Yard Thread

I'm learning how to grow plants

maybe eventually including plants that New Zealand native bugs and birds and lizards and such might munch on.

I've got a whole garden to screw around in courtesy of The Folks, who currently aren't asking much of me other than to work through my depression, get some gentle exercise on the semi-reg, and maybe cultivate them up some free produce down the track.

I'd like to get good at propagating plants because turning a $3 pack of herb seeds into thirty-odd gifts for all and sundry is Pretty Cool Beans. Also if you leave many plants for long enough you can just split 'em in two and end up with two plants. Maybe more!

Plants are great.

The garden currently contains:

Driveway area
-Assortment of native trees
-A blackcurrant bush
-A redcurrant bush
-A small lavender plant I transplanted last week
-An aesthetically pleasing strip of succulents

Chicken-proofed front yard
-Three vegetable beds (oca+courgette, potatoes, various herbs + some crinkly -lettuces)
-An out-of-control rosemary bush
-Quarantined mint
-An espaliered apple tree
-Compost heap
-Worm bin

This Vege Zone is also my half-assed potting area, containing:
-Several plants beg+borrowed+stolen from friendquaintances
-some cacti that might be dead, we'll see
-a tray full of coriander seeds in potting mix

Rest of the front yard
-A small, yet productive lemon tree
-the "cheesecake"/rockery
-lawn
-The Rock-Lined Drygrass Zone (feat. wisteria)
-A couple of big ol' camellias

Back yard
-More lawn
-Unused shady strip by boundary fence
-Lemon balm-infested corner (popular chicken dustbath spot)
-Two thriving hebes
-The neighbors' tree of indeterminate type that drops a lot of leaves and has a resident fantail
-Chicken Coop (with grapevine and mostly-forgotten-about feijoa tree)

> Retrieve watering can from chest.

>plant the chickens

I'm very excited about this thread. My family garden is becoming barren due to seasonal plant-death/harvesting time, and I am already loving hearing about your garden.

Good luck Schazer!

> Retrieve watering can from chest.

ERROR: "watering can" not found

For the vegetable zone, I've instead got this!



Its lengthy hose plugs into a regular garden tap, and the head rotates to change the way the water comes out. MIST is my preferred setting cuz all my plants are still fresh in the ground and more voluminous streams of water around their roots will likely strip the soil off 'em.




Generally, plants should be watered in the either early morning or the evening. Water droplets left on leaves can act like lenses, magnifying the sun's rays and scorching the leaves underneath. Also spraying a fine mist while the weather's hot will be a waste of water (a whole bunch of it'll just evaporate in the sun.)

>plant the chickens

The chickens are 70% beloved pet/family members, 20% steady source of eggs, and 10% garden ornament. Their names are Barney and Velma and they're a pain in the butt to photograph.



One of the ladies laid an egg this morning. For the first month and a half I was back they didn't lay anything much, as egg production slows down during cooler months.

Halfway through writing this I realised the gate to the vegetable zone was open and the chickens had merrily made their way through. The chicken's natural diet is omnivorous but boy howdy do they like ripping apart tender young plants.

>Activate almonds


do you have rooting powder/solution? you can get rooting powder from a garden store. when you want to propagate a thing you wound the bottom, mix the rooting compound with water and then put the cuttings into a soilless potting mix

another way to propagate things is wound a live branch, probably apply rooting powder, and then tie a bag of dirt around the spot you want roots to grow or bury that part of the branch underground

>The almond is a close relative of the peach!

I don't have any rooting hormones handy, but will probably end up trying stuff out with it once I'm confident with other propagation methods.

I visited Trees For Canterbury on the weekend, a nursery that specialises in propagation of New Zealand native plants (and provides much of the stock for various revegetation projects in the area). They mentioned the variation between individual plants of the same species was sometimes due to the plants being grown from seed or cuttings.

I'm very excited about this thread. My family garden is becoming barren due to seasonal plant-death/harvesting time, and I am already loving hearing about your garden.

Good luck Schazer!

Thanks! The southern hemisphere is rolling in the spring time right now. Nights still get a bit chilly sometimes but the frosts are basically done. I'm honestly really glad to have come home this time of year.

show us your trees

Is the little egg with writing on it supposed to induce chicken to lay egg? Like "Here is where egg goes, you should egg here."

i think it says "Redwood"

Ah so she's planting tree

Very crafty, she'll be rolling in eggs come its blossom

show us your trees

In the front of the property, we have:


The large shaggy sort of trees are manuka, named tea-tree by Captain Cook (who used its leaves and bark to make a tea that would fight scurvy on ships.) They're quite valuable from a conservation standpoint because they're the first trees to colonise new and exposed ground and forming a "nursery" in their understory for other trees.

There's also a steady overseas+tourist market for the honey gathered from bees that forage on it as a "superfood" or health supplement.

The spiky ones are cabbage trees. They're a hashtag iconic New Zealand plant. The small-leaved customer in the front is probably a beech? Let me get back to you on that'n


In the front yard, we've got a pittosporum (probably Pittosporum tenuifolum, aka kohuhu) in the back in the Vege Zone, and a plant of unknown disposition in the rockery. It's got cool zig-zaggy branches and soft leaves and I'm probably gonna have to ask my dad when he gets home. Blah.



A pple tree. Espaliered against the fence for space considerations and also to make it easier to pick the fruit. Next to it is the worm bin in black, and the compost bin below.


Moving into the backyard, we've got two camellias (underneath is a popular chicken-foraging spot), a japanese maple that my cat got stuck in, and big ol' azalea. In the back you can see a mature cabbage tree (on the neighbor's property).


Finally, backing onto our property are the neighbor's trees, which drop enough fuckening leaves and seed that they count in my tour. The yellow-green big fellow in the back is an elm, with all the annoying papery seeds that entails. The foreground broadleaf is a mystery for the fuckening ages (at least until I go and get some more Plant ID books from my library).

I want to see your chicken buddies.

Devour Succulent Succulents (Attend Cacti)

good trees all

Schaz.

You are the world-ender.

Embrace your destiny.

Consume all the trees. Life will shrivel all around you and all shall bow to your power.

I want to see your chicken buddies.

blurry cryptid-tier photos are perfectly acceptable