Really liking what I have done, pity about the power pole…
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I’d never heard of this…and now I love it…weeds in the back paving have met their match 
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Thanks, but nothing has really changed except neighbours (and I mean almost everyone in our area) now don’t really seem to want to control any weeds that they have growing and as they become more proliferate nearby they also invade our property. When I mow I start at the back, then the front and lastly the nature strip and then wash the mower so the lawns inside the property are generally ok.
My in laws have been using a mowing service for a couple of years now and their lawn has gone from looking like the botanical gardens to weed central. I have sprayed it a couple of times with a selective herbicide so that the dog and I can walk barefoot on the lawn without having to pick prickles out of our feet but it is still very weedy. My mate’s feet are a bit tougher than mine but bindis still make him hop.
One thing I’ve been trying to do on our lawn is to let it grow just a bit longer.
This seems to create a denser canopy that keeps the soil 100% covered which is good for suppression of those nasties. The plants also seem to have more energy and are very competitive.
On the gardens we mulch a lot and aim to have a biologically active soil, it chews through the mulch in summer, however the plants look super healthy. Super high worm and critters in the soil populations help. I’ve noticed when we used to use chemicals and fertilisers years ago, the soils got less active. On the broadacre farms, there is research to show this.
Our lawns up here are very summer active, it’s the winter where we get annual grasses coming in a bit, but I just mow them, making sure they don’t go to seed.
I guess it depends on what you see as your vision for your garden, your rainfall/ temperature and what you want to use as an input.
Time spent outside in the garden, is good for the soul.
Take care all.
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So I have six camellias planted along a fence line. One season in. Five are going well, but the sixth, the most westerly is “suddenly” - a few weeks - struggling and straggly.
A good one
The not good one
An algal blight? Too much sun? I’ve no idea . I’ll take notice to see if the other 5 get more shade than this one , in theory they’re all going to get more or less the same.
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I think we can safely rule out that one.
May be too much water or drainage not as good as plants close to it.
Hi @saladin.
I am the most experienced killer of camellias there has ever been.
I live on a double block with very sandy soil, and I love camellias.
I currently have about 25 in the garden, and I would say about 15 of those are well established and beyond the stage of worrying about their survival.
That is the good news.
The bad news is I have planted approx 80 or so over the 20 yrs I have been here, and the rate of attrition has been bad. All of them went roughly the same way as your bad one looks.
It definitely wasn’t lack of water, as I watered more and more in summer as the years passed and I kept losing them. And it wasn’t over watering as the sandy soil means that it dries out very quickly (too quickly). I really have no idea what was going wrong. In the end i suspected that where I was getting them from (the Dandenongs outside Melb) was growing them in ideal soil and conditions, and they didn’t survive the transition to a harsher, barren soil. I would plant them in a large hole full of compost and enriched soil, and they would go ok for a year or so, and then (maybe after the initial soil enrichment had broken down and dissipated??) they would start to struggle and eventualy the leaves went like yours and died.
Sorry if this doesn’t help, but maybe you can pick up a clue or two from my experience.
I am very proud of my 25 or so current survivors; some of them are really great, and I definitely have got better at nursing them through for 2 or 3 years and then having them prosper after that.
Best of luck.
Feel free to ask any questions if I can help at all.
PS I’ve done lots of things to “nurse” them. Primarily shade cloth to protect against the harshest of the summer sun. Also, seasol when they are looking peaky (but probably too late in most cases), and I feed at least twice a year with slow release fertiliser and horse manure.
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