Africanaussie

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...

The herb spiral is an area that I think of as a separate entitiy, rather than just tagged onto the side of the veggie garden.  On my big shopping expedition I discovered some lovely little herb pots.  Two of my stepsons are forever asking me for herbs, and I give them little pots of basil, or parsley, and then when I ask how they are doing I am told of disaster befalling those poor plants, every time......  Mostly from overwatering.  My thought was that in these pots it would be hard to overwater them, and I could give them a large selection all in one container....   Firstly some stones went into the bottom to aid with drainage. The pots were then filled with some potting soil amended with 5 in 1, blood and bone and crusher dust.  The plants were added and I will keep them until the plants are well established.  I am really dissapointed though with how the colour is peeling off the top of the one pot.  I should have got the plain terraco...

I have been enjoying the microgreens, although they also seem to be languishing in the heat - nothing like the tall plants I see growing in others greenhouses, which I suppose is a more controlled environment..    The purple basil is awesome sprinkled on salads, and definitely my favourite.  Standing water is not what one wants in mosquito prone areas, so in the end I poured the water out and lay the seedlings on top of my seed raising mix. Hopefully they spread their roots and grow here, and I plan to plant a few out into the herb spiral - I love to have different types of basil growing amongst my herbs.   The seed raising mix seems to work better in the wet season.  The great thing is that once I make this a permanent part of my gardening - continually sowing seeds - I reckon I can have greens almost year round.  I am going to get a sprouter as I have the feeling that they will do better inside during the wet season.  The sprouters from  MrF...

I received an e-mail from Mr Fothergills  asking how my seeds were faring.  So I guess it is time for an update. I was hoping to have huge flourishing leafy plants to show, but the weather has been a bit strange this year. These are the seeds I originally received: Climbing snow pea - climbing up the back fence and looking quite healthy - I have successive sown some more seeds about a week ago. Basil seed mat  - doing really well in my herb spiral. Carrot seed tape - I have put these tapes in different areas - alongside the harlequin carrots, and between the tomatoes as they are good companion plants. They look very neat in their evenly spaced rows and are very easy to plant - great for children. Carrot Harlequin - these look very robust and are doing very well - I keep assigning more space to them - in fact all the seeds are now planted out! Parsnip Gladiator - sent to Sunny corner farm Radish beauty heart - I need to figure...

The bugs are quite prolific at this time of year, and I wonder whether growing Asian greens is feasible.  I grew a type of Japanese cabbage Tokyo belkana- I have no idea what it tasted like because it was just reduced to slush by some caterpillars.  Might be cabbage moth as there are lots of little moths flying around.  I dumped it all into the compost - hope they don't breed in there.. ..  the bok choy is also getting attacked, so I just pick the leaves as soon as they are almost big enough - seems to be working. My garlic and chili spray seems to attract them... sigh. I see cucumbers in our future though -  some ready to eat...  I love to pick them right out in the garden and munch on them while I carry on working.  I might have to research the recipe for bread and butter pickles as it looks as though this is going to be a good crop. I also have rosellas!  I ...

We had a long weekend, so that was a great excuse to do some shopping and also gardening.   I picked up some plastic garden edging.  I had originally thought of bricks, but they were out of my budget.  Here is where you enter butterfly alley  and this is where you come out. I think what makes it so lovely is the fact that there are fairly high plants on either side - enclosing you in green. I would definitely recommend doing this in any garden if you can.   I have tried to zoom in and make sure, but I think there is a butterfly just hanging out in the middle of the photo!!!  That particular plant has some little red flowers that the butterflies love. I love to see birds and butterflies hanging out and enjoying the garden. I am so glad that I made this path. :)  The veggie garden is looking more perma-culturish every day. the herbs in the herb spiral  are happy too...

One of the major reasons for starting the herb spiral - growing rosemary - was a huge flop!   I now have some little cuttings in a pot.  Rosemary is clearly not happy in a hot and humid climate.   The arch over the top for passion fruit to clamber over provided too much shade and the ground in the herb spiral  never dried out.  Firstly the arch was tidied up - old dead branches of the vines were removed and tied back to allow some sunlight in.   The mandevilla lies over the arch too, with its very heavy branches, so it all got a good cutting back (what I could reach that is  -  it is aiming for the sky!). I removed the Ceylon spinach - I still don't call it edible!  I would rather make room for something I am going to eat.  One thing we eat a ton of is parsley and so I removed the top layer of rocks out of the herb spiral and extended a parsley bed out to the side.  This has made it flatter ...

Over the weekend we went shopping in the big city.  I got lost in the garden center. Well, I wasnt technically lost, and my hubby knew that was where he would find me when I lost track of time! The herb spiral has become overgrown with mother of herbs. That is a tropical plant much like oregano, but all you need is one leaf in a pot of spaghetti bolognaise, so I probably have more than an ample supply for an Italian restuarant.  The comfrey off to the one side of the little path is doing well, despite - or maybe because of me continually cutting back the lower leaves for compost. I found this cute litttle lemon thyme - the thyme I have grown from seed has always been rather spindly and I thought I might do better to buy the enitre plant,and maybe this lemon type will do better in the tropical climate. Strawbery plants were on special, so a section mother of herbs was cut back to allow space for the strawberry plant.   as you can see most of ...

I have been noticing for the last couple of weeks that crusher dust (which is what was put inside the middle of the herb spiral as it was built up) has been flowing out of the gaps between the rocks. I thought maybe I had been watering too hard as the connection to the soaker hose is right above my mint on the side of the spiral. After moving that there was no change and an even bigger pile of dust around the basil the following morning. So I began a little detective work and moved a few rocks to find............. a toad hole. Now most people say toads are wonderful for getting rid of bugs etc, but here we have cane toads which are a big pest, and poisonous, so they had to go. As I poked a stick into the holes, and jiggled it around the toads were jumping out left right and center. My, what a sight... they are truly horrible ugly creatures. There must have been a huge extended family - I counted about 10! I hope they got the message they are not welcome. That must be why some of the h...