Africanaussie

This month is all about seeds.  Connect with others at the Garden Share Collective. I must admit I am not always very good at saving seeds.  Last collective I showed a lovely photo of my bok choy flowering.  I have been keeping an eye on the seeds as they began to form, last weekend I looked for my little paper seed collecting bags, and then got distracted.  Ooops - now they seem to have scattered with the wind.  A lot of my seed saving is like that, and next year I will have bok choy coming up in that same spot. A while back there was a competition to grow oats and my grand kids got quite excited about it.  They are now ready to harvest (I think!)  I pulled out the plants and lay them over the compost, then cut most of the seed heads off.  the remainder of the plants went straight into the compost tumbler - lots of lovely greens (and probably a few seeds I missed!) The seeds are now in a paper bag pegged on the washing ling line under ...

I am slowly realising that the wet season in the tropics is a totally different season to anywhere else. I joined the Yates challenge and planted some bean seeds, but not one came up. Regular vegetable just do not do well here. I got my free packet of carrot seeds in the mail this week and will give them a try. I haven't tried them before but who knows, they might like all the rain. My gem squash was doing quite well, and then it seemed to take on a new lease of life and start running rampant in the vegetable garden - oh no!  wait a minute! this is a different vine and the gem squash has totally died off again.  Succumbed to powdery mildew yet again! I think this is a jap pumpkin vine.  Instead of the beans against the fence I have planted long tropical snake beans, jicama (yam bean) and ginger.  Right in the corner my sweet potatoes are starting up again.   So in a little while this fence will be covered in greenery, and I have learnt a lesso...

It all began with harvesting my jicama, I had popped a few seeds in the ground alongside the fence before the wet season.  The plant insisted on climbing through the fence and flowering on the other side.... and in order to grow bigger tubers these flowers and pods have to continually be pruned off.  So on Sunday I decided to harvest the jicama and remove the vines. The jicama are pretty puny, and I found out were quite hard to harvest behind the other plants so I wont be planting there again.  Not sure if they will shoot up again from remaining roots. This has left the fence very bare. I had an old wire wastepaper basket (useless in the office, as everything falls out the side) and I put a crucifix orchid in there and hung it under my thermometer.  That helps to make the wall a little less bare in that area. I realise that I have been just adding plants in this area without much of a plan.  The only plan being to hide the fence and have some greener...

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...