Africanaussie

The lady slipper orchid is beginning to flower again!  I have a few dichondra in a hanging basket, and like the way this is becoming the "hanging garden"!  I never tire of these beautiful flowers, and the fact that they are growing in my garden fills me with such pleasure.  The vine needs to be cut back so that it doesn't take over the entire garden.  I want light to be able to get in, and it also strains the branches of the weeping tea tree it scrambles over. In other orchid news I cut back the plants around the back fence, letting in more light and neatening it up a bit more.  Often when one does such a thing though it can still look a little messy for  a while until new shoots start to fill in the bare areas.   All my orchids need a bit of TLC, but they have survived the neglect pretty well. My phalanopsis has two flower spikes!  yeah!  They all got a good dunking in some seaweed solution.   This little...

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. ...

A while back I decided to permanently close one of the big gates and create a new garden bed behind it.  That was one of the best ideas I ever had I reckon....   I hung my orchids on that bamboo bar which has slowly sunk down on one end and looks a  bit tacky.  I think what I would like to do is get an arch to put into that corner.  I will hang the orchids from it and hopefully the stephanotis will trail over it. The stephanotis is a rather straggly vine, but the flowers are gorgeous.  Since the lychee tree was pruned and this area got more sunshine it has really flourished.  Great big bushes of  impatients, caladiums going wild, and this lovely little plant called balsam I got from the local markets.  It seems to be the same family as impatients, although the flowers are up the stem, rather than on top. Interspersed among the flowers are lots of cherry tomatoes the project for the...

I have been waiting for the  Harlequin carrots from MrFothergills  to raise their shoulders above the ground,  and then the other day I thought I would take a peek.... wow!  huge carrots, and so straight!   Funnily enough all the purple ones seem stunted and I seem to have lost the straight rows - even though the regular carrots were planted evenly with carrot tape.  This is a great time in the garden - cucumbers are struggling with downy mildew, but there are four different kinds of lettuces - plenty for a daily salad.   I thought the white carrots looked a bit insipid but they have the nicest flavour.  I haven't cooked any -  they make great snacks to munch on - even hubby has been known to do that.  He commented the other day (after I cooked the pumpkin vines) that as long as it grows in the garden I will eat it.  I  said  "well honey I don't eat the grass", but then I thought about the f...

There is lots of color out in the veggie patch.  The pigeon pea are flowering - they start off red and then open up to yellow. Aren't they pretty close up? These have taken a while to form beans, but in the meantime they have acted as a support for the winged beans, and of course they are nitrogen fixing plants, so are continually harnessing and trapping nitrogen for the other plants to use.  You can see a fuzzy bean just beginning to form.  I have not been so keen on the taste so use them mainly for amending the soil. The cucumbers are also twirling up into this bush - it seems to be a great year for cucumbers.  The flesh of the cucumbers is green and they are soooo crunchy.  My little two year old grand daughter loves them - it made my heart soar to pick a cucumber and then watch her eat the whole thing - not wanting to share! I planted a few more seeds a couple of weeks ago as the lower part of the vines is already dying...

A very common problem in the wet tropics is bacterial wilt.  This affects any plants in the Solanaceae family, tomatoes, capsicums and eggplant specifically.  The almost wild  cherry tomatoes seemed more resistant although last year even they did not do well, but that could also be because the dry season was very wet. I think we are overdue for a good dry season so I have planted a lot of vegetables in anticipation. I started a new bed along the back fence in order to practice crop rotation and also imagined that if I grew them in pure compost, the problem would not occur.  Wrong - I bought a six pack of "tropic" which is supposed to be resistant and they all keeled over,  along with all the eggplant. There are a few cherry tomatoes that seem to be surviving.  Funny though that I have an eggplant that has been growing for over two years in the front garden, and although it doesn't look that healthy it...

I prepared the new bed that I will be planting tomatoes in next April after the wet season ends. I had this extra "wheelie bin" and half filled it with some leftover mulch, then kept topping it up with garden clippings, seaweed etc.  I did not mix it like I do the other compost.  It just showed the difference that mixing makes as the top part had not composted much at all.  Also this bin is not open at the bottom. The uncomposted bits went deep into this pit, covered by the richer black gold that I found on the bottom of the bin.  I have a sheet of plywood submersed so that I  have an access path in front of the tomato bed.  I found this worked really well to tip the bin over onto its side and use the lid to support a bucket that I kept filling up and transporting to different parts of the garden.  The other bin next to it has leaf mould, which is busy maturing.  I also used some of the rich black compost to build up around ...

I have noticed that lately the asparagus stalks have been getting thicker and stronger.  I dont know if it is because we are heading into the wet season which is when we are supposed to harvest them.  In more temperate climates, the plant dies down in the winter, but here it has continued to grow and produce, but I have left the shoots which is supposed to build up more strength in the roots.  This weekend I cut back all the older shoots that were starting to collapse at the base. These were planted as two year crowns and at the same time I got a packet of seeds for a purple asparagus.  Out of the whole packet only one plant survived.   It looks very spindly, but I will leave it in the pot a while longer before I transplant it into the ground.   The asparagus tops are full of little seeds - I wonder if they will grow?  I put some into a  couple of pots.  They are very slow growing, but since mine are doing so well I...

When I returned from my five weeks away the veggie garden was a little overgrown.  Cherry tomatoes everywhere, and as I carefully put in some stakes and tied branches back I discovered that the capsicum        plants had been buried underneath them.  Hopefully they will perk up now that they can come up for air.  I don't know why I have such trouble growing the large bulbous capsicums that you see in the store.  Oh yes I do!  They are capsicums on steroids or hormones or something!  My little organic ones are very tasty though!  Supermarket produce can give you such an unreal expectation of what your garden should produce.  Isn't that sad. they should be ashamed of themselves. My lettuces have essentially lain over and gone to sleep..... on long leggy stalks.  Anyway I planted some seeds and we will see what comes up.  Snow peas, lettuce, radish, silverbeet, green beans, gemsquash, amaranth.  Our ...

Tommorrow we go away for a long awaited holiday! I spent most of last weekend putting things right in the garden - making sure everything gets a good long drink before I go. The neighbour has been asked to water if we don't get any rain. Surely we will start to get rain soon.... The tomatoes are really almost at the end, but I cant bear to finally pull them up until we get home. Then I will put them onto the makeshift compost pile where I will grow tomatoes next year. . Maybe try some green tomato chutney, with the few remaining tomatoes that never quite ripen. Slowly we will transition to plants that like the hot humid summer, but right now it is just hot and dry! Transition time is always a little untidy in the garden. Yesterday evening I went out and discovered that the sunbirds were happily flitting about the passionfruit - oh gosh, I am so glad they like passionfruit flowers. That means we will have lots of these cheery little birds. Of course as soon as I got the camer...

OH I do love to order new plants! I found out that asparagus grows well in this area, so went online and ordered 4 two year corms which should start bearing this year and then got some seeds for some "black" asparagus which will take a couple of years. I have to now make a bed for them since it is going to be a permanent perennial bed. I will pick up some chicken manure pellets on the way home, hubby is not keen on eating vegetables that have been near any other kind of manure. Since he is going to be eating half the vegetables..... he said chicken manure is OK. I also do have some lovely compost. The other seeds I ordered are for angled luffa . This plant, you can eat the young vegetables like zucchini , but if you leave them to dry on the vine will make loofahs ! How cool! Both of these should go into the ground before the wet, so I only have about a month until that starts to happen. I wanted to grow something in the wet - most gardeners here just stop growing anything f...