Farewell to the Trees

On the 2nd of January I took this photo:

Tiny silver wattle, Acacia dealbata, trees just germinating. I apparently didn't write a blog post about them at the time.

They were part of our TreeProject kit for this year. We (and a number of other people) were growing them for a landholder near Lancefield who was hoping to have all the growers come for planting days to get the 4,000 trees he ordered into the ground. Then the virus happened, and put an end to those plans. He is isolating because he has health issues, and travel restrictions would make it difficult for trees to be transported, and community planting days are right out.

Today we heard from the landholder that a member of his family was going to visit him, and would come past our place to collect the trees on the way. Here's how the silver wattles look now:

Also visible, prickly tea tree to the left, and some grass. In fact 5 out of our seven boxes this time were grasses, rather than trees. We haven't grown grasses before.

The tree boxes were moved to our driveway and this evening someone came and took them away. Not the normal sort of hand-over! I hope the landholder manages to get them planted, and they grow well.

Trees

This morning we heard from the guy we've been growing TreeProject trees for this year. As he has had some rain and more is forecast he was coming to collect some that are ready to plant out.

Rather than go outside and photograph the trees before he arrived, I took this picture through the window, which you can see was not a good idea:

Reflection of my hands rather spoiling the view! But hopefully you can see that some of these trees are very large. The tallest ones are the manna gums, Eucalyptus viminalis.

When the landholder arrived we sorted through the trees, giving him three boxes of mixed seedlings,

These two plus another one.

The left-overs look a bit sad by comparison:

A couple of boxes of small and very small seedlings, and not quite in sight off to the left a couple of boxes where nothing has germinated yet. The larger plants on the left of this photo are actually from the previous year's batch of TreeProject seedlings. They had only just germinated last May when the rest went to be planted, so we hung onto them to grown them up. Now they are well and truly ready, but we have not been able to contact the landholder we grew them for.

A few trees around our garden this afternoon.
The ginkgo still has a few leaves, despite the strong winds today:

 The liquidambar is colouring up nicely:

One of several new trees planted:

Acer rubrum "October Glory". Obviously named in the northern hemisphere. I don't think it will look this colourful in October.

Farewell to the Trees

This time for real:

Four boxes of TreeProject seedlings loaded onto the back of the ute. Two other boxes of just-germinated species will stay with us over winter.

Dropped off at a house in Ballarat, where they joined others, and from where they will be collected by the landholder and taken to their final home somewhere way out in the west of Victoria, almost to the border with South Australia.

Grow well, little trees!

One the way home we drove down an unfamiliar road, and saw a mob of kangaroos in a paddock:

 They seemed pretty relaxed about having their photo taken.

Around the Garden

Our warm autumn seems to have confused the lilac:

It flowered in October, and seems to think that spring has arrived again.

The zygocatctuses all have buds. They normally begin to flower at the end of May, but this one is starting to open already:

A month ago we were supposed to deliver the TreeProject seedlings to our co-ordinator, but because there has been no rain at all where they are going we were asked to hang on to them for a bit longer. I mentioned then that the common fringe myrtles, Caltrix tetragona, had only just started to germinate. At the time I had little plants appearing in about 4 of the tubes, but lots more have germinated since then.

About 28 of the 48 tubes now have tiny plants growing in them.

And the final species, desert hakea, Hakea mitchelli, has also started germinating in the last couple of weeks:

They will obviously not be big enough to plant out this autumn, but perhaps by spring they will be ready to go into the ground. You need to have a bit of patience to grow these two species. The seeds were sown in early December. Five months of watering tubes of gravel before you get the reward of little plants!

It occurred to me today that I have not shown any pictures of  the newest parts of the garden. There are two new beds to the east of the house which have been planted over the last year. So here's a couple of photos for future comparison once they have grown.

The first bed is planted with natives, most of which came from the nursery at Melton Botanic Gardens. I think we took that trip in about June or July last year, although it seems I took no photos that day and never blogged about it. I don't know why, because it was a lovely day, and we bought lots of plants we had admired growing in the gardens.

Most of them have survived and thrived with minimal water over summer, which is fantastic.

The second bed also has a few natives, but we think of it more as our "Gondwana" bed as it also has lots of plants from southern Africa:

Aloes, leucadendrons, strelitzia, haemanthus, and kniphofias all from Africa, plus a kangaroo paw and some grevillea ground covers that will fill in the gaps. And my big rusty ball!

