1).jpg

Hey Woz, I actually gave this tomato plant to a friend in Mirboo North as my garden was full. It's a lot colder up there and as you know, a limited tomato growing season. This was her absolute prize tomato. I finally got to taste one very late in the season, after a frost and it wasn;'t quite ripe so I can't exactly comment on taste. It gave her so many tomatoes, very large, maybe slightly bicoloured. I have seed from 3 tomatoes, not bagged, But will grow a couple of plants this year. One that she shared on Facebook actually looks like this...

Whwoz wrote: ↑Sat Feb 26, 2022 8:55 am Bogatyr Maslov

Some nice big fruit on these two plants, this one not fully ripe but well ahead of the rest on the plants here, everything is late this season due to the weather. just over a pound.

Bogatyr Maslov (1).jpg

And it looks just like the tomato in this picture!

Off to visit a cousin tomorrow. He runs a wholesale native plant nursery. Raiding season has arrived.

A few more native plants for the garden and some shelter belts for the paddocks on top of the 70 we purchased at the Cranbourne botanical garden on the 23rd July

Wound up getting 60 Callistemons for the shelter belts, 20 of each of Hannah Ray, Dawson River Weeper and Kings Park Special, three tough as boots varieties that have been around for a long time now. They should tolerate the variations in moisture in our soil without too many problems. Plus another 50 more ornamental plants to go in around the house as bee fodder.