Brown rot

One of my email subscribers just wrote to me and asked about brown rot in nectarines.  As I had just posted about my great nectarine crop, I thought it would be a good idea to share the reader’s question for the benefit of everyone.  Brown rot is a common problem that affects not just nectarines, but most fruit including apples, cherries and peaches.

Brown rot is a fungus (Monilinia laxa and M. fructigena) that infects the fruit causing it to rot on the tree, and can spread to the branch as well.  Damaged fruit are more susceptible.  Here goes:

Hi Matthew,

Thanks. I find your tips and chart very useful over here in Sydney. I have a question on my nectarine tree.  This is the second year in a roll that they suffered from brown rot. The rotted fruits hanged on and dried up on the now dead branches. I have cut off these branches and throw away any of the rotted fruits that I can find. Any suggestion as to the cure for this? Will Copper Sulphate spray help?

Simon

My abundance of nectarines - yay!

This year has been a great year for nectarines. I think it has been a combination of factors coming together to produce a great crop.

This year for once I managed to get my act together and spray with Bordeaux mixture just as the buds began to swell. As a former fruit growing area, leaf curl is endemic. Spraying is essential if you don’t want the trees growth stunted by this condition. It seemed to pay off as we only had a few leaves this year that were affected, whereas usually most are affected.

Last year we also had quite a problem with fungal growth on the fruit itself. This was due to the high humidity we had last year. However this year has been similar weather wise and we have not had anywhere near as much of a problem. I think that again this is due to the Bordeaux spray earlier in the year. Given the benign nature of this mixture is is prudent to give your stone fruit a spray every year before the buds come out in spring.

So we had a great crop this year as you can see from the photo. Lots beautiful fruit. How were your fruit crops this year? Was it a bumper year for you? Let me know in the comments section below.

Pear and Cherry Slugs

Pear and cherry slug is a common problem in my area, mainly due to the fact that this was a fruit growing area of Melbourne which has left the area with an endemic problem of fruit tree pests. Pear and cherry slug control is a task that I have grappled with ever since I put my cherry tree in a few years ago.

Initially I wasn’t familiar with the problem but as the leaves on my cherry tree were gradually reduced to skeletons I knew that I had an issue. A bit of research revealed that it was pear and cherry slug and I quickly deduced that some sort of control was going to be necessary. A quick spray with pyrethrum spray seemed to sort the devils out.

The pear and cherry slug is the larvae of the sawfly. The adult sawfly lay their eggs on the leaves of the cherry or pear tree which then hatch to for the slugs. The slugs proceed to eat the leaves of the tree, producing the distinctive lace like pattern that is indicative of the problem. On a closer look you will see the small black slugs on the leaf.

Once the slug has reached maturity it will drop to the ground and pupate. After it completes that process it will emerge to fly back up to the leaves of the tree to lay its eggs. There are two lifecycles a season, so that is why pear and cherry slug control is important, otherwise the second, heavier wave can really decimate an already weakened tree. continue reading..

The Onion Harvest 2011

I have just completed my onion harvest for 2011 and by my standards it has been quite a success. Usually by the time I get to harvesting onions they have gone to seed. However the journey to getting to that point can be just as challenging.

I usually start with planting my onions from bought seedlings in June (December for those in the Northern hemisphere). I often find that many of them are eaten by slugs and snails, or disturbed by the scratching of the feline menace (cats), so they never even get started.

However once they get going I find that onions are fairly tough plants. Apart from some really dedicated snails, there doesn’t seem to be many pests that will impede their growth. You do however need to keep the weeds down as they compete with the onions and will decrease their final size.

I tend to have a problem with the onions going to seed before they are fully grown. However I have discovered that even if the onion has gone to seed, once you remove the tough core, the onion can be used as normal. It is just that they won’t keep as long as they normally would. Perhaps a bowl of French onion soup is in order.

After harvesting onions you should really let them sit out in the sun for a few days to dry out the outer skins so they keep as long as possible. Then just make sure you store them in the dark where the air can circulate around them so they don’t go mouldy.

You would be forgiven for thinking that this blog is just about raspberries and chickens given the disproportionate number of posts on these topics. However those who grow their own raspberries will agree with me that given a small area of fertile soil you can get a wonderful crop of fruit that is streets ahead of anything you can buy in the shops. Below are some snaps of my current crop.

Premulch - Put down a good dose of manure (preferably more rotted than this!) and some fertiliser.

