cast in iron

The Aspidistra (Aspidistra elatior) better know as the cast iron plant was a very popular indoor foliage plant in the Victorian era. To the best of my knowledge it is not related to any Cretaceous plant species, it just looks a lot like some of them. It also has the massive advantage that it is thriving in the dry shady areas under the tree ferns.



They are angiosperms (flowering plants), but I haven't seen any flowers, apparently they occur at soil level and are only pollinated by terrestrial Amphipods little shrimp like creatures, (such as sand fleas, and other little bitty varmites). The angiosperms developed late in the jurrasic and spread extensively in the late cretaceous, particularly in the northern continent of laurasia.

Grey Water : Marque II

Whilst at the hardware I bought 15meters of 13mm black poly tubing (for my drip irrigation work) so I thought I'd try out syphoning out the gray water. Our washed empties into a special drain on the laundry sink, so it is easy to lift the washing machine discharge tube out of its drain and direct the discard into the sink. The theory was that I could them syphon the water from there.

BUT there were problems. Firstly it is important that the water level does not get higher that the washing machine's discard tube, or the water pumped out will backwash syhpon back into the machine (I learnt this the hard way). Second starting the syphon is not so easy with the 13mm poly pipe. Using the well tried method, of making three or so loops and letting all the air bubbles out then clamping you thumb over the end and lift the loops out and then let off your thumb, was not so easy with the tubing which wanted to kink and fold rather make the tight loops I needed to get into the sink. The tubing is light and wants to float to the surface, and loose suction, so I need a brick to hold it down.


With patience I got the syphon going and it worked well. Still it was a lot or mucking around you probably would not want to have to do that routinely.

Waiting for the rain

So the heat (over 40 C) continues, the serious bushfires continue and the weather bureau is forecasting "chance" of rain and "risk" of thunderstorms. I think that is just bureau spin for a few drops of rain, which unfortunately evaporates soon after landing. The drought drags on.

Without doubt the best way to deep water your garden is via natural heavy rain. However the continued dry conditions can cause soils to become hydrophobic (literally it means afraid of the water) which in physical terms it means that the soil gets a skin that repels water. How soils are affected depends on the soil type. In Melbourne the most sandy soils will quite quickly become hydrophobic, the surface affected with waxes from plants, air fall of hydrocarbons and oily polutants and possibly some natural near surface fungal and baterial actions. Melbourne more clay soils (>30% clay) areas will also be affect but only after the clay has started to dry out. First it becomes very hard, and then surface with start get powdery and large shrinkage cracks will open up. This occurs because the clays are loosing their formation water (water that makes up part of clays crystal structure). The fine powder particles of this dehydrated clay are then on the look out for water and will stick to water droplets rather than staying attached to other clay particles. The clay coated droplets soon coagulate and form a mat that forces any further water to run-off.(This drying of clays has the potentially to damage structures, like your house, via subsidence but this will need to be a separate post)

The best way to fix this in the long term is to add lots of organic matter to the soil to change its structure, and add a surface mulch.(when mulches are too thick and allowed to dry out they can apparently themselves become hydrophobic)

In the short term there is a group of materials called Surfactants (or wetting agents). They work by reducing surface tension of water, and are generally complex organic compounds which have one end which is water loving (hydrophilic) and the other water averse(hydrophobic), they work by acting as a joining agent. Soap and detergents are good surfactants, so using soapy grey water on areas that seem to be becoming hydrophobic has some merit as a good way to pre-wet the surface.(but the affect may only last a few hours).

Introducing the plants

How rude of me I have been rambling on mainly about watering and I forgot to introduce you to some of the important plants in my 100 million year old garden. The plants themselves are of course not that old, most are less than 10 years old. They are just the same or very similar species to those that existed back in cretaceous times.

Having a look at my plants I see that my Ginkgo Bilboa (Maiden Hair tree) has some spotting on the leaves. Not sure if this is drought stress or the result of hail at christmas. You can see a younger and happier leaf, on the same tree, in my photo blog, wandering in the light.

