Time flies, Instant gratification to patience, all in a garden

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I've written here. I've gone to a couple of times, but think to myself, that the day to day is not that exciting, or I don’t really have great photos to put with it. It’s a shame I've wasted all those opportunities to note down what I've been doing in the garden, because I know I’ll look back next year for guidance on when to cutback the asparagus and re pot them, or when I gave the blueberries fertilizer that’s made them look so much better this year then ever before, or when did I first add those plants to my garden.

When I think back there has been so much going on. I did my first ever purchase on the internet, I know, I'm probably a little behind the times, but wow, did this convert me! Of course the me of six years ago would have probably bought shoes, clothes or make-up, but I'm proud to say the me of now, made my first on-line trip to Green Harvest, and as I lay there in bed, drooling over their plants (it was their description of the Yacon or Peruvian Ground Apple that finally got too much for me to hold back!) I made the decision that it was worth it to give it a try. Well, that purchase won’t be my last! The glee of instant gratification! I was so excited when my box of goodies arrived and couldn't wait to get them out and into the garden. I was able to buy so many exciting things and it was just at the right time for them to be planted, the start of spring.

So what did I buy? Well, the Peruvian ground apples for starters, two big bulbs, which will produce sweet potato type tubers that will apparently taste something like a cross between an apple and watermelon. To this I added: Jerusalem Artichokes, Duck Potatoes, Chinese Artichokes (they looked so unusual I just had to have them), Queensland Arrowroot, and then some great packets of seeds.
So they're all now well established in their starter pots. The Peruvian Ground Apple has now made it's way into a permanent spot in the garden, and now, patience is all that's required, for the next 7 months!

                                                         

Chinese Artichokes growing in their pot. They do suggest that they can become quite invasive, and obviously any tubers left in the ground are likely to sprout, so these will remain in pots, although they are due for an upsize. 

Chinese Artichokes: I borrowed this image from Green Harvest as I didn't think to take a picture of them before I planted them, but you can see why I had to have them!

And here's the Peruvian Ground Apples, planted alongside the pond at the bottom of the garden.

April

I know it's a little late, but I thought I'd do an overall for what has happened each month. That way I can look back and hopefully get a little planning in for next year. It's been a good month in the little blue shack. Alice and Wendy my two new chooks came to live with us.
April is a great month for fabulous sunset shots, I don't know that I shared many with you, but I took heaps of photos.
The annual canoe race has inspired my aunt and uncle who are keenly involved with the dragon boat racing scene, hopefully with their connections we'll have something extra special happening this time next year.
Hubby started the deck, well at least laid out the boards that we had inherited from my brother when he sold his last home and removed a temporary deck that wasn't council approved. No deck yet, but that timber is now being put to great use and I'll have an unveiling shortly.
In the garden construction of new beds is underway. The ground has been levelled for the top two gardens near the bananas and the bottom layer of the new wicker beds have been put in place.
Green caterpillars have taken over the garden, they are eating the tomatoes, the kale, parsley, hibiscus, rosellas and basically I've found them on most green things. The tomatoes that haven't been gobbled by the caterpillars in wicker bed number two are just turning red and I picked the first of them a couple of days ago.
I'm still getting a few passionfruit from both the dark and yellow passionfruits.
The mandarin tree has fruit all over it which although small are edible (actually quite sweet) compared to last years bitter offering that we turned into jam.
I harvested the last of the peanuts as they were dying back under the overgrown tomatoes. Note to self, find a sunny spot for these guys next year, a special place all of their own.
The asparagus is just starting to die back and is browning off, but still sending up the occassional green shoot, I know that last year I read that I should just cut them off (apparently they don't die back completely in our climate) and get them ready for replanting, but I don't think that was until winter.
The water chestnuts are almost ready for harvest, their leaves almost completely dead now.

Lazy days

Yesterday was a lovely autumn day, not too hot, not cold, sun shining and no rain. Just perfect. I made an early start in the garden, letting my chickens out early for a run around, and getting them to help me look for green caterpillars on my tomatoes. It was so cute watching them climb into the garden, something I would normally freak out a little over, but there's not much they can wreck under the tomatoes that hasn't already been decimated by the green invasion. They were jumping up and down trying to reach caterpillars after I caught the first few, which became snacks for the girls.
My Mum and aunt called in early to remind me it was the annual canoe race and I joined them to watch the start, gobbled down a yummy bacon and egg breakfast burger made by the local boat club volunteers and watched the first, second and third place takers arrive in after circumnavigating the island. In all a very relaxed way to spend a Sunday.


Some of the competitors warming up while waiting for the start.



The race kicked off with a frenzy of oars.

First, second and third place warming down after finishing.

