Member's Gardens > Stories from the One Acre Plot > Part 2 May 2006
by Phil Ryan

The possums have launched an attack on my still green passion fruit. Lots of beautiful, cricket-ball size pieces of fruit lay on the ground, most with just one bite taken out. A few were half eaten. What a waste! And just think what will happen when this fruit ripens! This eating of green fruit reminds me of my childhood when my brothers and I would watch fruit maturing on the mango trees. Most times we picked and ate them green – we couldn’t wait for them to ripen and to then have them taken by someone else, especially the tree owner!

March/April is my time to give all the fruit trees a good feed, starting first with a bucket of comfrey liquid tea poured down their feeding pipe, (which is some plastic or metal pipe 40 to 45cms long and approximately 5 to 10cms in diameter, buried alongside the plant at planting time, and which sticks about 15cms out of the ground). Secondly, I add two cups of Organic Extra down the pipe, followed by a bucket of tank water poured in slowly. I then give the pipe a twist and a wriggle to help the flow of this feed to the bottom of the root area.

March/April at my plot is also the start of the pawpaw menace, the black spot season. These black, tiny dots appear on the undersides of the leaves and in next to no time, 36 hours at most, the tree’s leaves are covered in black spots. They also appear on the fruit, which, presentation wise, makes it look quite unpleasant, but the fruit is still edible. The tree’s leaves eventually go brown and sickly looking. John Box, our BOGI Produce Shop keeper, came to my rescue and recommends you spray with a copper based solution, add a few drops of liquid soap to help the mixture adhere to the leaves, fruit and trunk, and to spray in the late afternoon, (especially after rain while the trees are still wet) and to make certain you spray underneath the leaves where the black spot is, as well as all over the tree. After incubation, the tiny black spots release thousands of spores. They love days of wet, overcast weather, with a very high humidity, to really develop into plague proportions, which is exactly the very weather we have had this year in mid-March. So, I have been spraying fortnightly trying to control this menace. A very weak solution of condys crystals is also another good spray to use.

At present I have several liquid teas on the go. The results from both the comfrey and mushroom teas has been excellent on all the fruit trees and especially the Rosella bushes. The make-up of my mixture for these liquid teas is one third chopped up ingredients and two thirds water (tank, if possible). Let it soak in a sealed container in full sunlight for three weeks, or longer. It helps to give it a good shake or a stirring each day if possible, to speed up the breakdown and fermentation. Oh, and put in some assorted chopped-up herbs or lemon grass, whatever, to create a pleasant smell and reduce the ‘pong’ effect when you unseal your container. I remove what’s left of the ingredients (usually its floating on the surface) and bury it at the base of one of my deserving trees, or simply add it to the compost heap. Next, I use one bucket of tank wat er to one bucket of this tea, strain into a watering can and then pour over the veggies, flowers and fruit trees. They love this rich, organic fertilizer, which can be produced for virtually no cost, and the comfrey tea in particular is one of the best you can give to your plants. Organic Extra also makes a great tea. Mix one cup to 10 litres of water and let it sit till it has dissolved. Strain and use on your foliage or around the base of your plant.

The water pressure in my hose coming from the 1,000 gallon tank is not great. The main problem is the height of the tank off the ground. Its about 60cms and gives off limited pressure, and with no electricity at The Plot I can’t have a water pump, so the further I roll out my watering hose the less flow of water I get and I end up with just a dribble coming out of the nozzle. Then I read that if you want to get more pressure and flow at the end of your hose you simply put a circle in your line of hose when laying it out to where you want to water. I was frustrated with the tiny amount of water I was getting with the straight line approach, so I tried the circle in the middle – a nice big loop of hose – and BINGO the volume increased dramatically. Marvellous!

Last month I promised to give you my Tree Paste Recipe. Here it is. Mix thoroughly the following in a container, size of your choice – one third cow manure, one third blood & bone, one third clay, one cup of wood ash, add some molasses and Maxicrop (seaweed extract liquid), just a little at a time, till you get a nice, thick, rich paste. Give the trunk of each tree a good brushing to remove any loose bark, etc., then a pply this paste in the late afternoon, and only to the brown wood section, not to the green parts of the tree. A clean paint brush or rubber gloves will ensure a good all-over coverage. The best time to apply this paste is during June, July or August, our sub-tropical winter months. Medical science is using the ‘apply a patch’ system form of treatment and this application works on the same principle to feed the tree.

I’m delighted with the growth of lots of varieties of veggies in my cut-down-water tank raised gardens. I have been spraying them weekly with a John Box ‘special’ – half fish emulsion and half Maxicrop Seaweed extract mixed together with tank water in proportions as listed on each bottle. The results are fabulous. Since planting out these veggies in early March I have been covering them with a shade cloth from about 10am till 3.30pm each day. The sun is fierce on the tissues of these young plants, hence this precaution with the exceptionally hot days we have still been experiencing.

Possums, dogs, black spot, bandicoots – I never know what each new day will bring!

Finally, I lost seven delightful bantam hens to a wild dog attack, all during one very peaceful Sunday afternoon.

Until next time, happy organic gardening and may the forces of nature be with you.