Spring gardening update

So I've been really slack and not done a posting for so long. I got frustrated as I had people making lovely comments on my posts and then when I went to their posts and tried to leave a comment, I failed. I couldn't make it happen!!! Anyway, in a grumpy state, I gave up. Yes, I have tried again, unsuccessfully. But time has past, I'll give it another go shortly, but in the meantime, my garden is growing, changing with the season. If I don't make a note of it here, then next year I won't have a record to go back to, and after all, that was a large part of the point of this blog in the first place. Kind of a garden diary, as my other attempts have left large holes. (I have a diary I was making notes in....somewhere???)

Moving on....

The apple trees have flowered, and again this year they have had some tiny little fruits on them. The tree on the shadier side of the gate had one, which today is now on the ground, in perfect condition, so whether it's been wind, or just that the tree knows it's too soon to bear fruit in only it's second year? The other one has three little apples still holding tight. This was the tree that had a couple of small fruit on it last year, so maybe there's hope yet. From my reading it seems that the trees don't normally produce in their first few years.

One of three little apples, about the size of a golf ball.

The macadamia nut tree had flowered with the most flowers I've seen on it yet, and seemed to have lots of little nuts forming, but with the storms last week and all the wind, I noticed today that it seems like many of the higher stems are now bare and only the lower protected branches still have nuts on.

Lots of flowers on the macadamia looked promising.

Hubby got this one! Little did I realise it would be the one & only!

The peach tree that was so badly damaged last year when another big tree collapsed on it during a storm produced quite a lot of fruit, so too did the nectarine. However they both fell victim to fruit fly and we only got just that first single peach, the flys made short work of the rest. (Note to self, even if the fruit is looking fine and there are no signs of infestations still get a dac pot up and going early JUST IN CASE!!!)  These little flies went from nothing to millions in just a couple of days, so there's no time to be unprepared. All the books said to have the dac pots up when the plants were flowering, but everything just looked so healthy and I kept forgetting and it hadn't seemed to be an issue (famous last words). So by my rough calculations I would think I'll need to have the lures on the trees by early to mid September next year, just to be sure.

Nectarines, just days before being completely wiped out by fruit fly.

With Spring's arrival, the sweet peas I planted just after St Patricks day back in March finally started to grow and flower. Not as great a display as I'd originally hoped for, but I had thought they were done and failed months ago, so they'd not received any tender loving care for some time. I'm collecting some of the seeds so I can try to raise more for next year, rather than buying punnets like I did this year.

Oh, and I almost forgot the most exciting thing of all, one of my banana plants has had a bunch of bananas slowly growing ever larger and today, to my delight the other banana tree has put forward a great big flowering stem, so hopefully this too will be productive soon.

Anyhow, that's all for tonight. Bed time for me. So much more happening, but that can wait for another night.

This is on my mind...

Inspired by Rhonda from Down to Earths blog (link at right) here's my contribution to todays "This is on my mind..."


For all the long term gardeners out there, this may not look terribly impressive, but looking at this image brings tears of pride to my eyes.

Growing up we never really grew much in the way of crops, not even many flowers for that matter, even though my family had been involved in the fresh produce market. So when I started my first garden just over three years ago now, I really struggled with how to go about it and had to do lots of research and investigation to get it right. Three years later I'm still learning, having some failures, some successes.
The reason these vegies delight me so much is they've been grown by my neice and nephews who are under 10 years old.
When I discovered the joy of success from my first little garden, I was hooked for life. From small beginnings I've come a long way. Along the way I've tried to share that joy with my family and I'd like to believe it's rubbing off on them. My sister's family has spent many weekends being dragged around my garden as I show them seedlings taking shape and pick what is available. They were keen to start their own garden and put their first one in at Christmas. Above is some of the results from that small garden.
My mother and father encouraged me as I struggled at the start, praising every small bunch of herbs or cluster of tomatoes I managed to pick to share. My mother now has a fabulous small garden that's producing well. We share walks in it with my youngest niece and now my brother is thinking of putting in a small vegetable garden for her as she talks about "Nana's garden" all the time. It reminds me just how important it is that we share not just book learned knowledge, but our passion for the practical down the generations.

