roses proudly displaying

 

The roses are blooming all over the garden at the moment.  The two proudly displaying their beauty are the Ballaerina and the Desert Glo.  The Ballerina came with me from my previous garden where it was providing me with cascades of pink blossoms through October  and November, year after year.  It was given to me as a cutting nearly thirty years ago and I have given away many cuttings since.  It is a graceful  climber with the added advantage of not having thorns.  It can easily cover a fence but do remember that its weight may not be good for the fence.  I have one growing near a fence but I will not allow it to establish itself on the fence itself.  I have learned my lesson.  If you look at the close up picture of the Ballerina you will see that the flowers appear in large clusters which make them so endearing.

The Desert Glo covers one half of the arbour over the path leading up to the house.  The colour changes from pink to apricot and in the late afternoon you can almost see the flowers glow.  The Pierre de Ronsard covers the other half of the arbour.  At the moment there are masses of buds.  I cannot wait to see them open up and when that happens I do hope there will still be some of the Desert Glo to make a perfect arch.  I shall be feeding the plants with potasium to encourage the flowering.  I shall also be looking for aphids.  I hope the lady birds I see amongst the leaves are working hard.

A little surprise and more blooming marvelous

For the past five years I have enjoyed the fragrant flowers from my pot of lily of the valley.  They will open in the last week of October and will still look good on Cup day.  I have left the corm untouched but would add compost and feed the plant seaweed solution. In late winter I did not see any sign of life from the pot.  I was going to look for new plants but imagine my surprise when I noticed new life shooting through the soil.  This picture is of  my one and only stalk of lily of the valley and it will see Cup Day.  I shall look for more corms and will plant them in the ground beneath the jacaranda.  I have to pick the pot up to enjoy the sweet fragrance and it is worth it.

The flowers are opening up everywhere.  The blue sage flowers and roses look so good together.  The poppies are braving the heavy downpour but their delicate petals seem to survive.  The mauve and red poppies look after themselves.  They self sow and I try to thin them out but I hate throwing out seedling so they are transferred to different nooks and corners of the garden.  I cannot say I have a neat and tidy garden but at the moment every inch seems to be blooming marvelous.

This dark red pelargonium is producing masses of flowers this year.  I have a few shades of red of this easy to grow favourite.  It grows so easily from cuttings.  A neighbour came to ask for some cuttings and I am only too happy to give them away.  That way I keep the bush pruned.

The joy of gardening

In spring I know why I garden, in spite of the aching joints after a day of digging and kneeling on damp ground.  Being greeted by the happy faces of colourful flowers at the entrance of my driveway and then again, more of them as I head for the steps leading to my front verandah.  At this time of the year I am surrounded by flowers.  With all the drenching rain of winter and spring, and the regular feeding, the annuals and perennials are bursting out in brilliant colours.  Their brilliance are so giddying on a sunny day with clear blue sky.  That is the time when I am happy to just sit and absorb the clours and fragrance of spring. 
This year the two year old granny smith apple tree has produced some blossoms.  I'll be happy to have a couple of mature fruits in autumn.  The tree was struggling last year so I moved it in winter and added plenty of compost to the soil.  It looks quite happy in its new position.
The two year old lemon tree is finally keeping its fruits.  In the first few months of planting the top shoots were ravaged by possums (there are a few of them haunting my garden at night).  I need to feed the tree, judging from the colour of the elaves but at least the fruits are not dropping off.

My garden beds are a mixture of flowers and vegetables.  It is impossible to see in this picture, but the patch of pea straw is protecting  chilli and capsicum seedlings.  Before too long the lavendar and roses in the background will be sending out flowers.  I am not one for neat rows and my vegetables enjoy as much showing off time as the flowers. 

