I’ve started adding some tiny triangles to my collection of revegetation plots over our hills. Continue reading
Kosciuszko to Coast Foundation
STRIP TREES
It’s that time of year again, when we happily send some young trees out naked into the winter.
The ones that seem large enough have their wildlife and frost resistant covers removed, so that we can recycle them for this year’s plantings. That’s hundreds of covers to be jerked up, flattened and carried back to the truck, then transported to our overcrowded garage for storage. Continue reading
A BIG DAY OUT FOR SMALL BIRDS
diamond firetail finch photo by Chris Tzaros
This year the grand finale of our tree linkage project was not even on our own land. To complete the 3.9 kilometres (2.4 miles) of small plots that will allow birds like diamond firetails (stagonopleura guttata) and speckled warblers (chthonicola sagittata) to move around the landscape, we planted a larger area at the edge of the Dog Trap Road. A paddock that actually belongs to our neighbour Suzanne.
PLANTING HOPE
At sunset on Anzac Day we planted an Aleppo Pine (pinus halepensis), a descendent of the Lone Pine at the centre of the 1915 battle at Gallipoli in Turkey. I don’t usually plant non-native trees, but this one was special.
The Rev. Peter Dillon, a former Army Chaplain, and Dad of our neighbour Leonie, gave a moving speech about the war, a prayer and a reading of the Ode of Remembrance by Laurence Binyan – the one that goes “They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old…” Continue reading
PLANTING IN DRY GROUND
The Easter Bunny this year brought friends and excellent company – and the planting of 182 trees and shrubs
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Generally, our method of planting trees and shrubs requires lots of water. We pour on 10 to 20 litres per tree to give them a head start in our dry landscape. We add mulch and a stout pink corflute plastic cover to help preserve the humidity, among other things. Then we walk away and hope for the best. We give them more water if the temperature goes over 40 degrees celsius (that’s 104 in Fahrenheit for people on the old-fashioned measurements).
Our truck mounted fire and tree watering pump plus 800 litre tank
But out new plants have the best chance of doing well if the general ground moisture is good and there’s regular rain after they’re planted.
Ground moisture when we planted this Easter – nil. Continue reading
WHICH? WHAT? HOW MANY? THE PLANT LIST
Nick and Nick’s Patch aka K2C Exclosure 4
Last autumn we planted up five mini enclosures to provide protection for small native birds and to re-establish a corridor from the Mullion Creek down to the Murrumbidgee River. It turned out to be a great way to get a lot of connection done without a massive amount of time spent planting.
At the time I was glad to see a lot of native speargrasses and scattered clumps of native bluebells (wahlenbergias) among the introduced grasses and weeds.
WHAT WE PLANTED
| Acacia dealbata | Silver Wattle (1) |
| Acacia genistifolia | Early Wattle (3) |
| Acacia implexa | Hickory Wattle (3) |
| Acacia rubida | Red-stemmed Wattle (5) |
| Acacia sp. | a wattle (1) probably Sydney Green |
| Bursaria spinosa | Sweet Bursaria (3) |
| Callistemon sieberi | River Bottlebrush (5) |
| Eucalyptus macrorhyncha | Red Stringybark (1) |
| Eucalyptus melliodora | Yellow Box (4) |
| Eucalyptus polyanthemos | Red Box (3) |
The numbers in brackets show how many of the enclosures include that species.
I’m really happy to have this list as I sometimes lose track of what I planted, and it’s a long hike uphill to check. In the heat of the moment I also sometimes make some odd choices. Putting river bottlebrushes on the top of a ridge, for example.
After we were done planting, Rainer Rehwinkel and Lesley Peden from the Kosciuszko to Coast Foundation came out and paced back and forward in each little area recording all the plants they saw. It was early in the season, so many of them were very tiny.
I looked up and made links on the names for many of the plants that interested me or I didn’t know well. I chose sites that had good information if I could, including the Atlas of Living Australia. There wasn’t one site that covered everything well. Some were fascinating, such as EattheWeeds.com Continue reading
