Africanaussie

Months, it has been months since I last posted.  admittedly I was away - wandering through castles in France with one daughter and her husband, and then in the USA with my younger daughter, husband and grandson, then some time in Sydney with my hubby.  Wow - it sure is hard to get back into some kind of routine! Luckily my garden survived but I have had very little free time to spend in it lately, and have just been watering and weeding.  Also just plopping spare cardboard on top of weeds - my quick way of weeding! I have tons of weeds and they are all going to seed.  Ahhh! Here is my poor herb spiral - if you look carefully you can see some herbs.  One thing that is doing well is the citronella - not sure if it keeps the mozzies away but it smells nice. My philosophy is to create a vibrant, healthy garden, full of good things to eat, lovely flowers to admire and a place where friends and family love to gather. I never quite harvest a huge amount to ...

Well, as you know I have been trying to fit my new compost tumbler into my composting schedule.  You are supposed to stop topping it up at some stage and then let it finish off before transferring to the stand alone compost bin.   The thing is that I am not sure what to do with the kitchen waste that accumulates while the tumbler batch is processing (about 4- 6 weeks.)   I have lots of leaves, and they seem to take forever to break down too!  The kitchen scraps compost down quickly but the leaves take ages....So I keep adding to the tumbler, and it is in fact now getting rather full and a bit heavy, so something had to be done. This is what it looks like.  and inside: A worm farm, everyone suggested....    I have only ever heard of one person with a worm farm in this climate.  Recently though, I saw an honesty stall with bottles of worm wee.  Hubby looked the other way when I went to put my coins in the jar and pick up a bottle....

The theme for this months Garden Share collective is taste.  Here are the others participating. We have had an extended wet season, and so my garden is not as far along as it normally is at this time of year.  I purchased an eggplant and jalapeno and planted them in the far back corner.  the eggplant has to go into a pot because of the bacterial wilt in the soil.  Even then they dont always survive.  it is just a case of wait and see.  I thought I had lost all the tatsoi and rocket in the flooding rains, but they seem to be bouncing back nicely.  Fresh greens in a salad is the best taste ever, and I am sure loaded with vitamins and minerals compared to what we can buy in a plastic packet.  The bed along the side fence has a few volunteer cherry tomato, and one capsicum which is doing very well.  there are also a couple of cucumber, which go back and forth between looking on their last legs with powdery mildew and thriving....  I...

This year I am going to add some polystyrene boxes to plant tomatoes in.  Large tomatoes don't do well here - we have bacterial wilt in the soil, and I think a myriad other diseases that are commonplace here.  I like tomatoes though, and I did get some free seeds to experiment with.  I am going to try a sort of wicking bed system as in the past I have had blossom end rot as well which indicated uneven watering.   I am putting some boxes front and centre.  They are resting on the front of the the asparagus bed, making use of every inch of the garden.  I hope I wont be disappointed. assemble what you need: The idea is to drill a  drainage holes about a quarter of the way up the box.  Add drainage rock - I used quincam, scoria is another good one to use.   Below this line the boxes are filled with small rocks for drainage. . Now I am not sure if there should...

I just made the linkup -  check out who else has showcased their lovely gardens here . This months Garden Share collective is supposed to focus on leaves.  Now I could have a happy leaf photo or I could show you my cucumbers.  I was going to take a photo, but it is all too sad. My cucumber was doing OK - little bit of downy mildew which is to be expected in this climate, but I gave it a spray with liquid  seaweed with a little bicarb mixed in and it seemed to be doing just fine.  Then the rains came, and it rained, and it rained.  The highest rainfall recorded in this area in May in 96 years! We had 200ml overnight a couple of weekends ago. I had noticed a little insect damage and sprayed with garlic chili spray, but of course the rains washed that all off, but they still carried on chomping.  I saw a couple of catterpillars, so the whole bush got another spray of garlic/chili, but now the whole bush has died. I also had a lovely bed of tatsoi and...

I know some of you have been interested in the green ants we find here.  We have been seeing trails of green ants all around the garden and last weekend found the nest up in the tree.  It was about three feet around!  I know they are befeneficial, but that was just too many ants in my little garden, so we cut it down and my brave hubby carried it attached to a long stick down to the creek.  I didnt get any photos, but found this fascinating video that shows how the nests are built. Sir David Attenborough is the best!  Anyone else a fan? http://www.treehugger.com/animals/watch-these-incredible-green-ants-build-leaf-castle.html

I harvested the remaining coffee beans this weekend - so they are out on trays drying.  Honey processing, so that means they still have a certain amount of the fruit attached as they dry.  The curly parsley is doing well in the wicking box.  I keep cutting the bigger stalks, and the plants keep producing more stalks.  I love to have plenty of parsley for salads, taboulli, soups, in fact a handful of parsley will improve just about anything. The other things that I have been having success with lately is microgreens.  I will do a separate post on them soon.  They deserve a post of their own.   Here I have radish and kale.  I also took a photo of the passion fruit forming from the center of the flower.  Isnt nature awesome? I am enjoying the slightly cooler weather and pretty regular rainfall.