Africanaussie

How exciting! Malay- Kadazan girl has invited me to partake in the seed exchange she runs on her blog.  this is her blog   sunflower seed exchange   and she has the most beautiful bronze and different coloured sunflowers.  I have not had much success with sunflowers in the past, so hope I win some of her seeds to give them a try in my garden.  The plant I have had success with is loofahs!  I was most excited to hear that they would grow in this area and last year I grew the angled loofah.  This year I planted them to grow up the pigeon peas and they have now entangled themselves into the shade cloth and grown off toward the fence - taking over the whole area.  They have  a pretty yellow flower. Last year I grew them along the fence and they took off high up into the tree in the neighbouring telstra yard, and I harvested quite a few dried loofahs.  I did have trouble peeling them, but have since disco...

This is what my loofa looked like after drying out for a bit. Then over the weekend I decided to peel them.  I discovered that in actual fact the ones that I had left to dry for the longest time were more difficult to peel and they had spots of mould.  The ones that were in fact still green and quite moist peeled quite easily and have a lovely smooth texture.  When they say you will get plenty of seeds they are not exagerating!  I must have got 600 seeds from this pile of loofas.  If anyone in Australia wants to grow them just let me know and I can send you some. (Sorry - cant send any internationally) I gave the best one to my lovely neighbour - you will see why in the next post!

I keep hoping that the wet season is going to end soon, and over the weekend I tipped out a whole barrel of compost onto the vegetable garden, straightened up the eges, and planted some seeds.  Now I have a nice straight weed free path!  I cut back some of the branches of the pigeon peas (that should spread some nitrogen right into the soil.)  I planted gemsquash seeds on top of the mounds of compost, and then between the stems of the pigeon peas I planted some cucumber seeds.  I am hoping they will grow up the stems and after harvesting the pigeon peas I can cut the final leaves back to allow the sunlight in, while leaving the uprights as living stakes..  at the moment it is still a bit hot, so the light shade should be good for the litttle seedlings. I also have a couple of pawpaw trees that have sprung up in the very front, but I will leave them until I see if either of them are female - they dont like to be transplanted.  My eggplant seem to be a...

One of the principles of permaculture is to grow plants up , instead of letting plants scramble around the ground taking up precious space.  Just looking around the garden, I have definitely taken that to heart!  In actual fact the plants have done that on their own without my help. Take for instance this passionfruit vine:  When I first planted the passionfruit vine next to my little arch and alongside the fence, I knew it would ramble, but gosh, once it started to climb this happy plant it just continued to reach for the sky.  It suits us very well as we have a rather ugly Telstra building behind there, and I would much rather look at a 30ft wall of green.  When the passionfruit ripen, they just fall to the ground and I can walk around and pick them up.  How convenient is that? I planted pigeon peas as a green manure crop this year, and sometimes I miss the fine print when choosing plants - like how tall they grow!  I rea...

My aim was to try and grow and eat as much as I could from my garden year round, not just the drier winter season which is our main growing season.  I have been harvesting pawpaw and passionfruit, and then asparagus for the beginning of the wet season, but leaving the shoots now to grow the crowns.  Herbs are all doing OK, but do struggle with the huge amount of rain and bugs.  I was wondering what I was doing wrong with my luffas - The veggie garden fence is a tangle of vines - the thick snake beans, with their beautiful shaped leaves and delicate flowers then the neighbours passionfruit vine that keeps coming over to my side, then the luffa, with huge green leaves and tons of yellow flowers.  Often I would see the beginnings of a luffa, but then it would shrivel up and die.  I wondered if they needed more light, so cut back some of the excess vines, and trimmed some piegon pea plants that were growing nearby.  I see tons of honeyeater birds, but...

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...