A quick reminder

Don't forget to spray your fruit trees for curly leaf! It's best to spray them in the first and third week in August. You can check out our friends at Perry's for the details on what to do. I sprayed mine this morning for the first time (I'm running a bit late!) so thought I would remind others too!

Also the blog will be a bit sparse for the next few weeks as we are finishing renovating our home in Hallett Cove to sell! I may even take some photo's to give you updates as we go.

Gardening in August!

It's August - last month of winter, to state the obvious, but I'm excited as there is heaps of fun stuff to do in August. If you are in coastal SA (i.e. not inland) this is what we can be doing in August. Melbournites you can join us too!

Things to sow into punnets in August*:

• Late Onions (eg. creamgold and ever green spring onions
• Capsicums (we're planting 7 colour Heirloom)
• Leeks (some fancy French Heirloom Jaune du Poitou!)
• Tomato (this year we are trying Tommy Toe Red & Gross Lisse)
• Celery 
• Kale
• Asparagus (check out FAT BASTARD!)

We use a seedling tray in a little green house (less than $8 from Bunnings) and put it out in the sun when it's out and keep them in the laundry when it's not.

Straight into the garden you can sow*:

• Lettuce Heirloom Mix (any time of the year!)
• Carrot Heirloom Mix (July to March in warm climate)
• Silverbeet, why not try the spectacular 5 colour mix which can be grown at any time of the year and adds a pop of colour!
• Spinach

General gardening

• A trick some people do is to cover their soil with black plastic or newspaper to warm it up.
• You can spread well rotted compost or manure if you haven't already.

Fruit trees

• If you are lucky enough to have fruit trees now is the time to protect them from leaf curl. You can do this by spraying copper or lime sulfate. For more info check out the experts here and here.

* I'm in a warm coastal area where we get 150-240 growing days per year. Your local nursery will help you with when you can plant based on your local climate conditions.

A trip to an orchard

It was another beautiful Adelaide day yesterday, so we made the most of it by driving to the semi-countryside to visit an orchard. We headed to McLaren Flat (near the famous wine region, unfortunately no time for tasting today!) to check out the very popular Perry's Fruit & Nut Nursery. A number of my friends had recommended the trip and we were not disappointed!

The staff there are great. They helped us out with choosing trees that would give us fruit spread out over the year. They also helped us with cross pollinating apples and choosing trees that would suit the size of our garden.

It was so much fun dreaming about what food we could be producing in two years! In the end we chose:
Pinkabelle, which is a dwarf Pink Lady Apple, which has a gorgeous shape.
A dwarf Royal Gala, another popular apple which will grow to about 1.5 metres.
A peacherine (also known everywhere else except South Australia as a yellow flesh nectarine!) which will stand at about 2 metres.

Missy Moo appropriately eating an apple and playing in the orchard.

Perry's made it so easy to transport the trees as they remove the soil and then place them in saw dust  and wrap them together.

We really wanted to get a mandarin tree as well, but unfortunately they didn't have any in stock.... oh well I guess I will have to take another trip down to the lovely orchard and maybe pick up a few extra trees while we are there!

If you had space for an orchard which fruit trees would you choose?

Photography by Missy Moo- shame the model didn't put much effort into her pony tail!