Take us on a little tour.

Well, I've had, I've created a Kimberley garden with red fines and a Queensland bottle tree that look, they look a bit like Boabs.

And then I've got this massive big log of wood that's come from an old Melaleuca and it looks exactly like a sea dragon.

So I've planted out all sorts of plants so it looks like coral underneath and And then when you walk into the front garden, I've absolutely chock-a-blocked it full of rare, unusual natives.

And then the veranda has got all my nan's garden.

Then you go down the side and it's a rainforest bit because it's all shady.

And then you go out the back and that's where the parterre veggie garden is.

But I did hear you say something about a cake mix or something.

You've got Christine Layton filling in for Jade and Amber and Sabby back from the Ravensthorpe Wildflower Show.

You're in purple.

I am in purple.

And I have to say that I have a plant called a Eupatorium.

I want people to look it up.

It starts with an E-U, Eupatorium.

Now, it is a magnificent plant.

yellow hue.

No, it's not.

Okay.

So it can be that it's overwatered and got waterlogged.

It was a good idea to put rainwater on.

So just stick your finger in the pot and just see, um, how wet it is down there.

Now the other thing that happens with palms is the root system blocks up the drainage hole, so it means the water can't drain away, and I've had this with, um, q- quite a few of my plants.

So if you tip the pot upside down and see if you can see the hole, if you can see the root system, you need to get a drill.

No, in Bedford.

Yes.

Well said.

Thank you.

Okay, thanks, Nat.

Bye.

All right, Jade, let's get down to business.

Yeah.

have more already then?

No, we might need to come back to you.

Anyway, so I think there's a couple of people.

It's in my phone.

But if you go to the Corridors for Carnaby's website, start there, Corridors for Carnaby's website, then there's a program that's nuts.

for for cockies or nuts for cockatoos and that's the macadamia program you need to register and it will have all the information on when and where to pick up the macadamias um so uh So you've got a link in there and you have to go to that and then they will give you all the directions on how to log in and register to get some of these macadamias.

Is there anything else I can do to maybe lessen

the presence of this fungus? Pruning is really important.

Airflow, getting really good airflow coming through.

Hello, Joan.

Hello.

I have two pots of nerines.

Yep.

One flowers beautifully- Yep ... and the other, I haven't had a flower on in two years.

Yeah, I've got the same, same thing.

I don't know.

How, what can I do to help it?

I'd say, yeah.

Okay.

So Cam, woolly bushes in particular are really susceptible to a root rot.

Um, so the aidenanthus, uh...

And they get the wobbles up.

So in a wind, they, they sort of, the, the root system will move a bit and then the water gets down there and they, they tend to rot.

So if you're planting any more woolly bushes, then I always suggest that you get some of the anti-rot spray and spray on them quite early.

Years, they're even growing in the grass now.

... and it is just sitting in bags at the moment."

Okay.

So easy-peasy, Linda.

I would go and get yourself a couple of bags of really good quality compost.

Uh, not- Not, um, soil conditioner, but compost.

I'd throw in a bit of, uh, biochar and, uh, some poo, whether it's cow poo, sheep poo, chicken poo, um, because you're growing veggies.

So, uh, that e- either of those poos will do.

Mm

A little bit of good news.

[laughs] I did, I'm gonna give you the good news.

So, um, scientists agree that this is the sixth mass extinction on the planet, and unfortunately, Western Australia has the worst record of conserving species that are critically endangered and under threat.

So basically what's happened, for the past 30 years, uh, the government hasn't, all the governments over the last 30 years have failed to protect the environment and conservation.

So what the scientists are saying is we need urgent action and political courage to actually put through environmental protection laws.

Now, some of the good stories are that the critically endangered numbat, they have now been breeding them in isolated areas and are releasing them in areas where they control the feral animals, 'cause feral an- animals are a massive, massive, massive problem.

So we know that we can now, hopefully, breed animals that are on the edge of extinction, but we need the habitat to be able to put them back in, 'cause what's happening is we're getting these isolated little pockets of forest or, or environment that suits those species, but they're all fragmented.