Mum and my niece enjoying a stroll together on the beach waiting for the race sta

Invasion

After all the rain we've had I was fascinated by these mushrooms/toadstools??? that popped up in the local park. There were so many of them I just had to take a quick few pics. I don't know what type they are, please let me know if you do. They certainly don't look edibly appealing, but make an interesting find on a morning walk.

And as the rain had settled into a pattern of overnight showers and beautiful days, everything in the garden blossomed and thrived, including the bugs. Bad bugs, but they also herald the arrival of good bugs, and some bugs, I'm not really sure where they fit in.

A lone caterpillar on my mandarin tree.

Another Citrus loving caterpillar on my tangerine. This was the only one, sitting high enough the chooks couldn't reach it.

Someones been eating my tomatoes...

And brought along way too many friends....

Moving onto the rosellas as well

And yet another type on the lone sunflower that escaped my weeding

As you can see, caterpillars were a large part of my problem, but they weren't alone.

Aphids have taken an incredible liking to my snake beans. I never had this problem last year and I was getting desparate enough to reach for the pyrethrum, until I saw the lady beetles arrive.

Not to confused of course with the 24 spot beetle who has also taken up residence.

Gobbling the flowers on my white choko. Hopefully they are fertislising as they go and leave enough flower to fruit.

And then there are just all the other bugs in general.

And my best little bug eaters are also out in force

Somehow, nature just finds it's own balance.

Welcoming Alice and Wendy

Alice and Wendy arrived yesterday morning. I had no idea how they should be settled in. Would they be like dogs, would they try to run away, could they wander off and get lost. To be safe I put them in their temporary pen, our old chook house, just to let them have time to settle down and get a sense of their new surrounds. About lunchtime they were looking really calm, they had been wandering around the pen eating grass, digging, looking for bugs and had eaten some of their food and had water. I figured that was the sign that they had accepted their move, so we opened the door and let them out to free range around the garden. My other girls were already wandering around, but hadn't paid any particular attention to these new arrivals other than a brief glance through the cage. Things were a little different once they were out however. Alice and Wendy are much bigger than any of the other girls and were not in a socialable mood at all. Every time one of the girls came anywhere near them they puffed up and chased them away. I expected that there would be some confrontation, as the newcomers would mean a shuffle of the groups heirachy, but after the first few tries, the two camps remained separated. As I wanted to ensure they had sorted the bickering before they were penned together they spent the night separated as well. Today they all spent the day in the garden, there were a couple of small altercations, but still no unity. So tonight we are still in two separate chook houses and I'm wondering if there will ever be harmony in the garden again.
If you've integrated new chickens with existing I'd love to hear how you did it, any suggestions at all are very very welcome.

Alice and Wendy settling in the old chook pen.

Alice would only lay in a special box before, but she's taken to the lawn mower catcher already. Two eggs waiting for us there this morning.

A special Easter gift

I've had my beautiful girls, Naughty, Henrietta, Larry and Buffy since just after Christmas 3 years ago. They have been a wonderful part of the change my little blue shack has brought for me. My original plan for them was to be willing workers, clearing the ground of grass and weeds, allowing me to establish garden beds, eating bugs, and in general being of service in my garden. Little did I realise how many contented hours would be spent with a cup of tea in hand, just watching them roam about the garden. It's been a relevation to me in so many ways, from a naive start(I didn't think for one second they'd eat plants, in retrospect, how stupid was I) until today, they have been an incredible source of learning and company.

Well, today I welcome two new girls, Alice and Wendy. I haven't met them yet, but feel like it's a meant to be thing. I met their current owner a couple of weeks ago. She had overheard me talking with hubby about it being time to move the chook house again and mentioned she needed to move soon and was looking for someone to give her two girls a home.
When I first investigated the idea of having chickens, I had thoughts of keeping about 10. The chook houses are both designed large enough to take this number in comfort, but I was contented with the four I first introduced. If you're wondering how I arrived at four instead of 10 it's because I got overwhelmed making the choice of which ones I would have from a large assortment. I ended up with a white one (Naughty, named by my niece and nephews because apparently that's all they heard me saying to it for the first few days!!!), a brown one, Larry, as she was always on her own at first, a peach one, Buffy, named after the vampire slayer as she is always the protective one when it comes to other birds entering their space, and lastly Henrietta, the baby (bantam) who is black. Four different colours so I could tell them apart. I had always intended to introduce a new chicken each year and slowly add to my little flock. I hadn't done this yet. After seeing the four girls in action, I don't think my garden could survive more than 6 anyways, so I've held off waiting for the right opportunity. I didn't know how old each of the girls were when I first got them, or if they'd even lay. Originally all the girls would lay an egg each every day or so, which was a bonus over their required work duties in the garden, but they've slowed down now. And I had been contemplating getting the extras because now I've been spoilt with our own girls eggs, I  hate eating store bought eggs.
And so fate has had a hand and this morning I'll be welcoming two more girls to our little family. I'm excited and anxious all at the same time, I hope everyone will get along, I hope my girls will accept them and they'll be happy in their new home too. Only time will tell.