Colours in September

When the sun shines in September the garden seems to burst into brilliant colours.  The blossoms, ranging from the delicate whites of the apricot to the blushing pinks of the peaches and nectarines must be sending the bees crazy.  The flowers I am so thrilled with are the rununculus and the tulips.  Last spring I bought a punnet of rununculus seedlings and they did well.  I stored the corms at the end of summer.  I was not too hopeful when I planted the corms in autumn as some of them looked quite scraggly.  They sprouted and I have been looking after them, placing the pots in sunny positions and feeding them seaweed fertiliser.  The colours are astonishing.  The deep red is stunning but the one I like best is the deep apricot.  Then there is the white with purple trimming.  Perhaps I shall buy more corms to plant in autumn.  In the meantime I am enjoying the new growth that are sprouting up all over the place.  I hope the two trees in the outside garden will reveal their identities when the blossoms turn to fruits.  These trees have been in pots for at least seven years and I cannot remember if they were nectarines or peaches.  They grew well last summer, suddenly shooting up after being in the garden for a year and for the first time they have sent out pink blossoms.  I do hope the fruits will set.  My flat peach tree does not have as many blossoms this spring.  I will be lucky to get half a dozen fruits.  I should have given the tree more attention after the bumper crop last year.  It is still a small tree.  Some organic dynamic lifter might be the solution.          

blue and purple

After three weeks of looking at lush tropical greens, it is wonderful to return to the blue and purple in my garden.  The deep blue bearded iris is outstanding and as I have planted them in different parts of the garden it is providing the colours to contrast the white blossoms of the Manchurian pear.  Different coloured hyacinths have opened up but this purplish mauve one looks stunning.  I have left the hardenbergia in a pot, allowing it to climb on a support.  Then there is the masses of violets.  At the moment I don't mind its invasive nature as I am seeing the cheerful flowers all over the garden. Once the flowering stops in summer I will thin out the different patches.

Harvesting the yacon tuber

I harvested the yacon tuber eventually, even though the plants (3 clumps in different parts of the garden) are nothing more than dead leaves and shrivelled up stems.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the size of the tubers.  The second picture shows the yacon in summer.  By autumn the plants were over half a metre tall and showing splendid display of leaves.  This year none of the clumps produced the sunflower like flowers.  I attributed the size of the tubers to the compost dug into the ground, before planting.
The yacon came from South America and I have yet to see the plant in nursery.  I was given some tubers many years ago, and this has been my best harvest so far.  Check out http://www.culture-wise.com for the March 2008 Ingredients page on yacon.  Even if you don't care for the tubers, (delicious steamed, baked or raw), the plant makes an attractive bush in the garden.

water chestnut

About a month ago I harvested the water chestnut.  I should have done that as soon as the leaves started to die and avoided losing some of the corms.  The pots had stayed in the water too long and some of the corms rotted away.  I managed to salvage what was left and had some to eat and other to replant.  I should have taken the pots out of the water when the leaves started to go yellow and to harvest when the leaves die.  I have planted the corms but they will remain out of the water until I see some shoots appearing.  I hope to get bigger corms in the next harvest, that is if this lot will sprout.
The water cress is doing well and I must look at dividing the big clump.  The leaves are delicious in salad or in a sandwich and if you are tired of parsley, the curled leaves of the water cress make a pretty garnish.
The garden is looking a bit bare and I have to think about spraying the peach trees to stop leaf curl but when I am ready the wind is too strong or it is raining.  I am not complaining about the rain.  I don't have to get up at six in the morning to water the garden but I am checking the pot planys as the wind do dry the soil pretty quickly.  I am watering the pot plants, (especially the ranunculus), with sea weed solution to help them along.  The vegetables too are being fed.  I have been harvesting snow peas and brocolli and of course, the rainbow chards and silver beets are doing so well.  The Chinese mustard green is sprouting all over the place so those not picked for the kitchen are thrown into the compost bin.  I always make sure I have a couple of the Chinese mustard go to seeds so I do not run out of this slightly bitter vegetable.  I bought the seeds over twenty years ago and from that packet of seeds I have passed on seedlings to other gardeners, over the years.  If you think you do not have a green thumb try growing the mustard green.

This is a very mature mustard green, much too bitter for consumption.

The dandelion flower and leaves are fine to eat but I am not sure about the oxalis.  A patch of my outside garden has been taken over by the oxalis.  I pull them out and squash the nuts or corms and hopefully I can reduce the weed in this way.  Digging up the ground only encourage more growth.  I can put up with them in the lawn but they are a nuisance in pots and amongst the vegetables. For non-gardeners the sight of the yellow flowers in the lawn must be better than no flowers at all.  Children do love the flowers so we cannot condemn the poor weed.