Going to seeds

From a couple of punnets of mixed lettuce, purchased last autumn, I have now lettuce growing all over my garden simply because I am not good at thinning and disposing off the extra seedlings that appear when the first lot went to seeds.  Now I am picking beautiful lettuce flowers, some blue, some yellow, to go in a vase.  I tend to pick the lettuce by the leaves, rather than pulling out the whole head, so I am left with so many going to seeds.  The varieties I have growing are, cos, oakleaf and the green and purple mignonette.  With the kind of heat that we are getting today, well over 30 degrees centigrade, I would have to shelter the baby plants and give them plenty of water.  I am beginning to find seedlings as I work in the garden.  Some I will leave where they are but those in ridiculous places would have to be transplanted.  I can't allow the seedlings anywhere near the eggplants, chillies or cucumbers.  They will shoot up and overshadow the slower growing vegetables.  I have found a couple of eggplants, well formed and growing bigger by the day.  I found a cucumber, about 6 cm long, still too small to pick, and it was hidden under the leaves.  If the lettuce seedlings would catch up to the tomatoes and cucumbers, I will not have to go looking for salad ingredients at the market.  All this never ending cycle needs is the assurance of rain.  I hope this last day of 2009 will bring some rain to quench my very thirsty garden.

 

Waiting to harvest

I did not expect to find this pretty pink poppy in my garden.  I am waiting to harvest the seed pods of the other poppies and this tiny plant unfurled its crepe like pink petals.  I am also waiting to harvest the flat peaches.  They are a beautiful red but still firm.  However, this morning, I picked one that is tender on one side so my son Caley could have a taste before going on a cycling holiday in Vietnam and Indonesia for two months.  I had a sliver of the white flesh and it was sweet and juicy.  I have two nets over the tree and I hope the marauding cockatoos will not get to the fruits before I do.  I hope more people will grow the flat peaches as they are so tasty and so good to look at.  The variety I bought last year came under the name "Donut Peach".  The peach does look a bit like a doughnut, minus the hole.

I am also beginning to harvest the purple beans.  I am using the beans fresh or quickly stir fried as they are so tender.  I have been promising my grandson that I will start off a couple of the bean plants in a pot for him but somehow I have not managed to do so.  I can still put in a couple of seeds in a pot and he could harvest some beans in a couple of months.  The very warm weather we have been getting will certainly help with the growth.  This is happening with the self sown lettuces and Chinese mustard.  I will transplant them when they are a bit bigger, and dig in the excess seedlings.  I am digging in chopped up old lettuce plants to improve the soil.  I no longer throw my garden waste in the green bin.  Using a heavy chopper I chop unwanted plants and either add them to the compost or use them as mulch.  The seed heads of weeds I treat as rubbish as I do not want to spread more weeds in my garden.
I will be sowing more radish seeds, red and white, and hope to harvest them in three to four weeks.  By that time I hope to harvest my salad ingredients from the garden.  The cucumbers are still tiny and the tomatoes are fruiting very nicely and when the radish are ready I hope to have a constant supply for my salad bowl.

The North Wind

The flat peaches are red all over, but still firm.  I hope this northerly wind, that has been blowing all night, will not do them damage.  Unlike the north wind in the nursery rhyme, (The North wind does blow, and we shall have snow), down under it is dreaded.  Yesterday was the odd number watering day and I tried to give the garden a good soaking.  I am still thinking of ways to keep delicate plants watered in extreme weather.  I may bury 2 litre plastic bottles, with small holes drilled in the base to allow the water to drip slowly.  I will have the lids on to stop evaporation.  There are times when I long for the good old days when we can just turn on the sprinkler hose to drench the garden  As that is not to be, I will be bucketting water collected in the kitchen sink to keep the ferns and hydrangeas alive.  Why not get rid of those thirsty plants you may ask?  The ferns are so cooling to look at.  I see them from my dining table.   They are a pleasure to look at anytime of the day.  I worry about the large fronds of the lacy tree fern and the soft tree fern for they will be the first to go when the desiccating winds come through.  While they are green they keep the back corner of my garden looking cool. 