Around the garden

A quick update on what's happening in the garden at the moment. After all the rain we've had things are really happening. The grass has grown to super huge proportions in the side gardens. We are guilty of letting it go while we've worked on the wicker gardens and retaining walls at the far end of the garden so it's not surprising it's now hard to tell there was once garden beds all the way along here. We've started to chop it down, pull it out or dig it up, but it's not going to be a quick job. I'm looking forward to the Easter long weekend to hopefully get a chance to get a good go at it.

The rain has given the apple trees a spur along and they have flowers on and the start of new fruit, as too does the passionfruit vines.

The apple trees are flowering and you can see the start of an apple next to this one. The trees are now about three years old so they are at a size where we should start to see some resulting fruit.

I love the unusual flowers of the passionfruit.

Passionfruit on the vine, and now we wait...

The loquat tree is a mass of flowers heralding signs of a good feed to come and the little mandarin tree is covered in tiny fruits.

This loquat tree only stands as tall as me, but these flowers will probably produce anything up to 50 small fruits across the tree. Normally we just stand there and gobble.

This mandarin is about two years old now. We've had a couple of small fruit that were so tart the only thing we could do with them was make jam. But the fruit look like they are holding well this time, fingers crossed.

Some things that I thought were finished for the season have suddenly sprung back to life. The kale and basil are bigger than they've ever been and to think I almost pulled them out. The chillies have started flowering all over again, just when I thought there would be no more.

Kale on mass at the top, basil brought back to life at the bottom and sides. Pesto here we come.

Flowers mean chillies. These are my favourites, they aren't too hot. I missed out on getting many this season as the chickens suddenly decided after living with them for over a year that they'd try them and really took a shine to them, so much so it's one of their first stops on their rounds when they are let out each day.

Not everything is blossoming however. Regardless of the rain and the sun in between, the water chesnuts haven't been confused about the season and just seem to know it's time to die back. Harvesting them soon will have to go on the to do list.

It's not all about fruit and veg now though, the rose hubby was given for his birthday last year is in flower and the smell is divine. I love roses, but never dreamed I'd have any success with them. This one might just change my mind.

And of course my garden wouldn't be complete unless all this rain brought out the frogs as well. These are one of my favourites, I'm not sure what they're called but they are only about the size of my thumbnail at biggest and although they are green, they shine gold in the sun.

Thanks for sharing my pleasure in my garden at the moment. How is your garden looking with your weather at the moment?

On the potting bench

When I first started gardening I bought most of my plants as seedlings from nurseries or from our local Bunnings hardware. This was convenient and made it really easy for me to make up a quick garden bed as the fancy took me. There were some down sides though. I would often select what looked to be the healthiest and the biggest of the seedlings (maybe with a degree of greed I have to admit) which would often turn out to be rather poorly performing plants. On removing them at the end of the season, I would often find an undersized root ball, the exact shape of the punnet cell it had originally come from. I believe this is probably because the plant was already root bound at the time I'd bought it. Often these punnets come with unexpected "extras", sometime caterpillars I've missed seeing under a leaf, or an additional tiny weed that spreads like wildfire on the days I'm not in the garden. And all this comes with a heftier price tag then the huge number of plants I can potentially get from a packet of seeds. My last pet hate with purchased seedlings and the one that has really turned me off buying them is the tiny styrofoam balls that help make up the filling of the potting mix used in their punnets. This stuff never seems to go away. Yet again just a couple of days ago I turned up soil out of a pot to top fill a garden bed and this white menace was everywhere. Things don't look so organic when you're trying to stop the chickens from gobbling these little seed look alikes.

Like most gardeners I turned to producing my own seedlings, from bought seeds, from seeds collected from plants that worked in my garden, from volunteer plants that pop up and from strikings of plants already existing. At first my hubby built me a rough potting bench against the back shed. But time has proved it a little too high for me to work comfortably at (maybe because he's six foot 5 compared to my 5 foot 6), and instead my hive of activity now centres around the old outdoor table. I thought that I should start to share what I'm anxiously waiting on sprouting, what's sitting there waiting anxiously for it's own garden spot, the stories behind the successes and the failures in a regular little update. It also might encourage me as a sort of confessional, to finally plant out some of these poor things that have patiently waited way too long to find a more permanently suitable spot.

Hibiscus cuttings still in their tubes, stacked into a bigger pot to keep them upright.

