Spinifex garden pictorial - regular updates

Thanks Feralemma,

Try growing mint and asparagus. They are basically weeds!

The hay mulch is actually under my stonefruit trees. That's a very verdant plum tree that looks like a citrus and it yields about 40kg of fruit per year. And yes, I do keep much away from the trunks - about 20cm.

Three main options for weeds:
I do spray the fence-line and 'paths' in the garden with roundup twice a year. I will also prepare a bed with fertiliser and irrigation to get all the weeds to germinate and then spray the bed a day or two before sowing/planting out when weeds are all still tiny seedlings.

I have also used a gas blowtorch to flame-weed prepared beds before sowing/planting.

I tried weed mat for a year but found it created perfect refuge for slugs and earwigs that hammered the hell out of my crops. In other areas it might work well. It certainly did out in my central australian (desert conditions) market gardens. I don't use it here anymore.

Once crops are up and running I only hand weed. The trick is to get the crop canopy nice and lush as quickly as possible to shade out the weed seedlings that try and come up later. Some crops with sparse canopies like onions don't work in that way ... but many others do.

Ditto.

Spent a couple of hours sorting out my lime tree today.

1. Before - bit weedy hey?  The whole tree is just a 6 foot sphere so I can reach all the fruit without a ladder or any other form of messing about.  Keeping the canopy small also helps with reducing the amount of irrigation required thru the summer.
2. Graded harvest - the big square 20L bucket is 'marmalade grade', the blue box is 'premium' (for salad dressing and Asian dishes) they mostly have a short bit of stem still attached to maximise shelf life. The other two containers are 'intermediate grade'.  They'll be distributed out to friends and family and such.  They're good but will only have a shelf life of a few weeks tops.  There is still about a shoe box full of fruit left on the tree as well after harvest.
3. My citrus fertiliser factory!  (He's also a lot of tasty meat in a dire situation.)  I only collect and used the well composted stuff that the chickens have been working over for a few months.  
4. After ... with a fresh layer of compost applied.  The wire netting stops the chickens from spreading the compost from where I want it ... to the entire surrounding area.
5.  Assessing fruit for shelf life - longer term keeping. (Click to enlage) From left (looking at the three fruit in a row with stem attachment showing) : a good fruit straight off the tree with pale stem attachment. Next is a good fruit that has been off the tree for a week or so. The one on the right is a fruit that is showing advanced signs of aging - stem attachment very dark and has 'wrinkles' radiating out from it: no shelf life left in that one.

Inspiring thread spinifex! Great to see such productivity...

I'm ashamed to admit I let things fall fallow over summer due to being busy and having ridiculously dry weather... I even had a row of 3-4 year old acacias (the beginnings of a wind break for a spot I'm trying to cultivate) completely fall over and die.

Seems like you've got some pretty serious wind breaks around do you dig that iron/poly into the ground for pests also or is it mostly for wind?

I'm jealous of your favas! Mine never make it even close to that high...

I can attest to the quality of the so called "intermediate" quality limes - better than anything Coles or Woolies sell!
Thanks again spinifex!

Again, I'm envious. I do enjoy getting all manner of fruit from Donnybrook whenever possible, but that's a 2 hour drive for me.

There's a particular German plum variety called Zwetschge - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwetschge - it's used to make Zwetschgenkuchen - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwetschgenkuchen - one of the very few desserts I enjoy. And I *really* love this one. Unfortunately I've not been able to find the same flavour in any local plums I've tried.

That's awesome - thanks a bunch.

I'll keep an eye out for when they're in stock, and if getting them into WA is possible.

Click to enlarge.
1. My redundant 6mm irrigation lines with in-built drippers.  Really easy to install and really hard to maintain to keep them running well.  Now I use 19mm lines with individual maintainable drippers punched externally on to it.  Either directly (outside) or via 4mm tube extensions (Green House)
2. My all time favorite and easy to use irrigation controller unit.  In this case attached directly to a tap but they can be installed anywhere within an irrigation system with just a few basic fittings.  Note the hard-core pressure reducer (with the yellow band).  Water pressure needs to be kept within the operating limits of the controller or they don't function properly.  These run on a 9 volt square battery like in a smoke alarm.  A battery can last for a couple of years.  Easy as to program as it is a single station control unit.  I find 'hi tech' multi station units a total pain in the rear for vegetable gardens.  I want my entire irrigation system to go off at once (and I have the flow rate to sustain that) and to water different crops in different ways I change the drip lines between 2L per Hour and 4L per hour.  Each line has its own tap so I can switch off each line as it's crop is harvested.  That bent piece of copper pipe laying on the sleeper is what I use to 'jet' star pickets and/or fence posts out of the ground with ease.  
3. Close up of the face of the controller... easy to use.
4. Planting out my seeds (finally!) into tubes prepared a while ago.  I use a really high tech stick to do it just right.  I gentle wiggle the sharper (pale) end in a circular motion to make a nice 5-7mm deep opening, drop in a pair of seeds, gentle tamp the seeds down with the blunt end of the stick, and with a light touch of fingers smudge the loose soil back into the hole. I do not just push the stick into the soil to make a hole for the seed ... because that makes a compacted layer directly below the seed which gets in the way of instant, deep root growth as the seed germinates. (Sometimes a seedling will push itself out of the ground due to that sort of compaction.) 
They get a very light watering every day and I put a layer of water 10mm deep in the base of the tray each morning.  By the following morning it is gone thru evaporation and being soaked up by the tubes.  

All going well they'll be ready to plant out in the Green House in the first week of September.

Oh ... and gotta watch the cats.  They WILL sleep on the seed tray if it takes their fancy.  Think I'll prop a sheet of glass over them!

Found!
I am truly envious!