First lettuce. Before this he didn't even eat it. On this day he picked a leaf and gobbled it down!

Looking for strawberries at Nana's

Picking tomatoes from Nana's garden ( if you look closely you'll see that these are a "plant", bought in especially so she could find them as it's a little too early for ripe ones yet)

Showing me seedlings they've struck in their special little grow bed

The kids enjoying the pleasure of my garden, especially the chooks

Holidays

Well I've been on holidays for a week now and feel like I've not achieved half of the things I would have liked to have done. The time has been good though, I've had time with family which is something I always treasure, some time in the garden, and yesterday and today, some time in the kitchen.
We've had two new students arrive from China today. Amy and Rose (not their Chinese names, they take English names to make it easier for everyone while they are here) joined us yesterday and will stay for the next 6 weeks to get a taste of Australian life and learn english. At only 11 years old, it would have to be very scary for them coming all this way and living with strangers. We'll try to make their stay a memorable one.
With some time at home I've taken the opportunity to make some fruit bread today and a batch of yoghurt tonight ready to use in some new recipes I saw on the Food channel today. I was motivated by a recipe for spicy eggplant.


You can see the white eggplants here amongst other goodies harvested late last week.

I just happen to have about half a dozen little round egg shaped white eggplants I picked the other day just waiting for inspiration to strike. It necessitated a trip to the shops for all sort of spices I just don't (correction "didn't) have on hand. It was a joy to buy lots of new goodies, including All spice, Cayenne Pepper, Fenugreek, Black Mustard, Saffron and Cardamon pods. I can't wait to try them out tomorrow. They aren't all for the eggplant, some are for other dishes. I'm not sure if I'll get to try them all out before I return to work, but I'd really like it if I can.
The garden has had a bit of a clean up. Hubby insisted I chop down the choko vines that have not only run rampant through our garden, but also ventured into the neighbours trees. The chokos looked like Christmas baubles hanging off the branches of their palm trees! It was hard for me to do, especially as I was getting such a great crop off them this year, but Hubby is sick of them now, and groans with each new harvest I drag in. I can't complain, he has made heaps of pickles using them, and some Chutney as well. I've smuggled them into all sorts of meals, both savory and sweet, and we have more in buckets that we haven't gotten around to using yet, and they are starting to sprout! Definately a sign that the time had come.


Chokos hanging like Christmas decorations off the fence

Clearing all the vines has let more light into some of the garden beds. One I've planted out with some French bean seedlings and a few broccoli tucked into one end. The other had nothing much except a large old capsicum bush in it (after the chickens had excavated the snow peas for the third time and there was no saving them). The capsicum hasn't been producing well, so it was time for it to go. The beds are usually "made" over by the chickens (we place their pen over the garden, they dig it up and work in sugar cane mulch over a few weeks) but I've been too impatient to wait as they are still working what was the sweet potato bed and will probably be there for at least another week or so. I've mounded it up for the time being, placed some weathered sugar cane mulch into it and given it a top up with some composted cow manure and leaving it to sit ready to try some more peas, or perhaps some silverbeet or chinese cabbage.

You can see the French beans starting to come up around  a wire frame made from old fencing wire that is used as a trellis

There's still more clean upI'd like to do in the garden before my week is out, including pulling out the remaining pumpkin vines that aren't doing much now and tieing up my peppers that have fallen over with the support of the choko vines that had enveloped them. So little time, so much garden...

