Africanaussie

Once again I have not posted since the garden share collective.  This month is supposed to be about preserving.  The only thing I have preserved is the peppercorns that I preserved in brine.  Whenever I see a new stalk I pick it and pop them into the brine. Easy peasy. Certainly not going to keep us in pepper for a year though.  I read that the peppercorns only fruit on the lateral branches, and since the vine is sending shoots out, I thought it might be a good idea to put up a trellis.  Hopefully those will climb up and spread out and then it will be easy to harvest.  Only one aspargus plant has been really succesful - the purple asparagus, so I moved the other two onto that side of the trellis and will see if they do ok there.  I have harvested some of the asparagus already this year and it is the most amazing aspagus I have ever tasted.  Even if I let them get too long they are still tender all the way to the end.   The other side...

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...

A tumeric leaf unfurls A ground orchid flowers: Sweet potatoes start to poke their way above the soggy ground The start of a new year, and I have been looking back on the last year and how much my garden has changed.  I begin to wonder.  What new projects can I come up with?  I wanted my garden to be self-sustaining, and not require constant money effort or time, I achieved that, but what next?  I enjoyed the creativity of pulling everything together, and now I feel a bit of a sense of deflation. Maybe too this is a little bit of what we call here "going troppo".  The constant heat and humidity is very draining, and anything you do outside has to be interspersed by bouts of re-hydrating and cooling off in the pool or the air-conditioning.  I did about an hour of weeding and pruning yesterday, and that was all I could handle.  True, I shouldnt have done that in the middle of the day, but I was in the shade.  All the pla...

Well here it is - the path into the centre of the garden . It makes it easier to get in and weed and pick flowers. Obviously I like to the do the picking flowers way more than the weeding! My grandson likes to wander in there and hide away behind the plants, and that is just what I wanted to achieve - a sense of adventure --- mmm ... what does that path leads to. :) There are some interesting flowers forming just at the end of the path - called beehive ginger. And of course my lovely anthiriums. photos coming soon. The path is made with crusher dust and a few flat stones from the local beach - still collecting stones everytime we go - I love the different colours they show, especially when wet. In other news - the sweet potato vine is going gangbusters - I must really cut some of the shoots and stir fry them - they are supposed to taste delicious. Unlike white potato shoots which are poisonous! My arch is as I predicted it would be - dripping with passionfruit ! I think it l...