The gingko is not only a fascinating plant, it is the source of a powerful phytochemicals (commercially produced GBE or Ginkgo Bilboa Extract, is normally standardized to 24% ginkgo flavone glycosides and 6% terpene lactones) that has many claiming it as a wonder drug but it cannot be safely mixed with a number of common prescription medicines, including asprin. You can also dry the leaves yourself and make a great "pick me up" tea. Another amazing fact I found out about gingko is there are four special gingko trees that survived the 1945 atomic bomb at Hiroshima in Japan, and are still alive today.

Stay tune because I'll write a lot about my gingko

Deep Watering : Method #3

Another good way to water deep and save water is to use a dripper system, and these are allowed under level 3 water restrictions. The best ones are pressurized and have the special dripper buried deep in the soil (20-30cm). They really require professional installation, and are therefore expensive. Right now in Melbourne there is also apparently a long waiting queue to get then installed.

The question I am interested in for now is is there a simple alternative (that works at low/normal pressure). Better still is there a way that I can just replace th heads on my existing "black pipe" sprinkler system. Sounds like a good excuse to visit Bunnings (a big hardware, home improvement and just about everything chain). Well the good news is there are several ways to do this, the bad news (for me) was most where sold out, only the most expensive fittings were left. So I ended up getting buying from the pope range rather than the nylex gardena range (which my system was mainly built from). I also got some repair plugs to temporarily seal some of the riser locations (I didn't want to remove them). Using the variable tricklers (pope Veri-Flow) has has the advantage that I can adjust the flow if individual. Now all I have to do is wait till my watering night, when I can test it out.

Deep Watering : Method #2

Our local Council, have long had the practice of adding about 30cm of flexiable tubing when they plant new street trees. They then come around every month of so on the trees first two summers and fill the pipe with water.

So this second method involves adding a pipe or other channel way to let you deliver water deep below the new developing roots when you do the planting. The same pipe can come in handy during dry spells. However trying to add pipe below existing plant may do more damage than good. If you buy plants in tubes (they are very economic to buy that way) a great thing to do is bury the tube (unfortunatey the tube pots are seldom longer than 10cm) right beside the plant as you are planting it, you can then fill this tube with water as the plant develops.

Deep Watering : Method #1

Deep watering can be very easy. For an area that yous don't want to dig over (eg around established shrubs) you can just get a garden stake, crowbar, or any strong and pointy and hammer it into the ground say 20 to 30cms around those things you wan to water deep. You can leave the whole open or put in some satur-aid or compost. Just make sure it fills up.

Some councils around melbourne are using an "air lance" (a compressed air operated probe, to do a similar job around established trees

Checking the "soil"

I might have been joking before when I said I didn't know how to water. Where when and how you water depends mainly on your soil. In fact, I often watch Gardening Australia on the ABC and remember a great experiment performed by Jerry Coleby-Williams , where he oven dried three soil types and then monitored how much water they drew from a bucket of water. Read their fact sheet for more information.

So I went and had a look at my soil. Well for starters it isn't soil at all; its just muddy/silty clay with a little organic matter of the top. I figure when I was building up the garden that there was precious little cultivation back in the Cretaceous, so I didn't dig over the garden or add compost to the mud. I do know the soils where often waterlogged back then and problably not like the organic & humic rich profiles we call soil today. But I assume there was plenty of rotting vegitation on the ground, so I just add dead leaves to the surface from time to time. Even with my watering last Tuesday and a few sprinkles of rain since, it is clear my subsoil is powdery dry. The organic matter is however slightly damp. Opps that means I'll be encouraging the plant root to stay near the surface where they are much more likely to dry out. Not what I want at all.

[WATERING MYTH #1:I think a lot of people will discover this the hard way, after "doing the right thing" and mulching their gardens to "drought proof" them, only to find many prize older plants still curl up and die, because their older and deeper roots are not getting any water. All the water is in the satur-aid and mulch at the surface, only the shallow roots will benefit]

Some deeper watering is required, But how?

