Two Wednesday Plantings

We've been busy these last few weeks!

Off the back of the previous plantings, we've been doing a series of little plantings for our Wednesday activities; out in the field at Ashfield Flats!
We're coming towards the end of the planting season, with the rains starting to ease and the weather warm. We still have one more planting at Point Reserve scheduled for the 10th of October, but even with that planting, we still won't go through all our stock of plants.

Here's what we've been doing to clear the propagation benches, ready for new seedlings:

First we worked in the advanced trees area, on the south-southwest area of the flats, near the river:

There are a number of stakes surrounding the planting areas along the river here, in order to protect the new trees and other plants from damage by lawnmowing. Sometimes these stakes happen to go walkabouts, so we went through, replacing stakes and generally repairing the border. Then, with the tubestock we have available, we did some infill, meaning that we went around finding gaps and putting in new plants, so to better have a filled out understory in the future. 

As it is Djilba, several of the previous plantings were flowering!

Then, we went to the areas surrounding the wetter spots, just north-west of Sandy Beach Reserve:

This area varies a fair bit, from some wetter, seasonally inundated areas, where we planted more water-oriented plants, to slightly raised, drier areas, where we put in more typical banksia-woodland species:

While rummaging around in the weeds, we happened upon some little critters!

Austracantha minax, commonly known as the “Christmas Spider”

An as-of-yet unknown to me spider, found crawling around on the ground. Look at their little eyes!

There were also an incredible number of dragonflies darting around, no doubt going after the mosquitoes! Dragonfly larvae are predators of mosquitoes at all stages of their lifecycle (dragonfly larvae eat mosquito larvae, and adult dragonflies eat adult mosquitoes), so if you don't like mosquitoes, be grateful for the dragonflies; and if you like dragonflies, be grateful for the mosquitoes, because otherwise they wouldn't have anything to eat!

There are always some sorts of critters, flitting around and hiding in the brushes, and we're happy they're there! An abundance of different small invertebrates (insects, spiders, centipedes, and many other creatures) indicates a healthy ecosystem. Coming across these few critters indicates that there is still life in the flats, despite the damage that has been done to it in it's history; we hope to see many more different types in the future.

Next Wednesday (the 18th) we are at the GroCentre in Ascot again, preparing for the final plantings of the year, and getting started on propagation for next year. If you want to be involved, keep an eye out for the regular weekly email, and if you don’t get it, send us an email to get added to the list!