One hour project : Shothole.

Today I did a project on plant diseases.

I took a look around our garden for sick plants and
discovered that our nectarine tree is sick.
Shothole is a disease that stone fruits get.
You will notice this disease if you see little purple
spots and holes in the leaves. I took a few photos so that
everyone could see what it looks like.
Some leaves were worse than others.


Shothole can affect buds, fruits and shoots.
Shothole is caused by windy or wet conditions and
can also be caused from poor drainage.
Any affected twigs or shoots should be pruned
and disposed of.
A copper oxychloride should be applied at bud
swell stage.

Curly leaves on our Lemon Tree

Today Patrick the engineer set Rhyannon and I a task which he called "The 1 Hour Research Project". My project was to find out why the lemon tree has curly leaves and has not grown very much since we planted it.

When i looked at the lemon tree (ours is in a pot) i saw that some of its branches had no leaves, one branch was dead, some new leaves were growing but all the other leaves were curly. I looked up "curly leaves on my lemon tree" and found out lots of information about what it could be. Mostly i learned that different types of mite and fungus cause leaves to be curly but our tree did not have any of the other signs for the mites or the fungus that i read about.

The things i read that seemed the most like our tree were called: Defoliation (that is when the leaves fall off), Magnesium Deficiency (This make the leaves have yelloy tips and is why they fall off) and Stunted (not growing).

To fix these things we have to repot our lemon tree into a bigger pot with good drainage and make sure it is not root-bound (that is when the roots have no more room to grow because they are all twisted around). We have to cut the flowers off so the tree can put more energy into growing bigger. And we have to mix epsom salt with water and feed it to our lemon tree and this will give it the Magnesium that is needs.

Put a positive spin on it

Well our cheeky little ponies may have attempted to demolish our Compost Bin of Best for the sweet scraps they could apparently smell inside, and they may have knocked some of the bales about so badly that i can no longer move the lid without everything falling apart; but that is not necessarily a bad thing. There is no question that we will need new bales to hold C.Bob together, but now with an excess of loose pea straw and an abundance of pony poo we have the perfect base for our new garden beds. Next week we will plot them out and then it will be time for planting.

Getting back to our cheeky ponies...Whilst they came rather eagerly to Dragonfly Downs they were not so pleased with my plan of putting them back in their yard. Bowie was not too much of a problem (although i feel he played up a little just to show off); he's old hack at being led and he knows who the boss is (that's me). The young colt Ziggy Stardust however, has only been led one time before and that was to get him onto the float that brought him home. He was less than happy with the prospect of having another lead hooked to him and if it wasn't for Hugo (whose smaller stature is far less threatening) I would never have got close enough hold him and get the rope on him. Hugo and I then had another challenge trying to get Ziggy to go where we led. I do believe that we made a good deal of progress with just a little bit of brute force and lot of positive reinforcement in the form of freshly sliced apple. I'm sure that we'll have him eating out of the palms of our hands soon enough. Figuratively speaking I mean... physically he already does eat out of our palms.

Too much sun or not enough sun

Rhyannon is unhappy and not wanting to blog today.

She did not work on Dragonfly Downs today but went to

Daylesford Primary School Swimming Sports.

She is a little red and a lot grumpy. She has learnt a

valuable lesson in careful application and re-application of suncreen.

We have had to move the sweet basil, as unlike little girl, these are not

getting enough sun.

The tomato plants are going well and we have lots of green fruit growing.

Hopefully the weather will become a bit more consistent and we will see more results.

Beans are happening too and there are lots and lots and lots of figs.

The parsley and chives are very content in their old tyre and we have been using our own herbs, especially mint, in our cooking.

All of the surviving strawberries have now died, thanks to the curiousity of a certain little pony.

Our compost also gained some equine interest (and lost some structure) from the ponies too.

We have had a fair bit happening lately and the weather was really cold last week and now hot, so we have lost a bit of "oomph". Hopefully we will get it together and have some exciting news in the next few weeks.

For now, we are just plodding along........

Tiny pony : Bad pony.

This week we put Bowie and Ziggy into Dragonfly Downs to eat down the grass and weeds. Instead of eating the grass and weeds they decided there was something very yummy in the Compost Bin of Best. They munched on the pea straw trying to get inside. C.Bob now has a large amount of straw missing. Luckily they didn't get to the compost. We think it is still ok as is, but we will not empty and refill this one, we will buy extra bales when we need to.