Cruising the blogs

I've been cruising the blogs again and getting a bit depressed looking at all the great produce everyone seems to be getting. Out here the harvest has been pitiful to say the least. Below is the tomato haul for the week, barely enough for a sandwich. But at least we have had a few. My neighbour though, has ripped his plants out in disgust and he's a gardener that could give Peter Cundall a run for his money.

This time of year four years ago we where swimming in tomatoes, we had tomatoes for drying, sauces and bottling. We had tomato's coming out our ears.

OK, that's the whinge out of the way now on to the good stuff. We had truckloads of rain late last week, around 65mm in fact. As well as giving us a heap of catheads it perked the garden up no end and, it looks like we will get a bit more before this week's done. The last couple of days have been pretty steamy, downright tropical in fact. And just like the tropics, today around noon the cumulus started building, so with a bit of luck we will get a bit of a storm that will wet us down again.

 

In other news from the boonies the washing machine is back in action after a couple of weeks resting up. It started making quite a bit of racket, and initial thoughts where it was bad news, it's long out of warranty and a three hour round trip to the nearest repairer. On closer inspection it turned out to be the pump, no big deal at all really, a job I could tackle myself. Our machine is a Fisher & Paykel, Smart Drive GW612 and the pump is a simple bayonet mount unit. The pump and other parts for most machines on the market are here if anyone is looking for them. I ordered my pump from here and received reasonably good service.

If anyone needs to tackle this job it is fairly straightforward. The procedure is as follows. First disconnect the machine from the wall (very important, both power and water) and pull it out so that it can be tipped back or, lift it on to a couple of saw horses. You need to access the pump from underneath (the only practical way in). Disconnect the two wires from the pump, flip the retaining clip back and twist the unit so that it can drop free. Put the new pump in and connect the wires again, now you're good to go. The bayonet mount pump seems to be a standard unit in the Fisher & Paykel top loaders so this repair is a reasonably easy home job .

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Gardening Mates

Things are looking up out here in the boonies. The last week has been a bit cooler than heatwave conditions and as a result the garden has picked up a bit. The corn is flying along and developing pollen heads. The pruned tomato plants are showing good signs of recovery and the beans on the end of the shade house look like they will give us a few more beans before they sign off. The dwarf beans planted outside the shade have had enough and called it a day, but I'll get some more going in the next few days so it won't be to bad.

Last night we got a bit of the rain that has been moving down from Queensland, about 13mm so far and we may get more tonight and tomorrow. I took the opportunity to plant out the seedling tomato's I had ready to go and with a bit of cool and some more rain they should be off to a flying start. I had a bit of help with that job as you can see from the photo below. This guy and his mate are a permanent fixture around here and as soon as he spots me with a garden fork or hoe he's under my feet looking for any grubs or worms that get turned over.

That's one of the neat things about having a garden, you usually get to have a bit of wildlife as well, and we are lucky enough to get quite a bit. Of course living close to the river and a river bend reserve helps. Along with the usual insects we get all sorts of reptiles both large and small, and I have planted to encourage them. The garden is a mixture of native and exotic and I have placed logs and bits of garden furniture to create a habitat for them. 

 Most of the lizard population is made up of small skinks and geckos. Occasionally we get a snake or lace monitor cruising through and from time to time a bearded dragon or shingle back will be seen poking about.

Along with the reptiles we get the birds that like to eat them, Kookaburra, Butcher bird and Magpie. The Kookaburra like to use my weather station and shade house as a diving board for bombing their meal. There is a family of about seven that visit regularly and because we will give them an occasional handout they have become quite tame.

As today is cool enough for inside cooking I have taken the opportunity to throw a leg of mutton in the oven, so, tonight we dine in style.

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Time for a change of strategy

Its been an up and down week and a bit since I last posted. We have had a bit of cooler weather and a good blast of hot. The garden has taken another pounding so bits of it are looking decidedly sad. On the good side the blackberries are doing OK in the shade structure I built for them, we have had a couple of good picks with a lot more to come. These are destined for the trading post as we already have a good supply in the fridge.

The beans I planted outside the shade areas have been dealt to by the hot wind and are not looking too perky but I think they will pick up if we get a bit of cooler weather. Those in the shade house garden are fine. I have given up on the first corn crop and planted another lot with a bit of wind protection, I think we will get them through to maturity before it gets to cold. The first plants did produce a few cobs but definitely not the best corn I have seen. I will pull them out and get the ground ready for a few tomatoes I hope to carry into winter. Last winter we had tomato plants growing well right through the winter. The tomatoes we got off those plants at the end of winter where some of the ugliest looking things you would ever see but they had a taste you wouldn't believe. It was the first time we have had tomatoes survive a winter outside. They stayed happy and healthy right through with very little damage from the unusually light frosts we got. This year I will try them in a polytunnel and see if we can have them fruiting in the winter, we get enough light so if I can keep them warm it could be a winner.

Summer tomatoes have been almost a total failure this year, even the shade house ones have produced only a few small fruit. The hanging pots have kicked the bucket, another total failure. The pumpkins have suffered badly with only a few runners surviving. Today I pruned those back a bit and planted a few seedling pumpkins I had ready to go. I may have to work out some shelter for them to get them through the next month or so until it starts to cool a bit. Surprisingly some NZ yams I planted have made it through everything the summer has thrown at them. They are not a heat loving plant and usually turn their toes up if it gets over 35 degrees. I managed to get hold of a few seed yams last spring (even though they are rationed by most seed suppliers) and planted them in the shade house. As it warmed up I planted a row of dwarf beans on either side of them in the hope that cooling effect of the transpiration from the beans would help them. So far it's working and we may get a crop off them.