Lately I've been almost obsessed with growing anything I can get my hands on, just to try, so it's a real mixed bag. I've got what I think are called Spraxis in a punnet, struck from seed which I took from one that just popped up out of the ground near my front door one day, they look kind of like a dutch lily leaf and the flowers are dainty, gold with a red freckle. After the flower comes a seed pod, and well, I couldn't help myself, the seeds went into a punnet and the rest they say is history. Near them, some chillies or maybe capsicum, or bell peppers, in all honesty, they been there so long now I'm no longer sure, but they did come from one of the above I had growing at one point.
I have a large hibicus near the back door, and somewhere in my dreams this will need to be cut down and transplanted to make way for a deck, plus it needed cutting back, so I had about 30 cuttings, of which about 8 or so are now in small pots, another 10 are alive in tubes but still not showing enough root for me to believe they are ready for bigger things, and the rest are compost. Do I know what I'm going to do with either of these things? No, no idea. Just thought I'd give it a go because they were there and I could. I have ginger, lots of ginger, about 2 dozen in old herb pots, struck from the leftovers of last seasons ginger. I want to put these into the garden in the retained area around my levelled wicker bed area, but the area's not fully retained yet and the chickens keep digging it up, meanwhile they are quickly outgrowing their little yellow pots. The yellow pots remind me that I should mention that I kept my pots and punnets from previously purchased plants and reuse them (until they fall apart). I also like to keep same things in same coloured pots where possible, a habit I started when I couldn't really recognise what I'd actually planted. I've also got red pots with loquats grown from my own loquat fruit seeds, and green pots with cape gooseberry seedlings from last seasons crop.
So what's on your potting bench these days?

One tray of ginger waiting to be planted out.

Cape gooseberry seedlings from my own plant seeds

Spraxis to the left, chillies (I think) to the right

The loquat seedlings at least made it to the ground next to the table

A mixed bag of tumeric, ginger, comfrey, and something dead.

Rain, rain, and more rain

It's been raining heavily for the last three days which means I've been unable to get much done in the garden this past weekend. It was raining on my last day off as well. The grass that only a month ago was dried, dead and brown, is now flourishing at knee height. The only plants wilting now are those that are drowning. It's amazing how much the weather and climate can change so quickly.

A fortnight ago, after we had the first lot of deluge I pulled out the cucumber plants which had been flourishing happily in the number one wicker bed up till that first rain. They thrived, protected from the worst of the heat with a shade cloth canopy, and had enough constant access to water via the wicker bed setup, but kept free from water directly on the leaves. My first successful cucumbers! No problems with powdery mildew, no problems with them becoming dried out from lack of water. They were perfect, and delivered a bountiful crop of white cucumbers until the rain came. With the constant wet weather came the powdery mildew, and then the vine in it's weakened state fell victim to an invasion of bad (24 spot) ladybugs and their hungry offspring. I decided to cut my losses and pulled them out. Out too came the first crop of peanuts, perhaps in retrospect a little early, but I still have enough to be able to use some of the crop to replant and go again, and some for a little snack. In their place have been planted a variety of lettuce seedlings and asian greens from seed.  A fornight later the seedlings have sprouted and will soon need to be thinned out.

The chickens were moved off wicking bed number two, and onto bed three, which was already sporting a thick cover of green manure ready to delight the chooks and nourish my soon to be next planting area.
Wicking bed two has been planted out with some snake beans grown from seeds I'd struck from last seasons crop, some tomatoes and basil, edged with the rest of my peanut seedlings and accompanied by some parsley. About a week ago I also popped in some dwarf bean seeds, a mixed of borlotti and butter among others, and some beetroot. I have to say that I think the seeds may have been too old, because nothing has shown itself yet. I have to admit, I'm not feeling positive, given that beans and normally really quick to show.

On the positive, the rosellas I planted out have all settled in really well courtesy of the rain. So too has the sweet potatoes I'd started from slips from others I'd grown. These are outside the wicker beds in the ground gardens created by the retaining walls I've built to level the garden for the wicker beds to sit flat. Older plants like the pawpaw (papaya) and the artichoke that I thought had all but died off in the dry, have been given a new lease of life by the rain and are coming back strong. All sorts of things are popping up, including lots of self seeded parsley, nastursiums and even some basil right at the back door.

The first bananas were cut down a fortnight ago as well, and finally today have started to show a flash of yellow, indicating they are about to ripen. I find once one starts, they whole bunch follow suit really quickly. So hopefully Thursday will see me with some fresh home grown bananas, and by that night a well stocked supply in the freezer ready to use in home made icecream.
Today I also picked the one pineapple that had grown this season. It looked a little the worse for wear today, and when I went to investigate I discovered the base was aready blushing golden on it's way to being ripe.

In all lots coming along nicely. I am keen to make sure the three wicker beds really prove their worth over the next seasons, although with this rain, I wonder why I even needed them in the first place. How's your garden surviving the wet, or are you somewhere where you're still battling the heat and dry?