The flat pack water tank has been up a few weeks.  The 1000 litre tank, (see picture), is made from the same material used for the bladder container.  The tank I bought when it was on sale at a local hardware store for $99.00 and the cost of putting it up, including connecting the diverter to the downpipe, was $140.00.  I won't cost the brick base.  The secondhand bricks came from a neighbour who did not want to send them to the tip when he demolished his garage.  My three sons helped clean the bricks and their charges are quite fair - lasagnas, pasta, puddings and ice cream - not all at one sitting.

jacaranda

There are still flowers on the jacaranda tree even though the footpath is covered with the windfall blue blossoms, which I prefer not to sweep away.  If I want a thick carpet of blue I may need to give the tree a good pruning in autumn to encourage more flowers next year.  I need to give the tree a good shock for it to send new shoots next year.  I am not up to climbing the tree or a ladder with a chain saw, so the job would have to be outsourced.  I may persuade my sons to help.

This morning I noticed the white agapanthus ready to burst open.  When I was planting the different pots of agapanthus in the garden I had no idea what colours they were.  If I had known I would have planted the white agapanthus in a separate bed as I love to see the pristine white heads standing apart.  That would have to be a job for the future and I have to remember to label the plant.  I should also have remembered to label some of my bulbs when I dug some of them out.  That is the problem of gardening on the run.  Jobs are not done systematically.  Can I ever be systematic in my garden?  Perhaps not.  The main thing is to remember to feed the plants on a regular basis.  I use seaweed liquid fertiliser to help the plants along but give the roses additional feed to encourage more flowers.  The eggplants must be fed soon as I can see the fruits forming.  The zucchini too needs a feed.  Normally a zucchini fruit would double in size overnight (a slight exaggeration maybe) but my crop seems to be taking their time.  Perhaps some sheep manure and compost around the plant would give it a boost.  It is overcast out there.  It is time to do some work in the garden.

A bountiful surprise

This late in the season I don't expect the poppies to appear but a few are unfurling and the group underneath the cherry tree is looking good.  I hope they will survive the heat predicted for tomorrow, supposed to be 39 degrees centigrade.  I was going to put shade cloth over some of my seedlings but I have not had a chance.  The bountiful surprise is the potato patch in the outside garden, which I thought was my failure.  The patch lies behind the broadbeans and was almost unnoticed when the beans were growing tall.  I had forgotten that I had put in more potatoes in the bed and they had grown and mature and died down.  I was turning over the soil when I came across a bumper crop of desiree and nicola.  Contrary to what is preached in gardening shows I did not buy certified potato tubers to plant but use those I had purchased for eating.  I will try the kippler next time.  More surprises in the garden bed when I looked beneath a flourishing cherry tomato bush.  There was a bunch, red and ready for eating.  Could I go back to shop bought tomatoes after the real thing?

These ferns were photographed in June when they had recovered from the searing heat of February.  I did not think they would survive, with the fronds so desiccated.  I kept watering them and slowly they came back.  You can hardly see the ground now and the low ferns are thriving in the micro climate of the fernery.  Even with the shade cloth over them, the ferns suffered in the heat of February.  I must keep them moist to stop the fronds from drying up.  The summer heat is a worry but I do not want to grow only succulents in my garden.  When I moved in spring, last year, I put in a flat peach tree, a cumquat and a lemon tree.  The flat peach fruits are growing bigger daily, showing the pink blush on the top of the doughnut shape fruit.  The cumquats are fruiting too and I expect them to be ready in winter for some marmalade.  The lemon is not doing so well.  I suspect the possum has been eating the shoots.  Mulching and deep watering must be helping these trees.  I don't think I will stop growing water hungry plants.  I just have to be clever about using the limited water I have.

 

The flat peaches under netting.

Touch of blue

 The blue flowers are appearing all over the garden.  The jacaranda tree needs a shocking pruning to give the kind of display I am seeing all over the Melbourne suburbs.  I shall do it after the flowering is well over, perhaps after Christmas.  A not so obvious blue flower is that of the eggplant.  I'm getting a few of them from the few plants I put in over a month ago and they are growing at different rates.  This is the long Lebanese eggplant which I like to pick when they are still small and tender.  Last year I had a good crop from one plant and this time I am adding potash to the plants that are busily flowering.  The bees seem to love them as they do with the borage.  The self seeding borage are coming up with seedlings all over the garden and I have to transplant them before they are too big as the borage does not like to be moved.  Moving the borage seedling with a good clump of soil will encourage better growth.  The plant I will stop from self seeding is the agapanthus.  I have both the normal size and the miniature.  They are opening up, at various stages, in different parts of the garden, in pots and in the ground.  They are such cheerful flowers I don't want to call them weeds as some people think they are.  I chop off the seed heads as soon as they appear as the seeds can germinate with no help what so ever.

