Megan Palmer

Carla, the fruit from this tree have a particularly dark outer flesh, the purple is almost black graduating to white in the centre.

I suppose that I could set aside the peach stones with the least white and deepest colour for growing on since they ought to have the greatest antioxidant properties but I'm too lazy to sort them!

I have stones from this season's black boy peaches to share.

The cost of postage in a 19 x 28 cm bag padded with bubble wrap will be up to NZ$60 according to the NZ Post calculator (thickness will be about 5cm).

https://www.nzpost.co.nz/tools/send-it/overseas

Send me a message for my paypal account details, I'll post the stones upon receipt of the cost of postage.

It's been a wet and windy weekend and 90% of the free stone blood peach crop (aka black boy peaches in NZ) has fallen.

Been meaning to trim back the grass under the tree but not gotten around to it so it was a real treasure hunt and I had to be careful not to tread on any fruit.

Will be busy bottling the ones that have already been sampled by the birds.

Judith, a slurry would certainly work, as would digging up some of the mycelium from where you harvested these wine caps.

They are a little fussy about the type of woodchips though. I found that they didn’t do so well in pine.

How far away were your original strawberry beds - you might be surprised how far the mycelium is able to travel!

Lucky you, the are all wine caps.

They may have come in on your woodchips if you didn’t introduce them deliberately.

In my job as a property manager, we photograph the location of all the services - the water mains, internal and external power switch boards, gas meter, and hwc when we do the initial entrance inspection.

The report is provided to the tenants and is useful for maintenance people when they need to do any work at the property.

The local council also have online records of where water mains is located.

As a home owner, we are often less well informed if we didn’t actually build our home.

Emilie McVey wrote:I had always thought wood chips were a great idea for the garden.  In 2022 I managed to secure a chip drop with a local landscaping company, and I shoveled my paths and garden beds 4” thick.

Before the end of the gardening season and into the next (and the next and the next!) I experienced all sorts of problems with diseases, including botytris, anthracnose, rust, fusarium, verticillium, per the county master gardener.  The master gardener explained that the fresh wood chips unbalanced the soil nutrients (used too much nitrogen while breaking down? Can’t quite remember).   The soil became so drained that the diseases got a foothold.  Anyway, it’s been a disaster I am still trying to recover, and learn, from.

The MG said that wood chips need to be aged/dried before adding to the garden and paths.  Was she mistaken and I simply had lousy luck with the fresh wood chips?

All the diseases that you mention are also associated with overly wet conditions and/or poorly drained soils.  What are your annual rainfall figures?

I have been using fresh woodchips as a mulch for over ten years and not noticed an increase in diseases.

I don't incorporate the chips into the soil, it stays on the surface but I do incorporate well rotted chicken manure prior to planting.  My beds are raised in ground.

If we happen to get the right type of wood chips, I get a bonus crop of winecaps some years.

katie makos wrote:I will also look into whether I can source comfrey seeds from somewhere to try.

You mentioned that you don’t have much spare ground so it may be better to source comfrey root cuttings from plants that don’t set seeds. Comfrey grows readily from root cuttings.

There are a couple of arborists who drop their wood chips at our community garden, they get used up really quickly.

This variety of thyme grows locally in our region and is known as wild thyme.  It grows in poor soils over hot, dry summers up to 30C and winters go down to -6C.

The cultivated thyme has rounded leaves that are larger although the flavour is less intense. There is also a variegated cultivar that is lemon scented.

The plant in your photo doesn't appear to be thyme.