Africanaussie

At the end of the bromeliad bed is the corner where I have been growing gerbera daisies, but I think they are not happy there.  It is probably a little too shady and water logged, and that will only get worse as the wet season approaches.  This weekend I moved the gerberas out into the front where they will get full sun and good drainage.  A couple of my bromeliads have been producing extra pups, so they were cut off and moved to their new home.  As I prepare my tomato bed I will be digging up more and more stones, must really start to wash them off though so that the top layer has no dirt in them as that just attracts weeds. I just need a few more bricks and that will complete this area nicely. This one has coloured up so nicely since it was moved into a more sunny position.  It only gets morning sun but that seems to be enough. I have always hankered after a water feature, and if you look closely the inside of my neo looks just like a little pond wi...

Please click on the yates challenge link below and make comments on my 2 blogs and vote for me.  I want to win some of the great prizes, and also I want to get the word out that growing vegetables in the tropics is challenging but also rewarding!  We get forgotten up here, and cant grow the "regular" vegetables! http://www.yates.com.au/vegie-challenge/spring-vegie-challenge/gardeners/vemvaan If you live in Australia then sign up yourself :) - time is running out..... thanks all! Update to this post - sorry - you have to be signed up to vote -

I spent the entire day on Saturday in the vegetable garden.  There was lots to do.  Always the changing of the seasons seems to bring extra chores.  First thing to go was the support that I had added to  the back fence so that the passionfruit vine which went wild had somewhere to go.   That died off due to the woody passionfruit virus but has started up again travelling in the other direction.  I have decided I dont want it going along the back of the vegetable garden again as next season I want to plant tomatoes along that back fence and need to prepare the soil there.  At the moment there are small stones there, so it will be a big job, but I have time.  The arch had sagged down so much that there really was no arch left.... I had purchased a cheap arch and it had rusted away. Not a good look at all. I removed that bit of wire and with hubbys help we inserted it into the old arch.  We put the wire under the mass of passionfrui...

I have really wondered about orchids - do they require exra fertilizer besides bark?  Mine just do not seem to flower as  well as I would have hoped.  They are in the shade and I do realise they need a bit of sun when they are ready to flower, but quite honestly I dont have space for a summer house for them! Would it be better to have them on some sort of screen that could be moved out into the sun to promote flowering?  Mmmm, I do have an old cane arch - that has given me an idea!  I will shelve that idea in the back of my mind, but I can see pots of orchids suspended in a type of screen effect.  Not sure where I would put it..... but having somethign moveable might be the idea. Before I began gardening totally organically I used to spray my orchids with fertilizers and they would flower twice a year.  Now they get a little seaweed tea, and because they are not in soil where they would get my compost, that is pretty much all they get....

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...

A chrysalis has formed - it looks just like a leaf that has folded over, and the caterpillar must  fold a leaf over itself to form the top of the chrysalis.  I would never have found it if I wasn't looking.... From the underside it doesn't look as though there is anything inside the leaf. It looks like a jellylike substance - and I have heard that during the metamorphosis, that that is what the chrysalis contains.  Just a jelly, and from that emerges a beautiful butterfly!  amazing! Just after my divorce I read a great book that compared troubled times to that time in the chrysalis, where you are just a blob of jelly, but time heals, and  Gods hands re-create, and you will eventually emerge better and stronger  just as a butterfly will emerge from its chrysalis!  What a wonderful thought that was to hold onto.  We don't have to do anything, just wait, and see what beauty will emerge.   and the plain brow...

On our beach walk today I noticed that we once again have seaweed - for some reason it disappears during the dry season - I must remember that and stock up next time!   It started raining but I couldn't stop myself and was running around dragging bunches of seaweed back to the car.  I like to think I looked like a mermaid emerging from the deep bringing armloads of pure gold, but that would actually take a bit more imagination.  I certainly felt as though I had struck gold! The asparagus is now mulched with seaweed and some new shoots are appearing. Yummy - time to start harvesting them now! The other thing I have been wanting to do for a long time is make comfrey juice. I do already use the leaves as mulch and add them to the compost. Glen, who gardens in a community plot in England has posted some very interesting reports on comfrey.  Find him on kitchen gardens - link to the right. Loosely following his instructions I have a pot of comfrey leaves which...