I am disappointed that the love in the mist seeds did not take off.  I love the deep blue variety.  In my old garden they would appear in pots or flowerbeds.  The few that appear in this garden are of the pale blue, almost white variety and they seem to be stunted.  From where I am working at the computer I can see the blue flowers of the jacaranda, agapanthus and lobelia.  I shall look up my gardening books for some ideas. 

soaking wet

The rain on Tuesday and Thursday should seep in deep enough to satisfy the garden.  I'm trying to be diligent with mulching but there are patches in the garden where the old mulch has rotted down and some washed away, exposing bare earth.  First thing I will do is to soak some pea straw mulch before covering those bare patches.  I find soaking the mulch before application helps as the mulch will be damp right through and not inclined to blow away.  I'll feed the roses and water them and hope to have more flowers in the next couple of weeks.  The hot weather of two weeks ago burnt the flowers on the rose arch.  It's an unpleasant sight.  The arch is north west facing and got the brunt of the heat.  It looks gorgeous when the two varieties are in full bloom, with a pinkish white on one side and sunset hues on the other.  I'm not good with names and consult my rose book when necessary.  I have yet to identify the different roses in the garden, some of which are pictured here.  I have to photograph the Mermaid, a pale yellow climber I brought from my old garden.  It is doing well, even though in a tight spot squashed between a chilli bush and a yellow daisy.  I was in a hurry to put it in last spring when I moved in and that was the best spot. 

In the beginning

This picture was taken mid October 2008.  The rose bushes along the fence were showing some buds and the lime green Robinia was waiting to be dug out to make way for three planter boxes.  It took Steve, with his two helpers, two days to clear the patch, construct the boxes using red gum timber and filled the boxes with a mixture of top soil and compost.

These are the pillars, set in concrete, that form the skeleton of the boxes.  I could have bought ready made boxes out of corrugated iron or plastic.  I have seen them at big hardware stores.  I wanted an impressive structure to sit on the lawn and still be upright in a few decades.  The boxes are north west facing.  The disadvantage is the midsummer heat can desiccate seedlings if not protected.  Last summer when the temperature soared to over 40 degrees centigrade I used tarpauline and old sheets to cover the boxes.  I am trying to find some time to make a cover out of shade cloth in prparation for the heat of January and February.  I bought this place because of the garden, which is all in the front yard, setting the house back.  There is a large jacaranda tree in front of the house, which was one of the characteristics that persuaded me to show some interest to the agents.  After signing the papers I used to drive past with friends and with every visit the size of the garden seemed to shrink.  I wanted land to put in my collection of plants, which I had accumulated over a period of thirty years.  I decided on building the boxes even before I moved in.  They are for my vegetables.  In the raised boxes the vegetables would not have to compete with the roots of the gum and the robinias.  I have since removed two robinias but the roots are sending up suckers all over the garden.  If I had wanted a forest of robinias I could easily have created one without lifting a finger.

When I saw the boxes filled with earth I could not wait to put in the vegetables I was hoping to sustain me through the summer.  I added sheep manure and compost before putting in the seedlings.  I used lucern for mulch.  However the growth was not as fast as I had imagined.  Seedlings in pots were shooting up faster than those in the boxes.  I kept adding compost and manure.  On inspecting the soil I discovered it was quite sandy.  I suppose it is difficult to tell the quality of soil bought from nurseries.  Over the next few months I kept adding compost and manure to improve the structure of the soil.  Some plants did well and others were struggling.  The peas were giving me a few pods but I was expecting to harvest basket loads.  I should also have added some lime to the soil.  In hindsight I have to say that I was supplied with lettuces, radishes, silver beets, capsicum, tomatoes and basils.  The soil has improved greatly over the last fourteen months and the tomatoes I put in a few weeks ago are fruiting.

This is what the garden looked like in December 2008.  The tall plants against the fence are sunflowers.  They gave such magnificent flowers and the seeds collected have given me more sunflower plants this season.  The boxes are wonderful to look at and I don't have to crouch or kneel when gardening.  I do have garden beds where the kneeling is part of the job, but the boxes are a joy to look at.