Autumn leaps out overnight. You wake up and two branches of the sugar maples have turned flagrant red. The crab apples trees are a patchwork of gold leaves interspersed with green, and every single crab apple on my favourite tree - several hundred glowing red and yellow crabs - has vanished.
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We either have very small, light, and determined human thieves who've climbed up the tallest branches and stripped the tree overnight, or the fruit bats have visited, and also munched their way through all the winter pears I'd planned to pick after the first frost. Fruit bats are not so fussy.
On the other hand, without fruit bats we might not have the bush that covers the mountains I look out on every day. Bats collect pollen on their fur and whiskers as they feed on the nectar of flowers of gums trees, melaleuca, and many others, including some introduced fruit trees like mangoes, not only pollinating nearby trees but also carrying it large distances, spreading genetic diversity. They also eat just about any fruit and either spit out the seeds or pass them in their droppings, and so the bush continues, hopefully without feral crab apples - unlikely, as there've been crab apples here for over 100 years, and no crab apples have appeared among the eucalypt and angophera trees.
The microbats here dine on mozzies and fruit fly, and are welcome, except in the bathroom, or flying over my face at 2am, or if they decide to set up colonies in the wardrobe. Then it's time to get out the butterfly net, or just heave open the doors and windows to urge them outside. Microbats seem to get the hint: once they've been hunted out a couple of times, they don't return.
Possums also help preserve the bush by transferring pollen, dropping seeds, and giving trees a necessary prune so they don't get too tall and lanky too fast, and fall over before they've developed decent roots.
It is perfectly reasonable to want to keep some, or even most, or your garden plants, flowers and vegies for yourself. The solution is to protect those plants, rather than kill the possums or fruit bats by trapping and releasing them elsewhere. "Elsewhere" almost certainly has its own population of bats and possums, and possums usually die as they vainly travel tens of kilometers to get back to their home.
Trapping is also only a temporary solution - more bats and possums will move in once there is a desirable residence going vacant. There are stories - possibly urban myths - of trapping companies that collect all the possums in Area X and take them to Area Y, then when the humans in area Y protest, they are paid to relocate them again - this time to near Area X. The cycle is profitably repeated indefinitely, though not profitably to the possums, who become understandably stressed.
A stressed possum can be vindictive, eating every Jonathon apple or at least a few bites of each one as if to say "So there!". A happy possum - and one that has plenty of choice of blossom, fruit and veg - will just taste a bit here and there, as long as you let them have their favorite trees to gorge, like loquats, which they adore, or the juvenile leaves of blue gum trees, which can be turned into an attractive small bush by keeping them pruned to about a metre high, so they put out constant floury-looking bright blue new growth.
Possums are also conservative. If yours has developed a taste for parsley or broccoli, try growing several patches around the garden. It's likely they'll munch on one lot and leave the rest - especially if you have a garden rich in fruits and varied young tender leaves.
READ MORE: JACKIE FRENCH
I've been playing with "possum mesh". It looks much like the steel wool you scrub burnt saucepans with. You tie it around the trunks of trees, fence posts and pergolas, to stop possums climbing up. It's bronze coloured and fairly inconspicuous, and it works, as possums can't get a grip on it. You can also buy lengths of spikes to attach to tree branches to keep possums or birds off them. I haven't tried them, as they look a bit lethal, and I'd be afraid a possum or bird might accidentally get spiked. On the other hand, possums and birds may have more sense.
I'd rather just grow "lots". Possums demand "lebensraum" - lots of space with no other possums nearby except their mate, and they usually mate for life. No other possum is allowed near the dominant possum's favorite lemon tree or broccoli patch. Wars break out at 2am involving shrieks, grunting and screams, but only for a few nights till the intruder is driven away. You are better off with the possum you know - or rather, the one who is supremely confident that your particular garden is theirs.
Fruit bats can be kept off with fruit bat netting, but check the netting is bird-safe before buying - birds become tangled in some kinds of netting. So do snakes. This is not fun for you, and even less so for the snakes. You may find you only need to protect a branch or two to have all the fruit you want, unless you have a large family, hungry friends, or are a jam maker. Otherwise grow dwarf varieties of fruit tree for easy netting. You can make a relatively simply cross piece structure over the trees from polypipe attached to tomato stakes to drape the netting over. This makes putting it up and down much easier - draping netting over tall branches involves a lot of tugging and repositioning.
In other words, concentrate of growing lots of garden instead of killing what you might mistakenly believe is a true pest and should be eradicated. True pests include European wasps, but native wasps are fantastic pest consumers. In fact, you may not even realise you have fruit and veg pests around until the European wasps kill the native ones, which sadly they tend to do. I can't think of any native species that doesn't have a major role to play in the local ecology, usually without the humans understanding what a blessing they actually are. If it's a choice between the bush and my crab apples, I'd gladly sacrifice my crabs - though I have also covered a couple of crab trees with wire cages, to keep them for the family to enjoy. Think of a few losses as paying rent to the species whose home this is too.
The British Royal Horticultural Society released their Top 10 Beneficial Garden Species last year. The list began with lichens, which both help control pests as well as feed the tree and keep it healthy. Lichened trees also look lovely, as do lichen-covered rocks. The list also includes ladybirds - the kind that eat pests, not your potato plants - and solitary bees . We have native Aussie blue bees that love lavender and blue salvias as well as indigophera, hardenbergia and other native blues and mauves. Hoverflies feature on the list, too.
I'd love to see a well-researched Top Ten Aussie Beneficial Garden Species list, but suspect the best list would possibly have thousands of species, most so small you don't know they are there.
Plant lots, feed well, and learn how to protect the fruit, veg and flowers you treasure. A garden rich in fruit, flowers, trees and bushes to nest in gives treasure and pleasure to uncounted species. We are blessed to be one of them.
This week I am:
- Glorying in the half dozen sasanqua camellias that suddenly transformed from dull green bushes to a host of pink or white flowers over two days and nights.
- Picking more hydrangeas to fill the vases.
- Not picking the golden salvia or the long, flower-covered stems of golden rod, because both look stunning in the garden and last longer in the garden than inside.
- Still trying to give away 3000 or so chokos, preferably to someone who'll clamber up the trees the vine has grown over to pick them.
- Harvesting the first of the fresh crop of Eureka lemons and Tahitian limes.
- Watching two kids race around the bush, and the bushier parts of our garden, finding out which native fruits might leave a human deceased or in major discomfort, and which are edible and tasty and yelling 'Hey, it's quite good!' as they try a bright red walking stick palm berry and squeezing out the globules of finger limes.
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