I'm collecting pine needles to put under my blueberries and tea plants which grow together. They're both acid loving. I don't worry about one big sticks. I come to pine forests, their plantation timber here in Tasmania. Nothing else grows in here except moss and fungi. The bases of trees are a good place to gather the pine needles. If I move that, this is what I like to see. See these white things here? It's red like things almost like well. It looks like mold, that's because it is a type of fungus. Where the fruiting bodies are, you'll probably find some good mycelium thread. You can see where that bit of wood has started to. Well, it's very well advanced and it's rotting down full of fungi. These are the fruiting bodies of the fungi. It's these moldy threads that spread for a long, long way through the forest. Look at all that lovely, good indication of soil health. I take things like this home, there's another big patch. Sometimes it's pure white when you dig it up. That used to be a bit of pine cone and it's just absolutely covered in fungi in the mossy little thread. And then I speak fat earthworm, I don't normally find worms. That's the second one I found there. There are all sorts of different kinds of fungi in this forest. I am reminded again of Jeff Lawton saying a forest grows on a fallen forest. If it wasn't for these fungi, these branches and pine needles would never break down. The tangle of the forest. It's lovely and quiet in here, although I am close to the road. Sometimes I have to wait for the cars to go by so I can continue my filming. This one seems to grow near the edge of the forest with it's more light. So when I brought the pine needles home, it's time to put the mountain mount around the bushes. My blueberries and tea plants which are also acid lovers get plenty of this. I just spread it around. There's a bit of blackberry that's stuck in here. There's a post that's fallen over. The tea plants are a good companion for the blueberries because they're both white and acid soil. Further up there are strawberries which have mostly died down for the year. They're about three years old so they're ready for replacing anyway. The blueberries are all dormant at this time of year. It's late July so we're nearly two-thirds of the way through winter officially and the tea plants are evergreen. They have been flowering. They've pretty much at the end of their flowering. These would be about three years old. I haven't harvested from them yet and I need to look into when I can harvest because I feel the bushes are now big enough. I have used pine bark in the past and it has worked well but I like the pine needles even better. The green creeper that you can see there is a native of Tasmania known as Buzzy and it can be quite evasive. It's easy enough to deer out if you want to. It's shallow rooted but the seed balls are quite a nuisance because they will get in your shoelaces on your socks, on the dogs. If you try to pull them off, it's difficult to get them off in one go and they get onto everything, stick it little things. When I first bought the block nearly eight years ago there was one small patch on the back of the boundary. That stayed like that for about five years and then three years ago all of a sudden they were just everywhere. So there must have been a lot of seed dormant in the ground because they just went mad. This whole patch here is strawberry. Most of it is dried back. As I said it's been in the ground for about three years. I'm just going to drop pine needles on top of it. It's spread it around. If the strawberries grow through it, pine they can. If they don't it can kill them, it's okay because they do to be replaced anyway really. Pulling little blueberry bushes here, it's never done very well this one. In total we have 11 bushes and last year we harvested about five kilograms of fruit. They've been in the ground for about four years and they were in pots two years before that. The bushes on the lower row are blue rows. They're very nice. The bushes on the top row are Brigitte and Australian variety, Australian developed variety. They have a slightly longer season than the blue rows do. As far as taste goes I can't really tell the difference. They're both really nice and they all freeze well, although they don't last long frozen, not in my house.