The Kumara are powering along under a rough shade cover and should provide us with a feed or two. The summer so far has been pretty tough and it looks like this is going to be the norm for the future. From here on it looks like we will have to start our summer crop at least a month early so they are well established by the time the heat gets at us. The shade cloth structures are going to be a permanent fixture around here, along with some wind breaks to keep the hot northerly winds from giving us the blast furnace treatment. It looks like we have to find new ways of doing stuff if we are to have any hope of an easy life on a Tough New Planet.

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Another scorcher

Ten in the morning and it's already past 35, one of my crazy neighbours is out mowing his lawn down to the dirt. Tonight it will be water everywhere trying to make it grow again, some people just can't get their head around drought. Anyway, as it's forecast to reach 43 today I made an early start, (4.30am) I've finished all my outside chores and have retired to the computer to get on with a bit of blogging. Since it is going to be another hot one I thought today's blog may as well be about our keeping cool strategy.

When I designed the house it was passive solar all the way, but of course for us passive solar is as much about cooling as keeping warm, it's quite a mild winter climate out here. We have a wide verandah around three sides of the house that keeps the sun off the windows for most of the day. To the east my neighbour has some decent trees that keep the summer morning sun from frying us and I have supplemented that with a shade cloth awning. On the western side there's a grape trellis, a carport and now a pergola. To the south I have a shade garden that supplies cool air into the house through louvre windows. House pages here and here, you may also notice that I weakened and put in aircon, but, hey I'm a senior citizen now and I melt in high temperatures.

The house is fully insulated, walls, roof and under floor so it maintains temperature quite well. At night we open the place up to the cooler night air. In the morning as soon as the temp starts rising it's batten down the hatches. Most hot days we can get away without turning the cooler on until late in the day. Some days though, like the last few and when the nights are hot that baby gets cranked up early I can tell you. The system we run is evaporative, not too hard on power but it can get through a bit of water, so we like to use it as little as possible. It's a bit of a dilemma though, water shortages and evaporative systems, but we do manage to keep our water use under 250 litres a day average for the year. Next year I hope to have it running on tank water, we'll see how it goes.

One other trick we use is quilt insulation on the windows. My fearless leader is a keen quilter so she knocked up some that fit snug in the window frames (they're not snug in these pics because I needed light for the camera work). They work a treat hot or cold. I made up some permanent rod holders and they are simply hung as the need arises.

Working hours around here when it's hot are, early start 4 - 4.30 am, weeding or watering by the light of the moon or the street lights on the nature strip. Any other quiet work until 8 am then as much noise as possible until midday. Lunch, then a nanny nap until it cools down enough for the evening shift. In this neck of the woods it's Mediterranean lifestyle all the way.

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Looking at the future

What a mongrel day, one of those days when you can smell the heat. That heat building up at two and three degrees an hour until, smack! it drops ten degrees in one. The wind, howling through from the North, hot as hell and over 65 km/h with peak wind gusts exceeding 90 km/h, and after the front passes, from the south just as strong. Trees and plants getting flogged to death and anything not nailed down sailing off to the neighbors. That spooky pink glow in the sky as half of South Australia blows past our door. It's not looking good Clive, seems like this sort of weather is becoming all to common around here.

 This area is an arid place for sure and it can get darn hot at times, but it seems as if there is a lot more anger in the heat these last few years. Anything not protected from the direct sun is getting fried. Even plants that can usually take a bit of heat are getting knocked about. Any of those plonkers that think climate change is not a problem should spend a bit of time out here. I'd like to see how they're travelling at the end of a summer like this one is stacking up to be.

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We don't know how lucky we are

Well I'm flabbergasted, absolutely astounded, you could knock me down with a feather. More Rain! I had thought a trip to the stables for more horse poo was on the cards for today but it looks like I get to stay inside and do a bit of blogging. Or I could bake a cake, maybe a practice run on my entry for the chocolate cake comp at the local show next year. Or a book perhaps, or maybe ten minutes in the beanbag, I'm spoilt for choice.



Update: It was 12mm and the beanbag won.

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Rain on the plains

We're blessed, it's rained, good rain to, about 19mm in the last two days. That's about 225mm for the year so far but still around 138mm shy of the long term average, so we will require some heavy duty rain in the next couple of months to catch up. Still what we have is welcome and things have livened up in the garden now, it's like magic, plants are popping out of the ground everywhere. I even found a Kumara I had planted for slips and forgotten about. A dwarf lemon tree I had to move the other day because it wasn't doing so well where it was, has picked up and even has some new buds on. I had given up hope of it ever making the grade so that's a bonus, we may even get a lemon or two off it yet. The swales are wet and the water tank got a top up so it's all good in the land of windblown dust and dirt.

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Hot as hell in Hay and Booligal

This from the Bureau of Meteorology  today.

New daily maximum temperature records for November have already been set at Wilcannia (45.2ºC) and Broken Hill (43.4ºC) on 16 November. Many stations across NSW are likely to set new November daily maximum temperature records over the next two days, Griffith and Cobar are both forecast to exceed their record temperatures on Thursday with temperatures of 45ºC. Broken Hill is likely to smash it's very recent record, set Tuesday, with 45ºC forecast for Thursday.

In addition to daily temperature records many sites across southwestern NSW are now setting records for a consecutive number of very hot days in November. Locations such as Hay, Deniliquin and Balranald have now experienced a record 8 days in a row above 35ºC. Broken Hill has set a record of 9 consecutive days over 35ºC and 6 consecutive days over 38ºC. With high temperatures forecast to persist in this region until at least Saturday these records are likely to be significantly extended.

It's looking like another long, hot, and miserable summer for us again this year. And we already have plants burnt by the sun.

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