Joan Grimes

I’m off to collect some new art I purchased recently. The artist is Joan Grimes. My mum introduced me to her a year ago. Joan had done a showing at her home that day and Mum had gone along. Mum was so impressed she asked if she could bring me back when I got home from work. To cut a long story short, I’m addicted. A fortnight ago was her annual showing again and I am about to be the proud owner of more of her work. I love the freedom of her artwork and the wonderful colours. Joan is a wonderful, warm and welcoming lady and her art reflects this.With her permission (I respectfully request that the following images aren't reproduced without the express permission of the artist), I’ve pictured the pieces I’ve bought so far…

This one is called “Tropical Angels”. I loved the fluid lines and the serenity of them. Who would have ever dreamed of angels that looked so curvy?

This one is called “Girl feeding Ibis”. Joan saw a girl down on the beach feeding the Ibis. I love the way she has given such grace to such ungainly and to me previously ugly birds. I see them so differently now.

This one is called Goddess in the Garden. Joan tells me that she couldn’t help it, but it started to look like me, especially the curves. I’m not so sure, but my husband thinks I’ve never looked better.

This one is called “Shoo Birdie Shoo” and Joan was inspired to paint it by a friends grandchildren, twins who chase the birds from their favourite tomato bushes. I loved this one the moment I saw it on the cover of her invitation and just had to have it.

Joan is a prolific artist, and I love that when you talk to her about her art there’s no “technique” waffle, instead it’s the moment of inspiration she talks of, and as she tells you her eyes sparkle. You can see that she is just bursting to get each “moment” captured and that gives you a personal connection to her work.

This is on my mind...

When it came to joining Rhonda's (from Down to Earth, you can see the link on my side bar) weekly Friday "This is on my mind..." photo image this week, this was the one thing that stood out. I'm off for the weekend and I need to do something with it...

We were given this wonderful gourd by our neighbours when we took them one of our pumpkins (doing the neighbourly thing). I was very excited and couldn't wait to cut it open and get the seeds, I had visions of giant gourds hanging from vine that has ascended overhead trees. But what do I actually do with it???? I believe they are edible, but I've never encountered one before, and I have no idea how to cook it. If anyone has some information to share, I'd really appreciate it. I'd hate to see this giant go to waste.

Measuring time in pumpkins

A photo of one of my very early baby pumpkins

Well it’s been way too long since my last blog, almost two months. I was wondering what on earth have I done with the time, where have I frittered it away too?

But I have been doing things, and my garden has kept growing. My pumpkins are now almost all picked. The ones from the footpath were the first to be harvested, but not at my doing!!!! People had begun helping themselves! The first couple to go were just roughly pulled off the vine, so I guess they were walking past and just couldn’t help themselves (they did look fabulous). I wouldn’t have noticed them disappearing except I put little pieces of broken tiles under each one to keep them off the damp ground (last year I lost quite a few to rot, not having known this little trick) and those naked little tiles bereft of their pumpkins stood out! The next ones to go however were very neatly “cut” off, so I imagine someone bought their secateurs with them on their walk, an act of premeditation…so it meant if I wanted to enjoy the fruits of my labour, it was time for picking!



Using broken bits of tile keeps the pumpkins from rotting on damp ground

I don’t like to pick the pumpkins that early. Normally I like to leave them on the vine until it dies back to the stalk leading to the pumpkin and then pick them. I believe that way the pumpkin gets the very last goodness from the vine. So my others within the garden stayed on for quite a bit longer and I now only just have a few left still growing or waiting for them to drain the last energy from their vines. In total I’ve had more than twenty pumpkins ( I forgot to count them all before I started giving them away). They add a feel of autumness inside the little blue shack, with their lovely creamy orange tones. Strangely even though some of them looked like they would turn out as large green pumpkins, and made me wonder how it was possible to produce such a variety of shapes and colours, they all changed to similar colours in the end.

The first made deliciously creamy pumpkin soup, a favourite as we start to get colder. One of course went to my parents, as they are still waiting on theirs. One made a lovely gift for my Nana, with a cheeky red ribbon tied around it’s stem, along with a jar of homemade passionfruit curd. Some have been roasted, and the rest await their individual futures.


