The pistachio has nuts!

A pair of one year old pistachios were grown during winter 2009.

Pistachios require a male and a female plant to cross pollinate. They were placed a metre apart.

The pistachio tree can grow high but responds to open centre pruning which will keep it shorter. For open centre pruning select three or four side branches and cut the central stem off above the topmost side branch. The tree will continue upwards and outwards along those side branches. Mine, however have yet to produce side branches big enough to clip the central stem.

The two pistachios were situated at the front of the house, near the neighbour's boundary. Here they will not cast too much shade over areas of the garden or the neighbour's garden.

Making a hedge - Nandina domestica or sacred bamboo

The right side of the driveway is to be lined by a hedge of nandina. There is one large existing plant that has been growing under the neighbour's fence into the backyard. The line will be extended from the backyard under the carport down the driveway to the letterbox.

The young leaves in spring are brightly coloured pink to red before turning green; old leaves turn red or purple again before falling. Flowers of Nandina domestica are white, borne in early summer in conical clusters held well above the foliage. The fruit is a bright red berry ripen in late autumn and often persisting through the winter.

The plant is drought tolerant but responds well to watering and feeding. It grows to 1.8-2.4 m. so makes a great short hedge. The nandina growing in the space between the carport and the fence is bird and insect attracting. There is a blue bee that can be seen below it was photographed while visiting the white nandina flowers .

Spring garden

Canberra gardens definitely go through the four seasons. It's always lovely to see a garden burst into life in the spring. The city is on track to have the highest rainfall in 40 years. Everywhere you turn there are fresh green shoots, bulbs, blossoms and roses. The rain has really been a bonus - I think back to last year when I was struggling to establish plants under water restrictions and drought.

Mystery butterfly

I photographed this butterfly while it was sitting on the wall of my house. I've been using
Michael Braby's The complete field guide to butterflies of Australia to identify my garden visitors. I couldn't identify this one in the book - so it remains a mystery for the moment.

Butterflies

I am committed to creating an environment that will attract butterflies to the garden. They add beauty and magic and, on the practical side, help pollinate plants.

In order to create an environment for butterflies the garden should also take into account food for the catapillar. Butterflies and their catapillars are dependent upon different plants. The favorite food of the Australia Painted Lady caterpillar, for example, is the commom everlasting daisy. The best means of attracting a broad variety of butterflies is to have a diversity of flowering garden plants. Different species have different colour preferences.

Butterflies are migratory and generally on the wing between spring and autumn. Some of the large butterflies, however, semi-hibernate during the winter months and can sometimes be seen on warm winter days in the garden.

The pond forms part of the environment designed to attract butterflies. The shallow wet areas provide a place for the butterflies to drink. Unmown grass areas are recommended for catapillars and paved areas provide a space for the butterflies to bask in the sun before they take to wing.

Small tubular flowers are the best nectar providers. Meadow Argus likes fairy fan flower Scaevola.

I photographed the yellow admiral above as it sat on the fence while I was paving in the vegetable garden. The Caper White (left) migrates through the ACT and was photgraphed in the garden 31 October.

The truffle beds

No dig beds sown with potatoes make excellent trojans for what you may want to plant in the long term. The compost and potatoes will shape and soften the soil where the truffles will eventually be grown.

No dig recipe:

Step 1. Mark out the area and shape with bricks.

Step 2. Create the layers:

Layer 1: brown cardboard boxes. placed thickly straight over the lawn.
Layer 2: semi broken down clods and weeds that were dug up from the vege patch covered with fresh weeds and glass clips.
Layer 3: cardboard boxes again.
Layer 4: lucurn Hay
Layer 5: manure
Layer 6: pinoak leaves
Layer 8: lucern, blood and bone, worm juice and Seasol.
Layer 9: straw 20 cm thick.

Step 3 Make cup holes in the lucern down to the thin layer of soil. Put the seed potato in and fill the cup with a little soil topped with pea straw.

Zuchinies are grown in the cups made in the straw filled with a little soil.

Peas are grown along the fence for temporary privacy and nitogen for the soil...and also for the beans.

Potatoes like phosphorous - blood and bone , manure and plant leaves are good sources of phosphorpus.

Hazelnuts and truffles - notes

Unlike other fruiting trees, the hazelnut tree blooms and pollinates in the middle of winter. Wind carries the pollen from catkins (male flowers) to small red female flowers, where pollination occurs. The flowers remain inactive until spring, when fertilisation occurs and the nuts begin to develop.

All hazelnuts require cross-pollination in order to produce nuts, so every planting requires two or more varieties. Hazelnut trees are generally in commercial production when they are about 6 years old, and
a well managed orchard can remain active for 40 years.

The nuts mature during the summer months and are harvested in late summer and early autumn when the nuts fall to the ground within a short period.
Hazelnuts require a very well-drained, slightly acidic to neutral range soil of pH 6.0 - 7.0 to thrive. Higher pH soils are required to produce truffles in the range pH 7.5 – 8.0.

Most of a hazelnut trees roots are found in the first meter of soil, but soils must be sufficiently deep to allow active root systems to penetrate 2 - 3 meters. Root penetration can
be stopped by rock, high water tables or lack of aeration.

The truffle hazelnut trees were produced in October 2008 and inoculated in December 2008. Hence the trees were 18 months of age when planted.

Truffles thrive in dewy dark forest conditions and alkaline soils. Attention must be given to trace elements such as iron, manganese, copper, boron and zinc. Slugs and snails will attack truffles that are close to the surface and may need to be baited in autumn if necessary.

Truffles ripen and are harvested during the winter months. In the southern hemisphere, this is during the months of June, July and August.

The edible part of the truffle is botanically a fruit, containing spores. It is located up to 20 cm below ground and may weigh 500 g, but can be as
heavy as 1.2 kg.

Hazelnuts

The natural growth habit of the hazelnut is a bush, or multi-stemmed small tree. Three hazelnuts were grown in 2008 as the start of a hedge along the west side of the fence. Cultivars 'American White' and the seedling Cosford which was a seedling.

The young hazelnuts, however, proved vulnerable to the hot summer sun and looked scrappy with their sunburned leaves. The plan for this type of hedge went into doubt. The hazelnut hedge plan came back with a force when we discovered truffle trees.

Six more hazelnuts will be placed along the fence to complete the hedge. The six plants are 18 month old seedings that are truffle infused.

The photographs of male catkins and the female flower.

Plants that host truffles - Hollyoak (holm oak - Quercus ilex)

The Holly Oak is a rounded evergreen tree with smooth dark gray bark and lanced shaped, dark glossy green leaves. The leaf shape is variable, the adult leaves are entire, 4–8 cm long and 1–3 cm broad, while those on the lower branches of young trees are often larger (to 10 cm long), and are spiny, resembling that of the common European holly.