Answers to your gardening questions (by those in the know!)

On the other hand, considering your season Down Under, your tree may be going into dormancy. Aside from remedial pruning, there is little you can do right now. Good Luck!

My first mandarin of the season is ripening.
Yay!

how many have you got left? enough?

Heaps more than I'd imagined!

chocolate covered madarine segments.
mandarine liquore.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Yum, yum, yum, yum!!!!!
Love chocolate-covered madarins!

Mandarin Liqueur
8 mandarins
1 litre white rum
250 g sugar (11/4 cups)
125 ml water (/2 cup) to make a sugar syrup

Wash mandarins and peel zest. Juice the mandarins. Combine juice,
zest and rum. Steep/macerate for 4 weeks. Filter. Add sugar syrup.
Bottle and age for 2 weeks.

Oh!
Never done anything like that!

You need a high quality belgian dark chocolate for coating.
add some vanilla beans to the chocolate before dipping.

That sounds utterly delicious, dp!
The trick would be to try to refrain from eating the chocolate before coating the mandarins!

When the stirring is done may i lick the spoon and bowl?

You may!

Doesnt your jaw get tired after just a couple days?

It certainly doesnt take me that long

Question for you more experienced onion growers. Last year the onion sets I planted in March didn't start sending up flowering spikes until late July and by that time the bulbs were forming nicely so I just left the spikes on the plants.

This year, I planted the onion sets in late February and they are already sending up flower spikes but have not yet formed bulbs.

My instincts tell me I should cut off the spikes (leaving the leaves) so that more energy goes into forming the onion bulb and not producing flowers/seeds. Is this correct, or should I let them go ahead and flower? The weather has started to warm up only this week with night temps in the low 50's and day temps in the low 80's.

Your instincts are correct.
cut off the flower spikes. cut as low as possible.
Sometimes if you et them flower the bulb will rot

Thanks. I could find info about cutting off the leaves once they wither and brown, but couldn't find any info about what to do with the early flower spikes.

It makes sense that they would be cut off since that is also what the Dutch bulb growers do to produce optimum flower bulbs.

Another go at identifying & seeking solutions to this parasitic climber which has wreaked havoc to trees in my garden (luckily not too many of them ... yet!) ... and also around my suburb.

It is an extremely tough & rampant climber, with very strong stems, which wind themselves very tightly around branches of trees & shrubs. When broken, the stems leak a thick, milky white liquid, which can cause considerable itching & irritation when it comes into contact with your skin.
The leaves could be described as "heart shaped".
In summer it has rather pretty white flowers, followed by "fruit" which very closely resembles Chokos.:


I've looked in gardening books under "pests" but haven't been able to identify it, say nothing of figuring out ways of eradicating it altogether.
I'll be taking samples of this plant to a nursery for identification and advice, but I'm almost certain that the solution will be the application of some poisonous weed killer or other. I really prefer not to use such weed killers, but, in this case, I might have to.

In the meantime, any useful information & advice, anyone?

We have a perennial pest called the "Multiflora Rose" which is a wild rose that is spread by birds eating the little fruit (pome) that is often sold as "rose hip tead". The rosebush just crops up in fields and keeps otjher understory plants from establishing themselves. Once a rosebush field is established, it becomes a thorny, tangled mass of brmbles that must be dealt with or we lose a potential pastureland.

I go through with a brush hog (Its a bigass lawnmower that fits on the back of my old tractor. I cut the bushes off at the base leaving only a stump . Then I "paint" a healthy daub of Roundup on the stump cut face. I do this immediately after cutting or Ill have help with someone else daubing the Roundup . The secret is to be localized and daub the concentrated (53%) Roundup on the cut face BEFORE it has a chance to cuticle up and reject the herbicide. (If you wait longer than about an hour before painting the hwerbicide, it may not be effective).
SO, cut the plant to the ground and daub a herbicied on the cut face IMMEDAITELY. It will take several weeks to be sure you got it, but at that point the stump will begin to wither and youve got it into the root.
You wont be spraying Roundup all over the place and you will only need about a teaspoonful on your weed.

BTW , when you find out what it is let us know. There may be some use for the damn thing. Sounds like it may be a relative of the cashew family , which includes POISON IVY in our continent.

Im sure that, with all the spreading of non native trees all over the world, you already have poison ivy in your land.