Just some of the pumpkins waiting for use

 Well I needed to add an update here, I'm thrilled to say that when we gave neighbours one of our pumpkins,
they've given us some mandarins and a very large gourd in return. Hubby has turned the mandarins into the
most divine jam, (he experimented with our very sour and almost inedible tangerines a week ago, and now perfected it to a whole new level with the mandarins instead) and he's made enough that tomorrow we'll drop the neighbours a jar as a thankyou for letting us access their tree. As for the gourd, I have no idea what to do with it???? So I'm open to suggestions, but for sure I'll keep some of the seeds out of it as it is spectacular to look at if nothing else.





Simply divine Mandarin Jam



This is on my mind...

Success... looks like this today!

It may not excite some of you, but if you've read some of my previous posts you would know this has been a much anticipated event! After hand pollinating at every opportunity I will have home grown pumpkins for my winter soups and roasts. It doesn't get better than that!
It was a puzzle for me at first that I wasn't having any luck with my pumpkins this year. I'd grown them from seeds given to me from a pumpkin bought last Halloween. At first I had begun to think that maybe they'd been bred to be infertile (or something suspicious like that), but it was just a lack of bee activity as my hand pollination has now proved.
And now I wait as they grow and mature, along with all the neighbours who have been watching the progression of my vines on the footpath. I guess it might need to be a communal soup day when it comes!

Autumn and new beginnings

I love that Autumn has officially arrived. Not that it's much cooler, but I was keen to get some new seedlings in, and it seemed fit to do it with the start of the new season. In fact it was a little earlier than the new season (what can I say, I don't have that much patience, and I had new seeds). So in my eagerness I'd planted up some seedling punnets ready to start my Autumn crops off well.
So here's the list of what seeds I planted on Thursday 24th of February:
Snow peas
Peas
Brown Onions
Red Onions
Red Arrowhead Broccolini
Purple Broccolini
Corn
Coriander
Cos Lettuce
Brussel Sprouts Tighthead
Then on the following Tuesday 1st March I added:
Strawberry Alpine
Mini Cabbage
Cauliflower

Kale at 4 days

Rocket at 4 days



English Spinach starting to show after 4 days

 The photos are a little old now, the first of the peas have just been planted out and I've had hubby build a little "pen" ready to protect the Brassicas (cabbage family) from white moths which have been enemy #1 each time I've tried (and failed) to grow these type before.

Taken over by Pumpkins

Last year I grew my first pumpkins. I'd tried before, but I think I always left it too late for them to be successful. Last year I learned that pumkins spread, a lot! They will also grow up things, not just along the ground as I'd envisaged before seeing how easily they'll scale a fence or wrap themselves tight around a lemon tree! My pumkins last year new no boundaries, so this year I've put them in a different garden away from too much other stuff, but they've still taken over.



Pumpkin spread, here it's escaped the garden and heading onto the outside footpath.



This years seed came from a pumkin my mum bought that I'd never seen before. She purchased it around Halloween, so it was probably a special type, not sure. I can say it was large, and not the typical Queensland Blue or Jap I'm used too, not even a butternut. So official pumpkin type unknown, but very round. I struck the seeds in punnets before planting them out, and even gave Mum some too as a thankyou for keeping the seeds for me. The resulting vine looks like it's on steroids!! The vines have giant leaves, and the baby pumpkins that form under the flowers are huge too. But to date, not one has taken. They have all just died and dropped off the vine. And it's not just something unique to me or my garden, Mum's haven't a single pumkin under way yet, and in past years I've been more than a little jealous of their pumkin successes.





Baby pumpkin dies and drops off.



Section of pumkin vine showing female flower  (characterised by the swell of the baby pumpkin below it) forming.



Female flower dies back and the baby pumpkin starts to grow in size below it.



I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Last year, I did learn that they have both male and female flowers, and it's from the base of the female flowers that the pumpkins develop.

