Africanaussie

I arrived back after more than four weeks overseas to discover that my garden had done just fine without me, thank you very much!  The peppercorn vine is full of little bunches of peppercorns.  Last year I pickled some, but might do some research on drying them instead.  I made a lovely pepper sauce to go with our pork chops last night.  The lady slipper orchid has made its way into the veggie patch, so I now have flowers and fruit intermingling. This bed required lots of weeding, and then I quickly planted some seeds to make the most of whatever growing season we still have.  Tatsoi, rocket and whatever else was left in the packets. The asian greens in the one box were pulled out to make way for bok choy.  Mizuna was my clear favourite, so I will plant that again.  For the first time ever I have been able to grow rainbow chard - isnt it pretty?  I never grow huge leaves of kale - think it is still too hot here, even in our winter. ...

This months garden share collective is all about herbs.  This is the middle of the wet season, when everything struggles with the heat, humidity and occasional floods..  Everything except the weeds that is.  A neighbor kindly offered me a couple of barrow loads of mulch, and the weed spiral was the first to benefit.  I pulled out weeds, and drastically cut back the plants that were there.  Something was really enjoying the lemon balm , and it wasn't me!  Then I spread out a fairly thick layer of mulch.  In the herb spiral I have cuban oregano - a tropical perennial that is similar to oregano in taste, but the leaves are quite fleshy.  Very versatile - I use it in any sort of tomato based dishes.  It doesn't get any bugs, and there is a green and a variegated one. It sort of wanders around, but never gets overwhelming.  The perfectly behaved plant!  Then on the other hand I have sawtooth coriander - oh my gosh, if you don't kee...

Months, it has been months since I last posted.  admittedly I was away - wandering through castles in France with one daughter and her husband, and then in the USA with my younger daughter, husband and grandson, then some time in Sydney with my hubby.  Wow - it sure is hard to get back into some kind of routine! Luckily my garden survived but I have had very little free time to spend in it lately, and have just been watering and weeding.  Also just plopping spare cardboard on top of weeds - my quick way of weeding! I have tons of weeds and they are all going to seed.  Ahhh! Here is my poor herb spiral - if you look carefully you can see some herbs.  One thing that is doing well is the citronella - not sure if it keeps the mozzies away but it smells nice. My philosophy is to create a vibrant, healthy garden, full of good things to eat, lovely flowers to admire and a place where friends and family love to gather. I never quite harvest a huge amount to ...

The theme for this months Garden Share collective is taste.  Here are the others participating. We have had an extended wet season, and so my garden is not as far along as it normally is at this time of year.  I purchased an eggplant and jalapeno and planted them in the far back corner.  the eggplant has to go into a pot because of the bacterial wilt in the soil.  Even then they dont always survive.  it is just a case of wait and see.  I thought I had lost all the tatsoi and rocket in the flooding rains, but they seem to be bouncing back nicely.  Fresh greens in a salad is the best taste ever, and I am sure loaded with vitamins and minerals compared to what we can buy in a plastic packet.  The bed along the side fence has a few volunteer cherry tomato, and one capsicum which is doing very well.  there are also a couple of cucumber, which go back and forth between looking on their last legs with powdery mildew and thriving....  I...

I just made the linkup -  check out who else has showcased their lovely gardens here . This months Garden Share collective is supposed to focus on leaves.  Now I could have a happy leaf photo or I could show you my cucumbers.  I was going to take a photo, but it is all too sad. My cucumber was doing OK - little bit of downy mildew which is to be expected in this climate, but I gave it a spray with liquid  seaweed with a little bicarb mixed in and it seemed to be doing just fine.  Then the rains came, and it rained, and it rained.  The highest rainfall recorded in this area in May in 96 years! We had 200ml overnight a couple of weekends ago. I had noticed a little insect damage and sprayed with garlic chili spray, but of course the rains washed that all off, but they still carried on chomping.  I saw a couple of catterpillars, so the whole bush got another spray of garlic/chili, but now the whole bush has died. I also had a lovely bed of tatsoi and...