Not All Ready

Yesterday we received an email asking for our TreeProject trees to be delivered to the co-ordinator, ready for the landholder to come and collect them. These are the seeds that were sown back in December.

Some of our trees are very ready for planting out. For example, these mallee wattles, Acacia montana:

and these grey mallees, Eucalyptus socialis:

Yes, I know there are some weeds in there, but they are in tubes which are otherwise empty. They won't be going to the landholder.

Not all the trees are ready to plant. In fact none of the desert hakeas have germinated yet. I'm not worried about them yet as last time we grew hakeas they didn't germinate until the weather cooled down. Perhaps the seeds really need to be chilled before sowing?

I was worried about the common fringe myrtles, Calytrix tetragona. I've never grown them before. They are said to have very low germination rates, so I thought that perhaps we had had a complete failure with them. But look what has just started to happen:

Germination!

So 5 boxes of seedlings will be leaving soon, but we will probably have 2 to look after through winter. Hopefully they will grow well and be ready to plant out in spring.

More Seedlings

A few more of our TreeProject seedlings are growing. This is our seventeenth year as volunteer growers, raising plants from seed for re-vegetation projects around Victoria. You can read details about how the scheme works on the TreeProject website.

Grey Mallee, Eucalyptus socialis, sown on 5th December, first seedlings up on 24th:

Almost too tiny to see with the naked eye. Actually impossible to see without my glasses!

Moonah, Melaleuca lanceolata, sown 6th December, seedlings first noticeable 24th December:

Had quite possibly been up for a day or two before they were large enough to be seen, as the gravel was quite disturbed even though I couldn't see the plants.

Wallowa, Acacia calamifolia, sown 7th December, first seedling appeared 20th December:

But it was the only one, so I wondered if it was a stray seed that got mixed up in the wrong packet. But five days later more seedlings appeared, and they looked the same:

So it looks like that early-bird seed was in the right place after all.

Now there are only two species left to germinate.

First Seedlings

Ten days after the seeds were sown, the first of our TreeProject seedlings popped up today:

These are Acacia montana, the mallee wattle. There are three seedlings poking out of the gravel in that photo, although it might be hard to see them because two still have their dark seed case covering part of their pinkish leaves. This morning there were none up, this evening there are seedlings showing in 11 of the 48 tubes of this species. These seeds had to be rubbed with sandpaper then soaked in boiling water before sowing, so seeing the first ones appear is good as it means the pre-treatment worked.

There are another 6 boxes (which are of 5 different species) still to show signs of life.

Seeds, Flowers, and Dead Branches

This morning I finished sowing the last of the TreeProject seeds:

We have quite a mixed batch this time, with a eucalypt, two different acacias, a hakea, a melaleuca, and one I've never seen before, Calytrix tetragona, common fringe myrtle.

My first dahlia flower is opening:

But the most exciting thing this morning was this:

Do those dead tree branches look like they have eyes? Zoom in for a closer look:

Definitely eyes! Eyes that follow you around without appearing to move. They belong to an adult (on the right) and baby tawny frogmouth, Podargus strigoides. The adult is a perfect dead branch, but the baby is still a bit fluffy to be convincing.

They were in a tree across the road from our place. Their nest may have been somewhere within sight without us ever realising. The birds are nocturnal, and can be very hard to notice during the day because they blend into the forest so well.

Planting Preparation

A small scale working bee to get the TreeProject kit ready to plant. Two people (under the shade sail) filled tubes with potting mix:

Then I moved the filled boxes to their table, compacted the mix and topped up any that were a bit low:

With three of us working on it, it didn't take long to get all seven boxes ready for sowing. By the end of the day some also had their seeds, but I didn't get a photo before it got too dark.

TreeProject Pick-Up

Only 11 days after last year's TreeProject trees were taken away, today was the first distribution of kits for this year's. The distribution point is in Kensington, so we offered to collect kits for the growers in the Ballarat area with our ute.

I forgot to take any photos of the pick-up. When we got back to Ballarat we delivered kits to three growers to save them coming to our place to collect them. Still no photos. But here's our kit:

Only one kit this year - 7 boxes which will potentially hold 336 trees.  They are for the same landholder as the last lot, and include a few of the same species. I hope we get better germination this year than last.

Little Trees

Last year our TreeProject trees were forgotten by the landholder, and didn't get collected until 3rd November. I don't know what happened this year, but until today we still had these:

There were meant to be 14 boxes of seedlings, but the germination rate was very low on several of these species, so we ended up with only about 8 boxes.  And now it is way too late for them to be planted out this year. The landholder came and collected them today, but she is planning to re-pot everything and keep them alive until autumn to plant out then.