 My vines have produced lots of male flowers,

Male flower, I noticed the stamen is quite different on the female flower but didn't have my camera with me at the time.





The male flower is usually on a longer narrower stem and doesn't have the bulge of the baby pumpkin directly under the flower.



especially at the beginning, and have only produced female flowers in the last few weeks. There's not been many bees around the flowers that I've seen so I'm wondering if mother nature needs a hand this year with the pollinating.

I wondered whether the giant leaves are hiding the flowers a little too much, preventing the bees from seeing them?

When I checked Mum's vines today it seemed as though the she had the same, but at least she had female flowers that were still open, so I used a feather and manually pollinated the female flowers with pollen from the male flowers. Hopefully that will give her some success. Now if only I can manage to catch my vines with the female flowers still open. If you have any other ideas what could be going wrong, please help, any advice is gratefully received.

In the meantime, I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope, as these are the only pumpkin seedlings I put in this year. If I don't have any success it will just mean I'm back to buying my pumpkins again.





This is on my mind...

 This little critter got me thinking...

I've disturbed what I originally thought was a baby Cane toad (for those not Australian, this is a introduced species which competes with our native frogs and is a pest) on many occassions when moving debris around in the garden lately. I've not been fast enough up till now to actually get a good look at it to be sure, but the other day I managed to corner one in a pot plant and although this isn't a great photo, it's enough to put my mind at ease that it's not a cane toad, but that leaves me with the question what is it I have in my garden and where did it come from?

I've seen other frogs in my garden, and it gives me a thrill each time I do. Mostly they've been either a largish green tree frog or little tiny green frogs (some with an almost silvery hue to them) not much bigger than a finger tip as you can see in the pictures below. (These three were sitting happily on the flowering branches of my fennel).

I'm keen to find out what this latest species is and whether it's friend or foe for both my garden and my other frog friends. Especially now...

Last year I convinced hubby to help me put in a small pond. A pond is an integral part of the permaculture garden and I was concerned that by not having one I was limiting the wildlife that would help to control my pests. I investigated lots of options for how to create a small pond. Space was limited and it needed to be situated near a large tree, with giant roots, so I opted to use a large container of sorts. The perfect thing presented itself via my mother networking on my behalf. I managed to get an old canoe mould, not quite what I'd imagined using, but at $50 and in the spirit of recycling it seemed a lot better than the preformed ponds I'd initially thought I'd need to use.

We half buried the canoe (that was as far as we could get it due to the big roots underneath) and put it on a slight downward angle at the far end so that any excess water would flow off into the garden areas below it. Next came the all important contents. I chose to try some edible water plants such as Taro and Water Chestnut and then because I'm a sucker for flowers, a water hyacinth with a pretty blue flower and a water lily. I also really wanted to encourage more frogs to the garden to help with natural insect control, so carefully chose frog friendly fish that would devour the mosquito larvae which are a huge problem here on the islands. The ones I chose love a good feed of mossie larvae but they are too small to be a problem to tadpoles. The downside of these is that they are temperature sensitive and died off during the winter last year, so needed to be replaced again this spring. To finish off I put some largish rocks in to create a dry space for emerging frogs or other wildlife that may fall in by accident and to give them a way out of the canoe.

So, a year or so on, I've had some failures, but also some very satisfying successes.

Well, it's been a long wait, but back to my dilemma, the other day I saw my first batch of frogs eggs. They were quite well concealed amongst the Vietnamese mint which has happily taken over one end of the pond. Then yesterday when I went to see how they were doing I couldn't find them, instead, there are hundreds of little tadpoles scooting around amongst the submerged leaves.
So do I now have an upcoming batch of good frogs or bad???

I've tried to google some frog images, but I couldn't find one that looked exactly like this one. If you know your frogs please let me know?

