Misidentified Mulberries and Giant Weeds.

This year I've had two trees produce fruit for the first time. We've had both about three years. The loquat put out its first flowers in autumn and we got two fruits. I was a bit too eager and one was really sour. Next year I'll try to remember not to rush with picking them.

Next up is the “white mulberry” we got from Bunnings. I was pretty exited to see the first fruits forming and wondered if I'd be able to tell when they're ripe. It seems I needn't have worried. What's wrong with this picture, Bunnings?

It's that special time of year again. The earwigs are out in force. My plants are under attack and my chickens are probably ecstatic. In the evening I'll go around the garden with a pot and hold it under the plants to catch them falling off in droves when I touch the plant. I don't catch them all, but there are so many it hardly seems to matter. After a while their numbers wool be depleted, then I'll be more concerned to get escapees. In the mornings the chickens get a special breakfast treat as I empty the pot in their run, while I wish that there weren't so many things that want to eat my plants.

This is just a quick whip round, because I was tired that evening, but I usually get three times that amount.

There's lots growing at the moment, mostly weeds, and I'm going to have to start watering to keep things alive, as rain is looking to be scarce again. Some of the onions have started going to flower already, which is probably down to the sudden hot days we've had. We're back to cold again, now though, but not with much rain.

Plums are forming nicely.

I've been fighting aphids on the sunflowers. Initially I was blasting them off with the hose, but the remaining few have succumbed to a parasitic, aphid wasp, so I'll leave them to finish up the stragglers.

The weeds are so big, I've been pulling them up and running the lawn mower over them, to mulch them up for the chickens.

On the chicken front, our australorp, Pancake, got impacted and sour crop. It took a while, but we eventually moved the doughy lump through, with the help of kefir. By the feel of it, the start of it was some fibrous material, like grass or straw. She's in the hospital run until we can get the sour crop cleared up.

Over the weekend we had some chicks hatch out, but it wasn't a great hatch. Three had issues, one seems to have picked up, one has died and the other doesn't look promising. I'm wondering if it's the new incubator, so I'm going to do the next hatch in our old one and see how we go.

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