BL**D!3 B@MB**

This area is to be an extension into the late creataceous, mainly palms, and also where I plan to put a rainwater tank. I needed to clear the area for the constrution of a new fence. Previously the area was a bamboo grove (I'm not the one that planted it there but it looked ok so I had left it). I had cut all the stems out in early december, and got a lot of usefull garden stakes. Now all I have to do is dig out the roots! I did some just before christmas but to be honest it has been very hot since and the cricket has been good. I did notice one or two shoots on boxing day but i am surprise at just how quickly they have shot up. (over 2 meters in 17 days)

Now the problem is getting more immediate how do I R3M*V3 TH3 BL**D!3 ST%F5

A little search for "removing bamboo from garden" in google shows a lot of discussion with varying opinions. Many suggesting it is a urban myth that bamboo is so invasive it is impossible to remove. Others maintain the real solution is not planting bamboo at all. Always the optimist I am going to test the theory that you only have to remove the thick roots (the rhizomes). So I'll keep you posted.

"Lot of gardeners have unknowingly planted running bamboos, only to have it take over their entire landscape, and I'm one of those people," master gardener Paul James admits

I do know how to water the soft tree ferns

I acutally do know how to best water the soft tree ferns [Dicksonia antarctica]. Their "truck" is not a trunk at all, just a pile of root matter, which can soak up an amazing amount of water. the shape of the fronds and the way they branch also aid the collection of rain water. So the best place to water these ferns is at the crown, where the fronds grow out of this "trunk" (aka aerial root).

"The funnel-shaped rosette of fronds of D. antarctica may harvest rainfall and make it accessible to aerial roots situated at the base of fronds. This process may maintain favourable water relations independently of a subterranean root system. This proposed strategy of water acquisition is unique for a fern species and may eliminate a need for soil moisture competition with surrounding plant species."

... from Ecophysiology of the Soft Tree Fern, Dicksonia antarctica Labill by HUNT M.A.; DAVIDSON N.J.; UNWIN G.L. & CLOSE D.C.

Measurements begin

As a first pass investigation I thought I should monitor how much humidity my little garden would maintain after a watering the previous night. I have a cheap desktop "weather station" (the clock battry ran out ages ago but the temperature and humidty dial still work) and placed in a shady spot. Then I just recorded the humidity every hour (yes I did sleep in! and miss the 9 am reading, but it is summer!)

I was somewhat surprised, it looks like my garden was not going to be able to maintain its humidity levels, as a natural way to fight of the heat.

10:00 AM 60%
11:00 AM 55%
12:00 NOON 40%
1:00 PM 33%
2:00 PM 27%
3:00 PM 23%
4:00 PM 20%

Time to water

Seeing it is Tuesday and I live at an even numbered house I can legally water my garden tonight between 8PM and 10PM using a hose with a trigger nozzle (I guess that's a health and safety requirement incase I fall asleep an the hose!)

About 2 minutes into the watering (which only lasted 5 minutes for my little garden), I realised I didn't have a good plan how best to water. Should I soak the area around the plants or spray a fine mist. What is the best technique? I'll have to start researching that.

It was am amazing how many neighbours (on my side of the street) where also out and watering. Maybe the water restriction will have a side benefit of a renewed community spirit.

Naturally I do have a wollemi pine

Discovered in 1994, by David Noble in the Wollemi National park not far from Sydney, the wollemi pine [Wollemia nobilis] is a significant mscientific discovery. The rather bizarre pine is related to the monkey puzzle pine (of south america) and norfolk island pine. There are perhaps fewer than 100 adult specimens known in the wild. After being initially considered a new species, it was eventually matched to fossils from the mid cretaceous period 110 million years ago, and was believed to have become extinct about 65 million years ago. So it pretty natural that I should have one in my creataceous garden (well in a pot in my garden)

"This is the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur alive on earth" ... Professor Clarrick Chambers, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, December 1994

collage of photos for my photomacro autostitch
Originally uploaded by imageo.

