Playing with sand

Thanks to the generosity of the people at the municipal nursery we got some surplus river sand from their newly installed misting house so today we removed all the old soil from the misting house and replaced it with the proper sand. Whilst doing so another weak spot in the heating wire broke, it looks like it is only a matter of time before we need to replace the wire, hopefully after our first successful rooting procedure.

I was more than pleasantly surprised how well last weeks Pelargonium cuttings looked and couldn’t resist to pull one out to check for roots. Of course after only one week nothing yet. They seemed a little wet though so I changed the timer settings to less water more often, we’ll see again on Sunday.

At teatime we checked the SD card from the wildlife camera and apart from some visiting people Rob also got some good porcupine pictures. Great to see it is working, not so great to see the damage they do, more Sterculia bark removed, Babania dug out and a big hole dug to get at the Sterculia roots near the Albizia. Thank goodness they don’t seem to like the Veltheimas in the forest glade which are budding nicely.

We thought it would be a good time to prune the young trees in the arboretum and use the cuttings for propagation, we are not experts but are convinced the trees are looking better for it. With Cathy and Ellie filling more trays with cuttings the misting house is now nearly full!

Even though Keith, our chief bluegum chainsaw massacre proponent, was not there some more trees were ringbarked. Judging by the number of seedlings in the vicinity it is a necessity and hopefully we can soon plant indigenous replacement trees.

The Protea compacta looked stunning on this winter’s day with Cathy and Rob in the background carrying their tools of alien extermination.

We finished off by collecting another trailer full of composted sawdust from the sawmill to be used for re-potting in the nursery.