The Attack of the Christmas Beetles

Midsummer is "Christmas Beetle" season. They can do enormous damage to eucalypts.  This young Willow Gum, Eucalyptus scoparia, growing on the Eucalyptus Lawn,  was stripped by them in one day.

It seems that isolated trees are particularly vulnerable,  whereas those growing in the forest fare much better.  Is this because one of the predators of the Christmas Beetle, the endearing Sugar Glider, cannot get to isolated trees?   It is thought that this was one contributing factor leading  to ":eucalyptus dieback"  in the New England region.  

We should perhaps seek to ensure that our eucalypts are not put at risk by being placed in isolated positions. Planting stands of trees that are particularly attractive to Sugar Gliders, such as Spotted Gum, Corymbia maculata,  could assist.

From the Kitchen Garden.

We grow a great variety of plums in The Espaliery, including wonderful old European varieties which are impossible to find in the corporate food barns.

Our friend Heinz Thole, a chef of German origin, is staying with us this week and used an eighteenth century, blue-skinned variety of plum to prepare Zwetschgenkuchen, German Plum Cake,  for a yummy Sunday afternoon treat. Here is the recipe he used.

1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup warm milk (about 110° F)
1-1/2 packages or 3-3/8 teaspoons active dry yeast
2-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
Pinch of salt
6 tablespoons of butter
2 eggs
2 pounds Italian plums
1/3 cup Turbinado sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Add a pinch of sugar to the warm milk and sprinkle with the yeast. Allow to sit for five minutes, then gently stir to incorporate any dry particles. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter. Set aside while you sift together the flour, granulated sugar and salt into a large bowl. Beat butter and eggs into the milk and yeast mixture. Pour into the flour, stirring until a wet dough forms. Turn dough onto a heavily floured surface, kneed lightly into a ball. Place in an greased bowl. Cover and let rise in a warm place for one hour.

Wash and pit plums. Cut lengthwise into halves. If you prefer smaller-sized pieces, continue cutting into fourths. Grease the bottom of a 13×9-inch baking sheet or shallow cake pan. Roll out dough to the size of the pan and transfer to greased pan. Poke several holes with a fork in the dough. Cover the surface with the cut plums. Cut up remaining butter and place on top of plums. Allow the dough to rise in a warm place for 15 minutes as the oven preheats to 400° F.

Bake for 25 minutes until plums wilt and pastry is golden brown. Mix together turbinado sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle liberally over plums while warm. Allow to rest 10 minutes. Cut into squares and serve warm. Store leftovers in fridge.  Makes 20 slices.

For more on The Espaliery, including a list of fruit trees grown there,  click here.

What's Blooming this Week?

Hundreds of trees of Angophora florabunda have erupted into white blossom on the hillsides surrounding our valley in the last week.  

Not a spectacular tree, this Angophora does however provide a valuable seasonal food supply to the honeyeaters, including the endangered Regent Honey Eater.  The flowers resemble those of Eucalyptus.

When in blossom they fill the valley with a delicious honey fragrance. Anne Williams, a reader of this blog via Facebook, describes Angophora as "soft, rounded and gentle". What a delightful and appropriate description.

Notes from The Library #31

"The Art of Creative Pruning" is Jake Hobson's most recent book and it is an inspiration.  With the publication of "Niwaki. Pruning, Training and Shaping Trees the Japanese Way" a few years ago Jake established himself as a modern day uber-dude of cool pruning.  His second book confirms this. 

Hobson commences his tour-de-force with a quote from rock legend Lou Reed and then moves on to pay tribute to two of the great modern examples of Topiary ... the gardens of Marquessac and Sericourt.  The journey continues with chapters devoted to Cloud Pruning and Organic Topiary, Niwaki and the Japanese influence, karikomi, pollarding, espaliers, pleaching ... it is all here.  And it is all good.

We seem to be amassing quite a collection of books on the art of pruning. This approach to garden design is becoming an obsession. Last week we looked at a recent publication about Nicole de Vesian's sublime garden creations in Provence and by next week I am hoping to have received a copy of a book by Yves Gosse de Gorre, the creator of Sericourt. For a list of books in our Garden Library click here

Pruning our Old Weeping Mulberry

The weeping mulberry in The Main Courtyard has recently been pruned back very hard, revealing the beauty of the trunk and branch structure.

We had neglected to prune this twenty year old tree for a couple of seasons and the huge amount of growth led to it blowing over in late November 2011, a victim of the strong winds we get here on top of The Great Australian  Dividing Range.

Clive and our frequent visitor, Elaine Paton, trimmed it back to a skeleton, propped it back up and hoped for the best.

We weren't at all sure the tree would survive all of this, but it is slowly coming back and looking more beautiful than ever after its ordeal.  As they say "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger".  For more on The Main Courtyard click here

Pruning Espalier Fruit Trees

The Espaliery is being pruned this week, with a lot of new soft growth being removed.

This is an important part of the midsummer maintainance routine; aiming to thin the canopy, allowing sun in to ripen the fruit and also keeping  the trees to the desired size.

Here Clive is attending to the arch of Beurre Bosc pears. For more on The Espaliery click here

Progress with Pollarding of the Plane Tree.

Twelve months ago we were wondering whether or not to pollard the plane tree in The Main Courtyard. The tree if left to its own devices would have eventually become too big and be out of scale with the area. To see the posting about this click here

We decided to proceed and got our local arborist to do the job in Midwinter. Pollarding requires technical skill and artistic judgment and we were thrilled with the result. To see the posting on this plus some interesting photos of pollards from around the world click here

And now having burst back into vigourous growth it is looking fantastic; lush and shady and in scale with its surroundings.  Pollarding is in one of the many forms of creative pruning that we are utilizing with  increasing frequency in these gardens.  Given the success of this firstr venture in pollarding we are now considering planting more plane trees in The Main Courtyard.  To see more on The Main Courtyard click here