The patch this morning

Some pictures from my mornings wanderings. Very dry here and I have to put the tank back on the Ute and cart some more water today. Its been a struggle keeping the garden kicking over. My dragon fruit are getting hit by the bee's so fingers crossed I get some fruit from them. Kangkong and Brazilian spinach are going well, rats are my beetroot but plans are a foot to deal with them.

Hi there Tony, yes its so dry!
I'm down to my last 6000lt tank of garden water too.
After that there's nothing.
I've stopped watering the orchard so those trees are looking sad and dropping their fruit already.
My last planting of seedlings came to nothing. They seemed to get attacked by everything or develop every nutritional complaint.
Just completely disappointing.
Then a cyclone came along and promised us rain, then left without fullfilling its promise!!
What's the world coming to??

One thing I would say is waiting for the bees to polinate the DF is waiting far too long because those flowers are fresh at around 9pm. So the pollen is ready then too. I think the pollen will be set and the ovaries closed by daylight the next day. But the flowers would still provide food for the bees in anycase. But having bees buzzing around a flower is no guarantee they are able to do the job.

So if you feel your DF need polination help, go out at 9pm and shake hands with each flower in turn. Cup your hand with fingers all pointing forward and gently push your hand into the flower. Give it a gentle shake. Withdraw your hand with pollen all over it and move to the next flower. Go round every flower till all have received some pollen from other flowers.

As far as trying to save water in my soil, I've been using heaps of soaked coir mixed into potting mix or the soil. I have to say mixing it into my soil is pretty much a waste of money but I felt I needed to do that experiment anyway. But your soil might be far better than mine and the coir might work really well.
My next trial is mixing it into my compost and using that as the complete growing medium and putting it in containers.

Yeah I tried hand pollinating but not with these plants. I had some dragon fruit that may of been ornamental (So the lady at Red Fox told me) and nothing seemed to work. I'll try the hand thing the next lot of flowers I get. I opened up one of the closed flowers and release three bee's an hour ago. They looked relieved. I am making the most of my septic water on my non food producing tree's, its been a god send.

Just been out sexing up the dragon fruit ClissAT. Well see how we go.

The only thing keeping my orchard going atm are the gray water sprinklers. Rain can’t come soon enough here!
I also find brazian spinach to be really hardy. Seems like the only thing that grows well in the heat and the cold.
Shame it doesn’t taste as good as perpetual spinach.

My chooks love the Brazilian spinach. They prefer it over most other greens.

Yeah you’re right, they do go crazy for it!