Once again it is time to catch up with other gardeners in our  Garden share collective and the theme is SAVE. Link to the other gardeners here . I really dont make jams or preserves out of the garden - I prefer to just grow enough so that it is eaten right there and then while fresh.  I did plant extra ginger last year, and dug that out a month or so ago.  I like to keep a big bag in the freezer, so easy just to grab a chunk and grate it - I do that with turmeric as well.  My favourite after dinner drink at the moment is grated turmeric and ginger in hot coconut milk, with a little black pepper grated in.  A little golden cup of goodness. Oh another thing I have been doing is picking and drying our coffee beans, and the first batch was roasted last weekend.  I just pick them as they ripen, so it looks as though I will have one pot a week :). I do love to grow from seed - it seems proper somehow.  If someone else has started the seedlings it seem...

The latest garden share collective calls for a a post about colour.  Well I suppose brown is a colour! I have been preparing the soil for my main growing season during the last couple of weeks.  I spread out some manure (brown), sprinkled a little lime (white)  and after lightly digging that in I spread brown cardboard over the top of that! Our local Coles supermarket has been selling little potted herbs for 1.98.  These are the best deal ever, they are so crammed with little plants, that I have been buying them and then using them as little transplants.  3.95 for a six pack or 1.98 for a million pack!  I got fennel, parsley and even capsicum (the capsicum had two plants.)  Here is  some of the fennel.  They are such delicate little plants, so I just lay them into a trough and filled in from the side.  I know we are on the edge of the fennel growing area, so they might not form a bulb.  Two different kinds of parsley were plan...

Once again I have not posted since the garden share collective.  This month is supposed to be about preserving.  The only thing I have preserved is the peppercorns that I preserved in brine.  Whenever I see a new stalk I pick it and pop them into the brine. Easy peasy. Certainly not going to keep us in pepper for a year though.  I read that the peppercorns only fruit on the lateral branches, and since the vine is sending shoots out, I thought it might be a good idea to put up a trellis.  Hopefully those will climb up and spread out and then it will be easy to harvest.  Only one aspargus plant has been really succesful - the purple asparagus, so I moved the other two onto that side of the trellis and will see if they do ok there.  I have harvested some of the asparagus already this year and it is the most amazing aspagus I have ever tasted.  Even if I let them get too long they are still tender all the way to the end.   The other side...

Welcome to the garden share collective hosted by  kate at rosehips and rhubarb  and  Kyrstie at a fresh legacy.   Thank you for doing this, it keeps me motivated! The theme this month is fruit, and since I have a small garden I never really thought I would be able to grow much fruit.  The main feature in my side garden is the lychee tree and this year I really wished we didn't have it in the garden.  We had it pruned a while back and the gardener said that he couldn't lop the height off for some reason (I was at work when this happened) Of course it has now grown higher and when it fruited over December, we couldn't reach a single fruit, but believe me the bats and rosellas could!  The noise, and the mess were horrendous.  My poor hubby was raking up leaves and rotting fruit a couple of times a week to try and gain control, but the fallen fruit still attracted fruit fly. Well, end of the sorry story we are digging deep in our pockets and going ...

I feel a bit of a fraud calling what I did a design.  More of an evolution. A note about my old photos: I was having trouble with my smart phone and stopped syncing photos, then thought I would delete them off my phone so free up room.  Take my advice - don't do that - it removes them from Picasa permanently.  So you will just have to use your imagination about what the garden first looked like. :( Basically there was just lawn and I covered sections with cardboard, and lots and lots of mulch.  (I got an eight ton load from the tip)  Slowly as that broke down I planted, ornamentals on the side and a veggie garden out the back.   The veggie garden is a triangular shape. One of the first things I read about was a herb spiral and I got a few big rocks and built up a small spiral, filling in the centre with crusher dust which is very well draining. I managed to retrieve an old photo of the herb spiral.  My main purpose was to be able to grow rosema...