My poor gardens have been so neglected of late. With the longer trading hours at work over the leadup until Christmas, and a lot of time spent inside the house to get things done ready to received visitors (my lovely sister and her kids) I haven't spent much time at all out in the garden.
Many of the seedlings I'd struck had grown too oversized and pot bound to be able to transplant into the garden. The gardens themselves had become overgrown with weeds and grass and the chickens had dug up anything that looked half decent! So just over a week ago I started the clean up. Out with the strangled seedlings (actually into the compost heap). All pots cleaned and stacked up ready for my next try. I'm pleased to say as I look around my garden, that much of what I've planted recently has been the offspring of last years plants, and my numbers are increasing.
Most of the ginger plants (I'm proud to say I've about 18 plants from last years roots, which started from 1 plant the first year and became 4 last year) planted out into one of the garden beds (new philosophy, not enough spare time to keep this many garden beds going with changing crops) where they will sit happily now for between 6 to 18 months. I normally like to harvest my ginger around August as the leaves die down, but these may not have had enough time in the ground by then to develop good sized roots. They've been given a good sprinkling of "Rooster Booster" to help get them kickstarted in the hopes of getting a great surprise come this winter, but the books all say they need at least 12 months, so we'll see.
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| The new Ginger bed, 15 plants here |
I purchased some Tumeric roots from a fresh food market held near work each Wednesday and they had started to sprout so I popped some into pots to see if I could get them to grow and I'm thrilled to say I have at least one that has pushed up it's first leaf. I had already purchased a Tumeric plant last year along with a couple of Galangal plants (these two are both related to Ginger and given my success with that I figured I'd give them a go). I had wanted to buy more as they are a nice green plant with beautiful leaves, and they seem happy enough to grow in the garden under my giant Ghost Gum where not much else is thriving, but a little bag of roots for $3 seemed like a more cost effective way to get them going than $15 plants.
I weeded and tidied up another of the two garden beds near to the one now containing the ginger. They needed quite a bit of work as the chickens had slowly spread them almost flat. One has been planted out with my peanuts I'd struck from seed from the plants I'd bought last year (two original plants become about a dozen). These too had become seriously pot bound so I'm hoping I haven't left it too long to get some results from them.
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| Peanut shrub |
In the clean up of the garden beds I dug up a couple of tomatoes that have sprung up and transplanted them into a better position near the fence line so I can tie them up and hopefully have a little more control over them as they grow! Each year since I first planted cherry tomatoes I've had them come up all over the place, many I just rip out as weeds, some I take pitty on as they seem so strong and healthy, letting them develop where they sit, only to get frustrated when they overtake other plants in the bed, so this time I'm determined to be the one in control!
To top off my gardening exploits, I put in some french beans in the third bed (my others were all dug up by the chooks in one of their escapades), some peas along the fence line, and lastly a few marigolds dotted around, just for good measure.
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| French Beans on the way |
Reading this it sounds like everything in the garden came to a holt, but as I look around my bananas have grown, and look about ready to pick the first bunches,
my snake beans have been producing steadily, my spinach has somehow survived the incredible heat through summer and it still going, the rosella seedlings are now about 2 foot high and growing quickly with recent rains,
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| One of the Rosellas |
the Purple prince chilli that stayed no more than a seedling for the last 12 months has actually grown only a little but produced it's first chillies,
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| The purple prince, worth the wait |
the water chestnuts have multiplied as well, quietly growing from last seasons bulbs I kept and put into another tray in the pond in the hope of getting enough to be able to move some into a new pond sometime this year,
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| The water chestnuts will start to die off ready for harvest |
the gooseberries are growing some leaves back after the beetle problems left them stripped, the cuttings from the Brunsfelia (Yesterday, today and tomorrow bush) are holding their own, the raspberries are shooting canes up everywhere, the pineapples have produced new leaves,
the fig has 3 fruit on it, the lemonade tree is loaded down with fruit,
new growth one the potted citrus, the new paw paw has grown noticably,
there's frog eggs in the pond,
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| Those white bubbles are frogs eggs |
and the purple passionfruit has set fruit and the local pair of curlews have hatched two babies.
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| This protective parent has both chicks under her wings. |
It all leaves me with hope that even without my contant input, things still have a way of getting slowly better.
