How is your garden looking today?

I have heard of the clay ball technique but it does not seem to have gained credibility here. I imagine the seed germinating and the root system emerging from the clay then having to penetrate another soil layer all the time struggling for water and nutrient. I can imagine it working better if the clay balls were installed into well cultivated soil but that kinda defeats the purpous.

Never heard of that...


Liked your pics, pad, got the idea.

The spot under the scots pine
as it looks today.
Click on photo for its
imagined look:

on friday afternoon this was the first nice patch of springblooms - now there are about a dozen spots throughout the garden where the bulbs are sending up their flowers .
the rabbits have been visiting and nipping off some of the green shoots , so i have started spreading some bloodmeal .
hbg

(thumbnail)

I just caught the "clay ball" stuff. Weve used paper linters infused with soap , polyamide ( "watering" gel that takes on water and holds it against gravity)and some vitamin B1 solution. Take newsprint (only black and white) and grind it in a blender and mix it in with the watering gel, some soap and B1 till its like oatmeal. Then ring these out and insert the seeds you want and put these in the garden. They germinate 100% and weve never had to replant if we have a drought and forget to water the seed balls. Its sort of a takeoff on the "Hydro seed mix" .I dont like the hydro seed mix because its all N based fertilizer and no polymer , so it can dry out when they spray it like grass seed on hiway banks. The only reason its used is that it holds up to moderate intensity rains and provides a substrate.

I grow a lot of maidens feathers and use them around trellises. The seedball works great because I can space a ball containing 5 seeds in a line around the trellis sides and grow a huge honkin bunch of plants that, with fireplace ashes and manure tea grow nice teeny red bell shaped flowers that attract hummingbirds like nothing else.

How IS the garden
Well my garden is pretty horrible. What with bushfires, drought, heat and rationed watering, everything has given up and gone on sick parade. However, since we have had a few showers in the last week or two the grass is coming back to life and looking greener. The flowers are dead though.
NOT a blooming success story.
Just thought I would share this with you.
Willywagtail

The pollen is thick, blanketing everything and we haven't had a good rain in weeks. I'm hoping this isn't an indication of what the summer will bring. In the meantime...



my hosta site:



my flower garden site:


in a few months, this all will look very different.

Looks as though you're about a month ahead of me, eoe; it's only just starting to look like spring here:



Click on photo to see this view as of two weeks ago. Our crocuses seem to be only a bit early this year.

But what an amazing transformation, neko!

Ah, just found this thread

A cherry tree root (which I cut through last year) has continued to grow (although it's not part of the tree any more) and it's lifting up my boundary wall.
It's looking like I will have to excavate again, take down a bit of wall, expose the problem and cut it out, then rebuild the wall. Drat.

Mctag depending on how extensive the root os you may be able to kill it with herbicide. glyphosphate and metasulphuron methyl (trade names here are roundup and brushoff) should do it. add a little surface tension reducer to help apply it.
This will help ensure any bits that get left wont regrow.

Thanks dadpad, I'll certainly consider these measures.

It's in an awkward corner....maybe I can take some photos later to illustrate the probem, and later progress. In any case, it's a job which will have to wait until after Easter.

Or, a variation, you can cut the stem of the root that is starting to grow, then, before the stem has a chance to form a xcuticle, just paint some strait roundup right on the cross section. We do this to kill multiflora roses that volunteer in distant pastures and get a few feet high before we seem em.

There is something weird going on under that wall. I dug a trench between the wall and my Prunus Kanzan and cut through the root on that side, which was about 6" diameter then. The wall was already being lifted up, of course. This was in an attempt to halt the upward movement of this localised section of brick wall.

Since then, the wall-lifting seems to have accelerated, so either the root had thickened considerably, despite being cut off from the tree, or there is another bigger root underneath which I did not find in my first trench (but this seems unlikely)

It will be a major effort, working from one side only in a confined space, to trench it out, remove soil overburden, take down wall to ground level, remove foundation bricks mixed up with tree roots, cut out and rebuild.
Just to make it interesting, there is a timber fence above the wall, which luckily is fixed independently to concrete posts, and I'll have to work underneath that.

Heigh-ho.

Blissfully and contemptuously ignoring my puny efforts, the prunus will soon be in full flower, and it's magnificent then. See picture next, which I took last year.

I dont see any bees!!
we have a kwanzan too and its always been a friggin bee magnet.

Forget the roundup !!!! I thought the root was already separate from the tree and was regenerating. If you roundup that sucker, you could kill it. I think your trenching and root pruning may be needed. Youd better ask dadpad about whens the best time to root prune so you dont kill that nice tree.

Not a concern.

The root which is causing the problem is already separated from the tree- I cut out a section of it last year. It's the bit which is still under the wall which is continuing to grow, but the tree is independent of it now.

I don't know why it's continuing to thicken under there, but that's what seems to be happening. But the position of the tree, close to the wall, means I have very little room to work in.

I'll take some more pictures after Easter, when I'll start.

mctag wrote :

[CODE]I don't know why it's continuing to thicken under there, but that's what seems to be happening. But the position of the tree, close to the wall, means I have very little room to work in.

If you think for a moment I would remove a wall's foundation without first taking the precaution of removing the section of wall.... :wink:

It's not too bad, I've worked on this particular wall before. It's built of stock brick in lime mortar so it's relatively easy to dismantle, and reclaim the bricks before rebuilding.
A lot of work though, and you end up with forearms like Popeye the Sailor Man.

The first flowers for the year in the frontyard.
Tulips will follow within a week.