No long essays today... While I'm away doing a course in Tasmania - much more about that in a subsequent post! - here's a short photo essay about the activities at Homeland through midsummer.

Companions

We’re really happy how the companion plants around the new vines are doing, despite the fact that in the dry summer the only get water once a week. Love the geraniums’ colour and the pumpkin is thriving!

Growth

The replacements for previous casualties – the avocado due to frost and the citrus due to excessive couch grass – are doing well.

Feeding and caring

Spraying biodynamic preparations every 2 weeks and feeding Seasol (liquid seaweed feed) to the fruit trees. You can do the maths: 150+ trees divided by 12 containers = how many trips?

This one is for Barry!

My friend Barry commented on a previous post about our battles with couch grass between the citrus trees that we should try smothering the grass with mat. So after the last bout of summer rain, we laid long sheets over a part of the citrus patch. Let’s hope it works!

All work and no play?

During the school holidays we had a few fun breaks too!

Taking birthday boy canoeing at Anglesea to celebrate his double digits:

The kids wanted a baseball bat and T-stand. To try and get away from the buy, buy, buy everything in site mentality, we had a fun little project making a bat and T-stand from cedar wood we had from cutting a windbreak shorter to get more sun on the young avocados. Great fun!