Garden Hose

 I know a bit, perhaps a lot about garden hoses and the trouble they can be.

With our large one-acre garden I have to do a lot of watering so I need a good quality hose.

There is nothing worse than having to continually take out kinks in a hose.

Some hoses go hard in the sun and perish which is so frustrating, especially if they have been expensive.

I recently bought this hose from Bunnings, it was a risk as it was made from new material.

To my delight the hose has never kinked and remains supple and easy to handle and has an eight year warranty.

Yes, I am happy with my purchase and would recommend it.

Heat Mat for Propagation.

 We have found this firm to be very good and helpful and there product is Australian made.

Best Potting Mix

 

Best Potting Mix

 Trip to Centenary Landscapes at Darra today to collect one metre of potting mix and some composted bark.

This is for Judy to continue propagating and for me to start potting all my stored Amorphophallus tubers.

For the Amorphophallus the composted bark and perlite will be mixed in with the potting mix.

It's a fair trip one we only make of a Sunday to avoid the traffic but it is worth it as the potting mix is the best we have found so far.

Beneficial Fungi.

 I have been sent a pack of this beneficial Fungi.

Will be interested to see how it goes.

All I have done so far is add it to my compost, later I will water it into the garden.

Soil Improver

This is without a doubt a fantastic product.

Used to be 'Active 8' but now they have improved it adding a further eight elements into the mix.

Bunning's do not sell Rocky Point products but most Garden Centers, Produce Stores do.

We grow vegetables with this mixed into the soil and when it's time to plant the Caladiums lot's of bags go into the garden.

#rockypoint

Potting Mix

This was a great potting mix but now they have changed the formula and we hate it.

It is very light without much body and it dries out very quickly.

Seems to have a lot of sand in it.

Hope they soon go back to the old mix as they will be getting a lot of complaints.

I will be testing other products soon and hope to find a really good mix that I can recommend to you.

#rockypoint

Ryobi One Power Shears

This is a great tool by 'Ryobi One' powered by an 18 v battery.
As I have said previously I need to make my gardening life a bit easier so I looked at this at Bunning's and said 'That looks like it may help me" so I bought it just in time to help me with cutting back several Carambola trees.
So am I happy, yes it did help and made my life a bit easier.
Ryobi One if registered on line with extend to warranty to six years.

Ryobi One Garden Tools

I am always looking to make life a little bit easier especially at my age.
I work dammed hard in the garden most days and sometimes get lot's of aches and pains.
So if I see a product that makes life easier I will go out and buy it.
Ryobi One products have impressed me, I now have quite a few and if registered online you get a six year warranty which means if anything goes wrong it's just a quick trip to Bunning's to exchange the tool.
I will post more at a later date of some of the other tools I have.
The ones today two hedge trimmers, one extendable and one not
All of these I have found useful.
As you can see the fruit trees have been trimmed nicely.

Great Top Dressing Soil

I have had so many problems with crook soil over the years so it is with relief that I have actually found some good stuff.
This product is a fantastic blend of goodies for top-dressing your lawn, it is sourced from 'Candy Soils' and sold at 'Rocknsoil' situated on New Cleveland Road, Capalaba.

I have just used three cubic metres on my back lawns and it is so fine that is disappears into the grass very quickly.
It is $85 a cubic metre but it's worth paying for something good.

Fiskars Pole Pruner

A big thank you to Fiskars for incredible service and great product.
Replacement Pole Pruner arrived today honoring their 25 year warranty.
I honestly could not look after my fruit trees without this great tool. 

Fiskars Garden Tools

I am a big fan of Fiskars garden tools.

After buying on a budget cheap Chinese junk garden tools I realized that if I wanted a quality tool that would virtually last me a lifetime I would have to pay more to get the quality and lifespan  I desired.

All Fiskars are made in Europe and are a Finnish firm.

Another great thing about these tools are that they are ergonomic.

So over the past few years I have been steadily building up my collection of these great tools (see picture).

Some I have been given by Fiskars but the majority I have bought myself.

I have never had any sort of problem until now.

The cord on my Telescopic Tree Pruner snapped and as much as I tried to replace the cord the more frustrated I became, I just could not get it right and yes I did download the instructions.

So at $200 plus it is an expensive tool to purchase and I am coming up to the time where all my Custard Apple trees will be needing their annual prune.

I noticed while shopping in our local Bunnings that Fiskars tools have a 25 year guarantee.

I will let Fiskars know and hopefully may have a positive outcome.