Winter is the time to be putting down mulch in your garden.  As I mentioned in my previous post about mulching the vegetable garden, mulching – covering the soil with a protective layer- is an important task.  In the fruit and vegetable garden mulch should preferably be some sort of organic matter, because then it will add to the health of the soil.  However in an ornamental garden non-organic mulches such as pebbles may be appropriate.

As you can see from the photos below, the mulch I selected was fairly newly shredded tree material.  This will work fine and provide a good protective layer against weeds, but because it is quite new it will draw nitrogen from the soil as it breaks down.  This obviously isn’t a good thing for plants as it reduces the amount of nitrogen they have for growth.  To offset this I would recommend applying a good dose of fertiliser to the surface of the soil like blood and bone and/or rooster poo.

Why mulch?

Mulch offers many important benefits to the gardener.  The first of which is it helps keep the weeds down.  Apart from looking unsightly, weeds compete with your plants from nutrients, limiting their growth.

Secondly, mulch helps keep moisture in the soil.  In Melbourne where I garden, the summers can be very hot, and exposed soil will dry out much

Cover with a good layer of mulch (3-5 inches). Keep it away from the plant trunk.

more quickly than covered soil, leaving your plants prone to heat shock.  A good layer of mulch will trap the moisture in the soil, just where your plants need it.

Thirdly, keeping the soil moist helps with the microflora of the soil.  Good healthy soil has fungi and bacteria that live within it. These help release nutrients in the soil and can help reduce the growth of harmful organisms.  When the soil heats up and dries out, this sterilises the soil, reducing the number of microflora in turn reducing soil fertility.  Mulching will help prevent this.

How to mulch.

Firstly start by removing any weeds and grasses around your plants.  This will stop them simply growing through the mulch you apply.  Like I said above the next step is to put a layer of fertiliser down to provide some available nitrogen.  Also it is easier to apply fertiliser for your plants before you put down the mulch.

Lastly finish by applying a good layer of the mulch, between 3-5 inches.  This depth will really help to keep the weeds down and build a good soil microclimate.  Just be sure to keep the mulch away from the trunks of your trees.  If it is too close it can cause collar rot of the trunk, killing the tree.

So, do you use mulch in your garden?  If so, what types?  Have you found it helped?  Let me know with a comment below.  Thanks!

Spring is well and truly here and summer is coming up fast.  If you have subscribed to my newsletter you will have received a copy of my crop rotation planner spreadsheet that I use to plan the crops I am going to plant in the coming season and how they will fit into a crop rotation system.  In this post I would like to share my plan for the coming summer.

My summer 2011-12 crop plan (click for full size)

As you can see I haven’t necessarily kept to a strict crop rotation program, but it is pretty good!

So if you would like to use a copy of my planner just sign up for my newsletter.  Thanks!

Pruning soft fruit is essential to get the best crop and to minimise pests and diseases.  Gooseberries are no exception.  Following on from my recent text post on pruning redcurrants I have put together a video on how to prune your gooseberries.  This is a job for wintertime when the plants are dormant.  Enjoy!

In our journey into keeping chickens I’ve looked at why keep chickens, where to site your coop and the building of the coop structure. Today I’ll look at the breed of chicken that we went for.

Like many farm animals, chicken breeding has favoured those that are high yielding for intensive farming methods, which is not surprising given this is where most of the demand comes from. However for those looking for backyard chickens, these breeds are not always the best. Yes they may produce large numbers of eggs, but there are other factors to consider.
How family friendly a chicken is was a factor I looked at when I made my choice. Many chicken breeds don’t like to be handled which can be difficult with small children. We made sure our chickens were from a calmer breed. Bantam chickens are supposed to be good in this way, but I felt the eggs were too small with bantams.

Our Barnevelder chickens.

I also feel that backyard gardeners and smallholders have a responsibility to support genetic diversity, whether that be in choosing vegetables, fruit or livestock. This to me is another reason to choose chicken breeds other than the factory stock birds.

So bearing all these points in mind we decided to go for a breed known as a Barnevelder. They are a medium sized chicken breed originally from Holland that are fairly tolerant of being handled. When they do lay (and ours were slow to get going as they were moulting when we got them) they lay a medium sized egg, up to one per day.

So let me know, what chicken breed(s) have you tried? What were the good and bad points of them? Would you recommend them? Thanks!

In my previous post I described how I go about pruning my redcurrants to get the best crop possible. Well it looks like the work has paid off as the number of flowers on the redcurrant bushes is amazing and it looks like I am in for a bumper crop. Take a look at the photo to see what I mean.

Wonderfully abundant redcurrant flowers after this year's pruning.