Keelbacks and cane toads

I have had a number of keelback snakes in my garden over the last few weeks as spring has warmed up. They are certainly on the move around my place!

(Source: snakecatcher.com)

Since identifying these snakes at my place as keelbacks (Tropidonopgis mairii), I have been interested to learn that this Australian, native snake species is in fact capable of eating cane toads, despite the toad's known toxicity to many Australian species. I believe this species' capacity to ingest cane toads is probably the reason they are calling my garden home! I certainly have a prevalence of cane toads.

According to a paper published by researchers from James Cook University, the keelbacks ability to tolerate moderate levels of the cane toad's toxin is a result of genetic history rather than a behavioural or physiological adaptation to cane toads since their arrival in Australia (Source). And it is likely still that keelbacks can be affected or overcome (die) as a result of ingesting too much toxin, potentially as a result of a particularly large, tasty cane toad. A case of eyes too big for their stomach, but with more fatal consequences.

If you're interested to know more about the keelback, DERM's website, as well as the Queensland Musuem's, provide some more overview information and interesting facts about this northern Australian snake species.


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Wisteria...a nightmare!

At our new home we have a wisteria vine that has been planted to block out the view of the rainwater tanks. I have never really come across this vine and at the time we bought and moved into the house it was in winter "hibernation". 

Since then, entering into the spring time, the wisteria has gone crazy. It has not only recovered its leaves on the "main bush", but sent out new trailing arms. These are attempting to latch on to nearby trees and vegetation. It has also got little "plants" coming up from the area surrounding the main plant and unlike normal new growth of many plants this new growth has established woody stems. This makes it almost impossible to pull them out by hand and a real likelihood of re-occurrence if you just chop off the top.

Having looked on the net to see what I can do to control this nuisance plant, it seems they are quite hardy and treatment (for removal) really means use of a chemical treatment (which I am trying to avoid). Trimming and significant pruning is apparently essential to maintain your plant within the confines of the location you plant it and complete removal can be tricky.

Looks like this plant will bring a significant burden to the garden, in terms of maintenance and the likelihood of me ever being free of this plant without chemical input seems unlikely. First step, hit the plant with a massive prune! Now, just have to wait for the rain to stop!

(Source: http://www.gardenadvice.co.uk/advisor/plants/wisteria/)

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How to build your own soils

An important step to becoming self-sufficient in producing your own food is having fabulous and healthy soils. Modern agriculture has all sorts of inputs that they pour into the soil to boost their productivity, but overtime the soils become depleted and require additional inputs and larger amounts. Such strategies are a long way from producing soils, are not self-sufficient and are generally very resource hungry, with many petro-chemical based inputs.

I went to a seminar today on Green Manures and Crop Rotation at my local library. This was presented by Sonya Wallace, a well known permaculture teacher here on the Sunshine Coast. This session was very informative and relieved some of my concerns about have green manure crops within my personal food production system. The concerns that I had previously about green manure crops was that I was loosing a good patch of soil which I could have been producing another viable vegetable crop.

For those that are unfamiliar with green manure crops, these are crops that assist in replenishing the soil with vital nutrients such as nitrogen as well as providing organic matter into the soil encouraging a good soil structure and a great diversity of life-forms within the soil (microbes, bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, etc). These crops are grown to rest your soils and also ensure that you have great soils to produce the food you want on your table.

Sonya presented information on types of green manure crops and the importance of rotating crops throughout your garden to ensure the soils can produce the best crops possible, with your rotation program to include green manure crops.

I now understand it is important to use such crops and strategies to ensure I will have long-term productive soils without having to utilise artificial sources of nutrients, in turn allowing for ongoing gardening success. Pin It

Cane toads

This evening I have been out in my backyard catching cane toads to tastefully dispose of them. These creatures are not welcome in my yard. I try and maintain some sort of island home within my backyard for as much native fauna as possible. Cane toads are a definite threat to the viability of many native species and if they don't directly impact on native fauna they outcompete them for resources. As such I choose to collect cane toads from my back yard and dispose of them.

Some of you might ask how exactly I do this. Well it is a matter of me going around with a plastic bag (yes those yucky plastic bags) collecting the cane toads by hand and then placing them into the fridge or directly into the freezer for a hibernating type demise in my electrical appliance. Once these creatures are frozen I then just place them into my garbage bin.

Tonight I collected 4 cane toads with little effort. I'm sure there are probably a few more lurking in the dim corners of my yard, but the batteries in my torch weren't very powerful tonight, so only the obvious ones were collected. Off to the land of nod for these four at least.

If you're wondering, cane toads are an introduced pest to Queensland and Australia. They were purposefully introduced to Queensland as a biological control agent to control pests within cane fields. The problem for Australia was that we apparently offered a smorgasbord of target insects, etc for the cane toad and they rapidly bred and forgot about the insect they were suppose to prey upon in the canefields and now have taken up residence across most of Queensland, into the Northern Territory and parts of New South Wales. The expansion of and the number of cane toads in Australia is likely to see them now as permanent residents, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try and do our bit to minimise or stabilise the population of cane toads within our own areas (in my opinion anyway). Pin It