Um-

And I don't know what to look for.

Okay.

So Ally, dieback is, it's called Phytophthora cinnamomi, and it is a water mold, and it travels through the ground, and it attacks the root system of plants.

So the plants can't uptake water and nutrients.

It spreads the, with water flow.

So, um, now, there's no cure for Phytophthora.

The only way to...

She needs to know how to prepare and to get it to grow and produce for her.

... one of those is dead.

Okay.

So, um, so Jude, apples are notoriously slow, and that's why people espalier apple and pear trees, because they're slow-growing.

The trees that come in bare-rooted come from Victoria usually, so it takes a little while for the trees to acclimatize to the Perth climate.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, but the, but the stem that's died back, I want you to prune that off.

Um, definitely fertilize them this spring.

I'd put compost on there and give them soil drenches that have got humic and fulvic acid and minerals in them, and you can apply that every month from spring onwards, and that should definitely help with flowering and fruiting.

Mm-hmm.

... not the microbats.

No, we don't, we don't wanna, we don't wanna encourage that.

Not- Okay ...

the microbats are safe.

Anyway, things like basil, mint, the, you know, the, um, pelargoniums, we call them geraniums, they're actually pelargonium, with the scented leaves.

So all those sorts of things, basil in particular actually, is really good as a mosquito repellent.

All right.

[laughs]

We still have

... well, we still have, and it, we've got it forever now.

Um, what happened was, unless the wood chips are, um, taken down to, uh, two, less than 2.5 millimeters, and, centimeters rather, and heat treated, then there is a problem where perhaps the polyphagous shothole borer just goes through and comes out the other side unharmed.

The other thing about wood-based mulch is we have Phytophthora, we have Armillaria.

If the wood is heat treated, the mulch, it is fine to use because it kills all those pathogens.

If you are going to use wood-based mulched, bleh, wood-based mulch, find out where it comes from.

Make sure that it is smaller in size.

Oh.

What do I do?

Yeah.

Well, there is, um ...

You can get fruit fly netting, John, but mandarin trees tend to be fairly wide, um, and it can be hard to net them.

I would put in a couple of different baits.

For a start, fruit fly are active all year round.

We only notice them when we have fruit, but they're actually there all year round.

Hopefully you've got a response.

What do we do with them?

Okay.

So I would not leave them in with the palm tree, actually.

So i- if they're small, you're better off with a ground cover.

So even putting dichondra in there is enough for small quandongs to hook on.

When they get bigger, you're better off putting them near a wattle tree, 'cause they make really good partners for quandongs.

So, um, but I would cut the...

Wants to know if you can grow pistachios in Perth, and is it hard to do?

That's the one, yeah

... bird flu has arrived on our shores.

So, a, a lot of us are going, "All our beautiful mammals, all our beautiful birds..." Now, what I want to...

b- I want people to know that there is stuff that we can do as individuals, okay? So I know there's all sorts of things happening in the world, and we seem to have the rise of the Fourth Reich with world leaders, but there is something that we can do.

So the Corridors for Carnabys was launched last Wednesday, and it is such a fantastic opportunity for all of us to do something to save a species from extinction.

It's not coming from government.

It's coming from you and me and schools and public grounds.

Imploring?

What went on

there? Well, particularly after World War I and World War II, when there was food shortage, but also supply of things like fertilisers, we're experiencing that today.

Some of the market gardens that were grown to sort of feed a nation, they noticed that in areas in the market gardens where they left the old root system, so rather than pull the entire plant out, they would just cut the produce off, say the broccoli or the cabbage, but leave the old root system there and they would plant the seedling next to where the root was still in the ground.

And they noticed that the plants that were grown that way were healthier.

They didn't get as many insects and they certainly didn't get anywhere near the amount of disease that a lot of them got.

So then they started experimenting with different zones and different plots and it was repeated again and again.

And the seedlings that grew next to the old rootstock that was left in the ground fared much better and gave them better yield.