New year, new additions to the garden

It's been so long since I posted last. Welcome to the new year. The end and beginning of last year was pretty busy for us. I had a largish tree fall down over my back fence during one of the storms we've been having, wiping out the fence and a chunk of my garden at the same time. The rockmelons were wiped out, so too was a raspberry bush, but it at least has sent some new shoots up since, and my peach tree was pretty badly damaged, but recovering slowly. Then to herald in the New Year I caught a virus going around work and ended up sick in bed for a week. And the rain didn't seem to let up at all here. Brisbane had the flood (we weren't personally affected and my thoughts go out to all those who were), which shut my work down for a couple of days and gave me time to recover from my virus. All the while the weeds in my garden were thriving and getting out of control. A few weeks on and I'm getting it back under control. The tree has been cleared, the fence temporarily patched, the dead plants removed. Over four wheelbarrow loads of weeds had to be removed from that garden and even more from the other which I'm only part way through. The rain has been good to the garden, my latest corn patch is thriving, the pumpkins are beginning to traverse the yard, the passionfruit vine is fully loaded with fruit, and the citrus trees too. We've dug all the weeds out from the base of the Lemonade tree, mulched around it and propped the heavily fruit laden branches off the ground with some stakes. The bannana trees have become huge and one has it's first sapling appearing at it's base. The comfrey under them has flowered prettily. And life in the garden goes on.

Banana Plants, the one at the back has it's first sapling, weeds in the foreground were looking to take over!

Since then, I've added an arrowroot plant to the garden. Unfortunately it wasn't the type I'd expected. This one is not the Queensland arrowroot, but rather an idian one. It will still make a nice addition, but not what I had originally intended. A tumeric plant has also been added. I have used tumeric in cooking plenty of times, but had never realised until researching it, that it is a type of ginger. So my little garden now has Tumeric, Thai ginger, and Galangal. All I need now is a Cardamon plant to round out the ginger collection.

I'm thrilled to have also added two peanut plants to my garden. I've been looking around for whole raw peanuts that haven't been treated in any way in the hope of being able to use them to grow my own, when to my greatest surprise my husband spotted growing plants at a local Bunnings Warehouse while looking for an electric whipper snipper (ok, the whipper snipper section is nowhere near the plant section, but you can't blame any gardener for detouring past the plants first!).
Peanuts have self pollinating flowers, and after the flower is spent and has died back the plant grows a shoot down from where the flower was, and into the ground, here the peanut forms. From different websites I've read regarding growing peanuts, a bush (they grow to around 50 to 60cm high) will produce up to 50 peanuts. To harvest they normally pull the bush out of the ground roots, peanuts and all and turn it upside down for the nuts to dry out for a couple of days before harvesting them. I'm hoping my first two will turn into many more down the track.

We've also replaced our plum tree. We bought and planted one last year when we put in our peach and nectarine trees. It never really seemed to take and in the spring when it didn't get new leaves I had to face the fact that it was definitely dead. We were given some good advice when we went looking. The first one I had selected at the nursery was not suitable for our subtropical climate, we wouldn't have had enough cold hours to encourage it to produce fruit. The gardener at the nursery was very helpful and looked up which would be best variety for us and that's the one we finally bought. It looks a much healthier and is a larger tree than the old ones and we know it's suited to our environment so hopefully this one will survive.

I mentioned the electric whipper snipper earlier, and yes we did end up getting one, to go with our new electric mower. Our old petrol mower has died and parts are unavailable to fix it. I always struggled with putting petrol in it. Our petrol cannister would leak everywhere, even when I used a funnel it would run all over the place. I worried about using a petrol mower in a garden where I've shunned any unnatural or non organic fertilisers and pest control, so this time around it's electric for us.



One of the wheel barrow loads of weeds removed from the garden!

 We bought an Okra plant at the same time as the peanuts. I bought seeds for these ages ago, but hadn't gotten around to planting them. From my reading I believe one plant will provide quite a few Okra, and as I haven't cooked or eaten them before, I'll try this one before getting too many going.
I'll leave it here for now & get this posted! I'll try to put some images of the new plants up on my next post.