The photo above is not a single photo it is a photomosaic stitched together from several photos. If you want to know how this portrait of my special tree was taken, go and have a look in my photoblog, called wandering in the light

One bucket at a time

One very sound and waterwise way to water pots plants is to place each pot in a bucket of water and let the soil soak up the moisture. This only takes a few minutes. It is only necessary to do this watering when the soil in the top few centimeters of the pot is dry. I learnt this from the tips for wollemi pine care website. Even in the hot recent weather this watering method last for over a week.

This is an ideal use for the "first" flow bucket collected in the shower.

Saving the first flow water

A very common (and popular) way to save water is collect those first 2 or 3 litres of flow while you are waiting for the shower to warm up. All you have to go is keep a plastic bucket on the side of your shower and move it under the shower head as you start the water. Once you have the right temperature slide it out of the way as yiou get under the shower.

This water has a big advanage over other grey water collections in that it is not contaiminated with washed off dirt or soap.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

My first thoughts of water saving, where of using grey water. We have a front loading machine that is supposedly water efficient, but how much does it use? It was easy to just take the outflow pipe and put it in the laundry sink and I now know a standard wash uses about 20 liters of water (which is very soapy) plus approximately another 15 litres of rise water (less soapy but still cloudy). The sink only hold around 30 litres. Still I did get a move on and bucketed out the water and avoided a serious flooding (more on that below)

The level of soap suds surprised me (we use the special front loader detergent). So instead of putting it on the garden I decided to test some on the lawn.
(PS: The lawn loved it and combined with the Christmas rains has greened considerably).

Even though I was careful I did manage to walk and splash water all through the house, so I am banned from using the bucket by bucket approach to grey water recover from now on.

My Gwondanaland

saving gwondanaland
Originally uploaded by imageo.

I started developing my Cretaceous garden back in 1998. I am a geologist and had moved my office back to my home. The renovations to put the office at the front door left a long mud strip between the garage and house in which remained three sad looking tree ferns. I decided what better garden for a geologist than one based on 100 million year old plants! The garden has slowly developed, with a combination of neglect and occasional enthusiasm. it now looks what I imagine is pretty authentic


Finally, a word of warning about this blog, which really began yesterday, it will have entries going both forward and back in time, in no particular order. I will just be documenting bits from time to timae as they become relevant, some will be historic and some current. I will also try to maintain links betwen revelant items and will will maintain labels as best I can. So if any of this interest you, you are welcome to find your own pathway through the blog.

Level 3 water restrictions begin

Due to the drought (and clearly a lot of inaction at government local authority levels) dam levels are low and melbourne has been put on level 3 water restrictions.



Rather than give up and let my garden dry out and die, and/or just complain. I think I should work out how best to look after my plants. I also though this might make an interesting thread on the blogsphere.

The irony of all this is that it was probably all the plant life back in the creataceous that help lower CO2, raise oxygen and begin cooling the earth. Perhaps they have more justifiable rights to water, and will make better use of it than man?

Why the strange URL name

This blog actually started its life, as a journal of serial walks (my wife and I often walk various tracks and trails just doing a short part of the journey at a time, the we pick up the place we got to the next time and walk further)

Well for the long time the journal had just one entry

Our first Serial walk was long ago, in the time before blogs. We walked from Mordialloc into Albert Park.

And that is all we will tell you about it!

so I decided it would be appropriate to re-cycled that blog (rather than start something new), I trust you wont mind.

Why do I use wikipedia so much?

No I don't have shares.

Wikipedia seems to me to be a fairly up to date and relevant source of a lot of the information I am posting about. I think it is a good way to let you the reader understand the scientoific terms and plant names. I also find that is largely correct, well presents the sames things I know.

Now that doesn't mean I'm saying it is totally correct, for example in matters to do with climate change. I am starting to worry that a lot, that you find on the internet may have political aggendas and in some cases be contrived mis-information. You must make up your own mind. Yet wikipedia is the most relevant place to review such issues, particularly contempary issues