Are there any other ways that you can look after and promote the microbes, though, from your experience?

I'm not sure if you can see that.

Yeah.

So what I'm looking at, for people that can't see the picture, is, um, five sticks, uh, that are leafless, but they've got fantastic big fat buds on them, and that's what you want.

When you prune a hydrangea, you want to get rid of all the old leaves, 'cause they often get powdery mildew.

And what she's done is she has pruned back to two fat round buds.

Now, the reason you go for the fattest ones is they are your flowering wood.

So you've done a beautiful job on pruning that hydrangea.

White sapote.

What is that?

Ah, that's a hakea.

Ah, and they...

Well, they'll wait.

Yeah, they'll, um, they like the seed pods on the hakea.

Their favorite things really are, uh, the banksias and of course marries.

Um, but they will definitely hook into hakea nuts, and they're very difficult.

And I'm just wondering what I might be lacking in the garden to, to really strengthen them up a bit.

[gasps] Begonia hardcore.

Yeah.

So, yes, you can pot that up.

Now, I have to tell you that, like the tropics, they don't like the cold weather.

So in winter, it's going to die down to nothing, right? So you need to replant the entire pot.

It- it's going to die down to nothing.

You water it probably once every four to six weeks.

... of the salt.

I think they wanna save it.

Yeah.

I saw a picture of it, Miriam, and it is an absolute monster of a thing.

Now, it is very old.

It's a double trunker, and it truncates close to the ground.

In order to successfully...

Well, in order to have a 50% chance of that beautiful Xanthorrhoea belgica surviving transplant, you would need a crane, and you would also need a mini excavator.

... should I just simply drop the, uh, the w- uh, the water in the reservoir of the wicking bed and see what happens? Or, uh, what else would I need to do? Um-

Alan sent some pics through

He sent some pictures of a beautiful heuchera lerena, the pink cushion heuchera, in full flower.

Um, and he's concerned that it's got a little bit unruly, and should he prune it? Now, Alan, yes, you should.

What happens with heuchera lerena, or the pink cushion heuchera, is there's two forms.

There's one that's upright and the other one is, uh, a weeping form.

So the problem with the heuchera lerena, the weeping form in particular, it gets really, really heavy with flower, and if you have major storms coming through, because it gets very top-heavy, they have a tendency to be ripped out of the ground.

Now, we're in for some pretty strong winds.

if it's a nutrient thing or what we need to do.

[laughs]

So I found a research paper that is now looking into, and this is happening all across Australia, on why passionfruit vines are flowering, but not fruiting.

And what the theory is that the, the Panama passionfruit, the black and the Nelly Kelly passionfruit were developed many, many years ago, and genetically they are getting weaker.

So the theory is that those older varieties are no longer viable.

They've, they've-

Okay.

Um, and then you're going to take a cutting that is 30 centimeters long.

You need to take the cutting just below a n- a node where the, where the, um, where the leaf comes off.

[laughs]

...

so I mean, they've put the energy into the only two fruit they've formed, but it's not bad.

Um, okay, so it's normal for their leaves to go yellow because they are now going into dormancy, and you have to fertilize that tree in spring.

With pomegranates, most people over-water and over-fertilize.

The big fertilizing regime for pomegranates is when they start shooting, where you see the buds are forming at the beginning or mid-spring.

You fertilize them then, and you don't fertilize them again after that.

Yes.

"... and start doing this."

Uh, 'cause it won't work, 'cause that particular viburnum, and mine gets it every year, they get absolutely hammered by spider mite, and it causes that browning on the tips and the speckled leaf.

Um-So there's a couple of things.

One of them can be the, too much calcium uptake, or if you've got a bore and the calcium builds up on the leaf, they definitely get, uh, spider mite really badly.

Uh, it lasts from summer all the way through to autumn.

Now, you can use wettable sulfur to treat the spider mite, uh, and hard pruning.

Now, viburnums, you can hard prune really well.

And then you let them loose.