Yinnar, Yinnar South Landcare - Winter 2024
Winter is a busy season for Landcarers, and our group has quite a bit happening. The new plants season began with our stall at the Yinnar Memorial Hall Market at the beginning of May. Group members have since bought most of the remaining plants that we had for sale. We have also grown plants ready for our group’s planting sites and for members and others who are doing revegetation work on their land. Unlike exotic plants, our native species do best when planted as small seedlings from late autumn to early spring. Wetland areas can be planted later. Most species are difficult to move, and they prefer less soil disturbance around their roots. Avoiding fertilizers containing phosphate is another useful tip.
Many native insects provide pollination
services to plants. These photosare of a
beetle, a hover fly and a moth.
(Joelle Champerts)
Our group’s newest planting site is on a section of our proposed pollinator link between Yinnar township and the Hazelwood Cemetery. This site is more accessible than the others, and we have been able to get out and do monthly surveys to try and establish a starting point or base line for our efforts. We missed out on doing our planned bird surveys in May and June as we were rained off, but September 10 or October 10 still look possible for bird surveys. In early July we will be trying to identify more of the Eucalypt species. We will have help with this from Latrobe Valley Field Naturalists. A pollinator insect survey is the plan for November 10, hopefully at a few different locations. If our current Victorian Landcare Grant application is successful, we can also look forward to a Grasses workshop and field visit in October or November and acoustic bat monitoring in February or March 2025.
Latrobe City Environment Dept are working with us on the pollinator link planting sites and have done a great job in removing exotic weeds and preparing planting sites on the road reserves. We will have our first planting day there on August 10, meeting in Yinnar at 9.30 a.m. We have been able to buy plants for the site this year due to a successful application to Planet Ark’s National Tree Day seedling bank and Latrobe City will also supply some seedlings.
Meanwhile, our existing projects on public land have needed all our problem solving skills. Sheep are running rampant on our site in the Billys Creek valley and this is proving a real challenge to our revegetation efforts. Our ideas factory isn’t really giving us any workable solutions to that one.
We’re currently looking into hiring a drone to work on the inaccessible areas of the Billys Creek site. The idea would be to spray blackberries and then come back later to spread seed into the dead canes. We will have a planting day in a different area of the site in August with TAFE students to assist our volunteers. If the drone project looks do-able it will mean a big seed collection effort over the summer months.
At our site along Upper Middle Creek the invasive weed, Cape Ivy, has spread through the areas that were flooded in the June 2021 floods. It is choking out the plants we have put in, and needs to be stopped before it can climb larger trees and spread more seed into the area. It is a big area and a very invasive weed. We currently have a couple of small trial plots set up to see if we can find a weed management solution that will work.
Our next group meeting will be our Annual General Meeting on Monday August 5.
Details of our group’s activities are posted on our website – a search for Yinnar Landcare will find us.
https://www.landcarevic.org.au/groups/westgippsland/yinnar-south/
Our e-mail address is: yinnar.landcare@gmail.com