Good luck, little trees!

Icy Start

It's five or six weeks since my bethel sage started flowering, but this morning may have put an end to it:

Minus three degrees.

Pretty geranium leaf:

If you are reading this, Jenni, that's the red-flowered one you gave me.

I know from last year that all these leaves on the blue and the white salvias will turn brown and drop off after a morning like this:

But I also know the plants will come back in spring.

I can only hope that the TreeProject seedlings will all survive it!

Mystery Flower and a Hakea

Today I was presented with this mystery flower:

Hibiscus-like, but we don't have any hibiscus in the garden. I thought it must be an abutilon, as we have several of those, but that was wrong. It isn't from the flower garden at all, it's from the vegetable patch. It is an okra flower!

And the last of the TreeProject species has started germinating:

Desert hakea, Hakea mitchelli. It is nearly three months since the seeds were sown, so we had just about given up on seeing any hakeas. But I guess it makes sense for a desert plant not to germinate until autumn.

Another Acacia

Wallowa, Acacia calamifolia, seedling:

This means there is only one TreeProject species which has not yet germinated.

An Acacia!

This was a bit exciting this morning:

One acacia seedling! Acacia rigens, nealie wattle. Only one seedling out of four boxes of acacias, but at least it is a sign of hope. There are now only two species of TreeProject seeds that have not yet germinated.

And one of the crepe myrtles has started to flower:

It could be "Sioux", which started flowering on the same day last year. Then it was in a pot, but now it is in the ground.

Tiny Trees

The TreeProject seedlings have been very slow to germinate this year. Each day I look for some sign of growth, and today I found a couple.

Out of five boxes (240 potential trees) there is now one slender-leaf mallee, Eucalyptus leptophylla, growing:

Just one. But I hope that there will soon be many more! Perhaps the thunderstorm overnight will have triggered mass germination?

Two boxes of moonah, Melaleuca lanceolata, have also begun to germinate:

These teeny-tiny plants look almost exactly the same as the callistemons that started appearing 10 days ago. Not surprising, as they are closely related.

So now there are three species growing (being optimistic about those eucalypts), and three which have not germinated at all yet. The ones I'm waiting on are two species of acacia and one of hakea.

First Trees

We have 14 boxes of (potential) TreeProject seedlings this year, but there has been no sign of germination yet. Today I thought perhaps I was seeing a slight tinge of green in one of the boxes. The only way to be sure was to take a photo:

And then zoom in:

Definite tiny leaves between the grains of gravel. Hooray! These teeny-tiny plants are scarlet bottlebrush, Callistemon rugulosus. (Although apparently since 2006 the correct name is Melaleuca rugulosa.)  I hope there will soon be another thirteen boxes of germinated seeds.


In between other events today I managed to do a little more work on my quilt:

Two blocks sewn together, with their full complement of border bits. This is a decent-sized chunk of quilt, but after a quick count, I discovered the quilt is still in 47 pieces! Quite a way to go before it is all together.

Forgotten Seedlings

Back in February the seeds were sown of this year's TreeProject trees. During March they germinated. And since then they've grown, although quite slowly over winter. Slower than in previous years; winter is colder here than in the city. They even got frozen in May.

Through September and October I was expecting to be notified that the landholder was ready to collect the seedlings, or that we should deliver them. When nothing happened, I thought perhaps where they were going was too water-logged for planting after all the rain we've had. But it is nearly time for the next year's kits to be started - we'll be getting ours in a couple of weeks!

Today it turned out that the landholder had lost track of two batches of seedlings for his order. It must have been a large order if 700 missing trees weren't immediately noticed. Our batch, and those of another grower in Ballarat, were the forgotten ones. He is coming to pick them up tomorrow.

So I gave the seedlings a last look over. Here they are:

You might notice that there are a few empty tubes. Some of the seeds had very poor germination this year. The paper barks and the tea trees all had only about 50% germination.

Here they are loaded into the ute for their trip to Ballarat:

Only five boxes after discarding the empty tubes. We dropped them off with the other grower of forgotten seedlings. We didn't see hers, but she said she had the same low germination rates and the same slow growth. In fact she thought these ones had grown more than hers.

The landholder will collect them tomorrow for planting out this weekend. Grow well, little trees!