We have entered the glorious weeks of high summer, where it’s just too hot to do much physical activity in the middle of the day. Having both had skin cancers removed – fortunately at early stages, we are careful to wear long sleeves and a hat when we are out. We start early in the garden and orchards, as we want to be out of the sun before it gets too hot in the middle of the day. We work until lunch time and then stay inside until the heat has passed in the afternoon, then we get back out there and do some more.

The jobs vary, but they are never-ending. There is always something to be done, often needed in a hurry. The morning starts with picking fruit. We have passed peak young berry and although we are still getting some each day, we are no longer picking kilos a day. At the peak, our biggest day was 3 kg. We will continue to get less and less, picking only every second day now, up until Xmas day, or thereabouts.

We have reached peak blueberry season today with 2 x 200mm. plastic containers of blueberries. We have about 20 plants, some doing well and others not so well. They are high maintenance and very demanding.

Blueberries won’t do well unless all their demanding criteria are met. They need to grow in a bog of fresh seeping, acid water, or at least watered every second day. They also need to grow in acid conditions, preferably a very well-drained situation. So here, where we are, up on top of this dry, stoney, drought ridden ridge, there is no natural place for them. We have tried them in the ground in a couple of places, even mulching with huge amounts of acidic leaf litter and the addition of a little sulphur powder to the soil, but they are not happy, even though we water them well, I suspect that they are not sufficiently well drained. They are growing, but not too well, hardly putting on any growth. They do flower and set fruit, but only in moderate amounts. They have only grown 700 mm. high in half a dozen years. Our second attempt, also in the ground in the vegetable garden, where we dug in copious quantities of acidic leaf litter and she-oak mulch, they did much the same, they didn’t thrive, but we do get some fruit from them.

Our best effort to date was to plant them in tubs filled only with naturally acidic leaf litter and detritus from the wood pile and from around the wood splitter, this being almost entirely made up of coarse, fibrous woody compost-like material. These 7 plants have grown 1.2 metres in one year and have flowered and set a great crop. They still need to be watered regularly, but boy are they productive. I’m still finding it hard to believe that a plant can grow so well in nothing but tree bark and saw dust! A medium that has no soil in it. It’s certainly well-drained and is naturally acidic. It seems to be just a matter of keeping up the water to them.

We have just started to pick the first santarosa plums along with the last of the apricots. Now that the apricots are over for us, the net is no longer needed there and we have decided to move this big net off the apricot tree this morning and along with its poly-pipe hoops and have set it up over the second plum-tree. The elephant heart plum.  These plums are still green now, but will be turning red soon, and that red colour always attracts the birds. So far we have managed well with the birds this season.

Once the poly hoops are set up and the netting transferred, I drag the last of the netting over and manage to trap one luscious Janine and two chooks under the net. Now we can relax a bit. All that is left to do is to move the DAK pots and fruit fly lures across from the other tree. I try and keep at least one fruit fly lure inside every net. I spend $50 each year on fruit fly trap re-fills and a bag of dynamic lifter. Even growing your own fruit isn’t free + the hundreds of hours spent in the maintenance and watering, but this isn’t really work. It’s better described as fun and recreation, otherwise you wouldn’t do it.

The late peaches are ripening, I suspect that it won’t be long and we will have these on the menu too. The late peaches are luscious, dense, yellow fleshed and so flavorsome. They put the super early white peaches to shame for flavour, but the early peaches are always first, so we are so glad to get them and really appreciate them for their sweetness. We don’t realise how thin the flavour is because we are so looking forward to eating them after 12 months without peaches. Now in the midst of the high summer heat and ever so long days, the solstice is just a few days away, we are getting picky. For instance, we have stopped picking and eating the mulberries, there is always so much more and better fruit at this time of year. We let the birds have most of those, we just take the easy low hanging fruit these days.

The strawberries are still continuing to produce regular pickings since spring, never too many, but just regular and steady, we have the strawberries mulched with pine needles that Janine sweeps up from under the big pine trees after every storm. We have a constant pile of it down where the truffle trees are growing. We use it for litter in the chook run and in their nesting boxes. After I rake it out of the chook rum every few weeks, along with a load of pooh all mixed in with it, it gets wheel-barrowed to the citrus grove and used for mulch around the trees in there. Nothing is wasted, everything has a use and a re-use.

Looking back at our mornings work, I can see that there is a lot of grass grown up under where the netting has been. I get out the whipper-snipper thing and see to it, then think that I should also do all the paths in the veggie garden while I’m out here and into it. Couch grass never sleeps in this hot weather. I can’t afford to let it get a hold in the garden beds. One thing leads to another. There is no end to jobs. But the sun is right up there now and its almost 12-ish and time to put the mower away and go inside for lunch and then some inside work till it cools off. It’s a good thing that the days are so long right now, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get it all done.

I get out there again and dig out a nasty patch of couch grass that has got a hold of part of the garden path. I set too with the mattock and dig it out roots and all. It’s hot sweaty work, but very rewarding when you look back after you’ve finished!

This is a job that won’t need doing again for another year in this spot, but there are still 3 more patches just like it at the other ends of the pathways.

I must have been wicked!