Africanaussie

We had a local garden competition and our council managed to negotiate Costa from Gardening Australia to be one of our judges!  My gosh - heart palpitations!!!   I knew I had to enter, but was away just before that, leaving the garden in the hands of my non gardening hubby.  Added to that we were in a drought when I returned, and the bandicoots were wreaking havoc in the garden. I got stuck in, and tidied up, mulched, and planted new seeds in the wicking boxes (which were just microgreens when he arrived!) The first thing you see when you enter my garden is fruit salad alley and we began to chat about getting kids interested in gardening.  The volunteer tomatoes in the mulberry pot have had a wonderful side effect.  I tied the stakes up into a teepee and this protected the mulberries from the birds., plus it is also fun to go scouting around looking for a plump ripe mulberry.  The strawberries were also just starting to ripen, since then I have en...

Fruit salad alley had a makeover!  I had been thinking that the fruit trees needed a little bit of loving care, and when yet another lovely long weekend came around I set to it.  I cut back the passionfruit vine so that it can shoot out some new shoots and produce more passionfruit.  I removed the strawberry pots a while back as they were being swamped by the passionfruit.  They are now in the veggie patch. I wrote about the process and the seed collection has published it on their blog - you can see it here.   I get paid in free seeds, so it is a win-win situation.  Here you can see my lime tree re-potted (and straightened up). All the plants seem happy and there are lots of little green leaves shooting out which makes me happy.

Happy Easter to all - a little late, but I was out in the garden!  Four whole days doing gardening related activities.  Can life get any better? On Saturday we went shopping and I spent my birthday coupons - what fun!  I decided to incorporate a couple of plants inside and have a row of terracotta planters with aloe vera on on the kitchen counter. Then I also found an amazing stand and pot that now has a spathiphyllum in it.  Bringing the outdoors inside a little bit! A lot of work was done in the veggie patch.  I laid out another soaker hose as my old ones perished.  Chook poo (chicken manure) was spread out over the main bed where I added lime a couple of weeks ago.  This was then covered over with a few layers of wet newspaper and some sugar cane mulch.  Some things have done well in the greenhouse - my tomato seedlings have done well - I planted a few out into the garden.  Red cherry and yellow pear, the rest of the tomato pl...

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 ...

As I was doing my update on my in ground worm buckets last week I began to mull over how my gardening has changed since I started blogging.... Worms ;  I had never even heard of worm composting when I first started gardening.  In fact I thought they were talking about earthworms.  I didnt have room for a worm bin, so discounted the idea of having compost worms in my small garden.  Then I read about worm tubes, but wanted to be able to harvest the castings, so with a little bit of inspiration from here and there my worm buckets were born. worm buckets Permaculture :  This is something that still does elude me a little.  I have such a small garden that I really only have zone 1/2 or 1.  Permaculture can spill out into other areas though and so I see those principles popping up in different areas of my life.  Nice to know that we dont have to own a huge farm to become permaculturists. Food forest :  I have lately been seeing more and m...

I always look forward to this season, it is cooler, the humidity is gone, and I can grow "normal" vegetables in my tropical garden.  We have had an usual amount of rain this year - it seems as though the wet season is starting later in the year and then continuing on later.  Of course that means it is cloudy a lot of the time, and things need sunshine to grow.  I suppose we cant have it all ways. My cucumbers were the first crop of this season and they are still going strong. I made some pickles last night, and realized I dont have  a pot high enough to water bath them, so they are in the fridge.  How long can you keep them in the fridge unopened? I have noticed a little bit of mildew on the lower leaves, so I might give it a bit of a spray with some milky water.  These are growing on the edge of the asparagus bed.  One thing I add to the asparagus bed that I dont put on the rest of the garden is fresh seaweed, and now I am wondering if that...

A couple of weeks ago I bought a dragonfruit from the markets.   It is one of my favourite tropical fruits.  Sweet, but not cloyingly so,..... beautiful - I didnt share it with anyone. Dragonfruit is actually a cactus, and the plants I have seen are huge - and supported by a central post, so needing lots of room.  Then Lousie from     told me about how she sees them in Darwin growing against a carport.............  hmmm well, either side of fruit salad alley has a nice wooden post.  Driving home from work I saw my gardening friend had put out some dragonfruit cuttings for anyone to pick up.   Supossedly you just place them into the ground, or into a pot as in my case.  So now we just wait and see..... Rather strange looking aren't they?

When I first started my little garden the only plant in the back yard was our rather large lychee tree... and lots of grass.  Eventually my garden evolved, and I never thought that I would have the room for much fruit. I was thinking of fruit trees in their own little orchard. Not every fruit tree is as big as the lychee tree though, and slowly more and more fruit has been added, until I think I am heading towards having a food forest. The idea of a food forest is to have layers, which works well in the tropics where most plants need shade from the direct hot sun.  I have quite a few pawpaw in the back veggie patch as they spring up on their own, and I let some of them grow to maturity.  They are the yellow pawpaw, and I have recently added a red papaya to add a bit of variety.  Then I have a lime mandarin and barbados cherry  in the middle veggie patch - they can both be kept small by pruning.   Most of the time I still keep up a small shadecloth but I t...

I often think of my small garden in terms of different rooms.  This last shopping trip definitely reflected that  train of thought. When I saw a dwarf mulberry tree for only 16.00 I began to think about the fact that I have a collection of different fruit tree/bushes, but they are scattered around.  I had been toying with the idea of moving my hanging strawberry plants to planters that fit flush against the fence, as the hanging ones always seem to collapse.  This is the spare carport at our entrance and does not look very enticing. So all it took was the purchase of a mulberry tree to start  "Fruit salad alley"  That was the first project I undertook over the weekend.  Passionfruit grow well in this climate, but need to be moved into another area after a while.  They develop woody passionfruit virus, and lately, even though new vines start up in the back vegetable area they never quite flourish like the original one did.   I would love...