The problem with being a garden writer is that people assume I'd love to answer their gardening questions.
Actually I do love answering gardening questions, but usually at far greater length that the questioner expected, i.e. they do not want a half-hour lecture on how a healthy population of microbats can reduce your fruit fly and mosquito numbers.
The real problem is that I seem to be asked the same three questions, over and over.
So here are the answers ... but if anyone has a really original garden questions, please send them in.
How do I get rid of possums?
Answer: You don't. Getting rid of possums by employing someone to rehouse them is the same as killing them, as they will return to their territory and often die in the attempt.
Most potential possum territory is already at full possum capacity, and the residents will attack any new comers.
Instead, get them out of your roof by leaving music up there playing very loudly - nothing melodic, more the yelling kind. Football matches are also a good way to disturb a possum's sleep. To be really sure, hire disco lights. Note where the possum emerges, then seal it up, but buy a possum house or two from the garden centre or online first.
Anti fruit fly netting, which can be bought in large rolls, will keep possums off fruit trees, tomatoes, broccoli etc too, but possums do need to eat. One of their favourite foods is the juvenile leaves of blue gums- the leaves that are rounded, and powdery blue. Buy three blue gums, like Maiden's Gum, and plant them in the same hole, and keep them pruned to about 1.6 metres high, so they look like a shrub. Once established though, the possums may do the pruning for you as they fill up on the new leaves.
Possums also love loquats, and loquat trees, as they can eat the blossoms as well as the fruit, which fills them up for at least four months of the year. I also sadly accept that the possums will eat almost every Jonathon apple I plant, both tree leaves and fruit.
We grow many, many varieties of apple, but the possums are only interested in the Jonathons. It may be worth planting one as a possum treat, so they leave your roses alone.
Possum barriers can be either bought or made. They are basically wide rings you put around pergolas or tree trunks, so the possums can't climb up them to get the fruit or as a road to your roof space. In other words, you just have to learn to live with possums, as if you have possum friendly territory ie a garden, more possums will just move in if you move the original possums out.
How do I get rid of fruit fly in my tomatoes, apples, peaches et al.
Answer: But the fruit fly netting referred to above. Dwarf trees are easier to cover than giant ones. "Splash on" poisonous baits that go on tree trunks or tomato stems, not the fruit, also work well. But mostly, clean up any fallen fruit, and that applies double to tomatoes. Fruit- and tomatoes- tend to fall off early if they are infected with fruit fly, which then breed more fruit fly. Feed fallen fruit to the chooks the same day it falls, or collect it and put it into bags that can be sealed, and leave in the sun until fruit and fruit flies are thoroughly decayed, or place in the rubbish bin. But recycling fruit fly into eggs and fertiliser via chooks - or a limited amount to other animals- is the best way to deal with it. Otherwise, plant fruits that mature in winter when the fruit flies have died in the cold, like late apples and pears.
Why don't my fruit tree fruit/my shrubs flower?
This is the one that can get a three hour answer. Often it's simple - they are too young, or need more tucker and more water - plants can't absorb nutrients if they don't get water. The plant may still look healthy and not even wilt, but it it's soil is too dry it may not have the nutrients needed to flower or fruit.
Another common reason is too much shade. As our gardens grow, so does the amount of shade they get. This is excellent to help the battle against global warming, but not good for fruit set. A few fruits, like tamarillos, will set fruit in the shade, but even they set more fruit with more sunlight.
Flowers that don't set fruit may not have been visited my bees, wasps, bats, birds and other pollinators. This can be because of too many rainy days, with few pollinators about, but it can also be because European wasps have devastated the local bee hives.
But it can also be that your trees needs to cross pollinate with another variety; gas leaks, smoke and other pollution, possums and bower birds eating blossom, frost, various fungal problems, lack of pruning for new wood to produce fruit buds ...you can see why it could be a three-hour lecture.
But if you have any other garden problems, do send them in, or rather, email in a description, with or without a pic. (I had a sudden vision of fruit fly infected apples, rotting branches or feral goats delivered to the office. The editor would not be impressed). After umpteen years of answering gardening questions, I still love answering them.
This week I am:
- Impressed by a New Zealand magazine's list of 40 ways to use choko, from adding to a mixed stir fry, baking with a cheese sauce, poach in syrup and serving with custard and ice-cream, to making hooch. Sadly they didn't add a recipe for choko hooch. Givennchoko has few carbs or sugars, I doubt they'd ferment;
- Filling boxes of chokos to give away at the Made in Araluen markets this Saturday, 10am to 2pm at the Araluen Hall;
- Hunting for ripe melons and pumpkins before the first frost, and planning to put in onions and broad bean seed. Most winter veg like kale, cauliflowers, winter lettuce, spinach, leeks, mustard, silverbeet and flower seedlings like pansies, Iceland poppies, primulas, and heartsease put in now won't die, but they will probably just sit there until spring, then go to seed unless you have a warm greenhouse;
- Wishing I had a warm greenhouse;
- Harvesting the first Jerusalem artichokes, as well as quinces, crab apples, pomegranates, fabulous native Atherton raspberries and avocadoes;
- Assuming the white cockatoos have eaten all the walnuts and pecans. Luckily we had macadamias, too tough for cockatoo beaks;
- Arranging for a tree near the house with interesting fungo growing out of it to be cut down by professional tree cutters, who can remove it in sections so it doesn't fall on the house.