January 2018 Garden News

No blog last month (December) as we were just so busy with family and of course Christmas.

We had great rain in December which filled all our seven tanks.

I was mowing the grass twice a week, which is a very rare event.

We looked after Grandchildren for a couple of weeks during school holidays and I was fortunate enough to see some quite good children’s movies.

Not much done in the way of gardening except for cutting out a couple of White Sapote trees which had never borne any fruit and constructing a shade area /walk where they used to be.

I replanted this area with all the new Costus and Beehive Gingers, should look great when established.

I think I should just forget about January, just so hot without a day being under 30c in the shade and absolutely NO rain whatsoever.

Thank goodness we had our tanks full because most of our time this month has been spent watering.

I must admit spending so much time watering really annoys me when I could be doing other things, but has to be done if we want to keep our plants alive.

One Sunday we had to drive with the trailer to Centenary Landscapes at Darra.
This is the only place we can find the 15 mill pine bark needed for bromeliads.
Left a very dry Birkdale and when we reached the suburb of Rocklea it started to pour with rain, so much so that we had to switch on the car lights and slow to a crawl and this lasted for some time, the curbside gutters were overflowing.

We picked up 1 and 2/3 rds metre of bark and returned home.
Guess what, Birkdale was as dry as a bone.

Hopefully it will rain soon, cannot be as dry as last year surely.

I split up my Native Bee hives and have four hives soon to be picked up from orders taken during last years 'Open Garden'. Waited until I was sure they are settled and happy in their new home.

You know they are Ok when you walk past the hive you get a strong smell of their honey.

A couple of years ago I bought a pool pump shed from ALDI, anyway it started to corrode and over a couple of days I have built a new one.

Also had to buy a new air blower for pool spa and our old one burnt out.

I  actually found time to take my boat out and catch a feed of prawns from our local creek.

Rocky Point Potting Mix

We have been using Rocky Point ‘Active 8’ for some time and love this product.

It has done wonders to our vegetable garden, so much so that our Hippeastrum and Day Lily gardens have also benefited from a layer of this with great results.

The biggest result was with our Caladium garden, I have never seen bigger flowers than this year.

‘Active 8’ has lots of goodies in the bag including, cow manure, blood and bone, trace elements, zeolite, seaweed, gypsum, compost, fish meal and iron.

You can actually just open the bag and plant straight into the mix if that’s what you want to do, we mix it into our existing soil.

It is not dear, Capalaba Produce sell four 30 litre bags for only $20 which is reasonable.

All in all a great product which works.

We were using a bulk potting mix from a landscaping yard but they got lazy and took things out of the mix, so that was their loss.

We then started to purchase a well-known brand of bagged potting mix but found it to be too fine and very ‘saw dusty’.

We then tried a bag of Rocky Point Premium potting mix and instantly liked it, a bit coarser than the other but that’s good as it assists drainage.  It’s all we use now.

The potting mix has nine month long life fertilizer, wetting agents, coco fibre/chip, fish and seaweed, compost and trace elements.

Judging by how the plants that Judy has potted with this mix are going we intend to keep purchasing this product.

I have not received any favours from Rocky Point for this review, just like the product and it’s local. 

Gardena Secateurs

I am always on the lookout for quality garden tools, there's nothing worse than shoddy cheap and nasty tools especially ones coming from China.
The old saying 'you get what you pay' for is very true.
These Gardena secateurs are brilliant  and come in two different sizes 24mm and a smaller 22mm which is suitable for my wife.
They are made in Germany and have a 25 year warranty, which is pretty amazing.
They feel good in my hand with two different hand settings.
Gardena say they have tested these to 50,000 activations (cuts).
I am impressed and have started to use these around the garden where they will get plenty of use.

Long Prong

I have started a fairly large new project and have finally a chance to use my 'Long Prong' garden tool.
This project will have a park bench sitting within the garden and will be planted with gingers and Costus.
It will probably be my final large garden project as there’s not a lot of lawn left to steal from and anyway Judy has threatened to divorce me if I take any more lawn away.
Just survived this one by the skin of my teeth.
It has certainly made life a bit easier, instead of hammering with a crowbar this tool lifts the pavers and rocks and makes it much easier to remove.
It is also useful for removing stubborn roots.
These are an invention of Peter Nicol from Toowoomba and you can only buy them on-line, not sure but I think I paid around the $70 mark for mine.
There are four models including a lady Prong, it is pink of course.
Thanks to Judy who was the video operator.
http://www.prong.com.au/