Africanaussie

The red and yellow flowers on the pigeon peas are so pretty, but way up too high to get a good photograph. My experiment to use them as green manure and then as stakes has worked well.  They are bushing out right at the top as I have pruned away all the side branches, and woven odd bits of sticks and poles to bring them into a straight line down the middle of the vegetable garden.  This means that they really only shade the garden from the midday sun which is perfect.  I began to wonder if I was ever going to get a harvest from them as they have take a good eight months to flower.  Luckily a fellow gardener in Nicuaraga grew them last season so I knew to be patient.  You never grow in full sun here, as even in the winter the sun is quite intense, and I much prefer a living shade. The good news is that  it has not been raining so much this week - just a few little sprinkles, so a bit more sunshine to get those vggie seedlings off to a good start.

I have a lot of red flowers in my garden,  but this weekend, pink seemed to be the colour of choice. The sliver of orange peeks out ready to erupt into multicoloured heleconia. A different type of cordeline - this type has large very leathery feeling leaves and a close up of the wonderful colours inside the new leaf My cordeline in full sun in the front garden has turned very pink.  I think this aswers my question as to whether they have better colour in sunshine.  I am thinking of moving all my cordleines (or most of them) from the deep shade to alongside the wooden fence which looks quite bare now that the shade cloth is gone. This little pink foliage plant is easy to propogate from cutting and I have it scattered around the garden. I love the way it looks next to the cordeline leaf. The central rib is quite  a stunning hot pink shade. as you can see from the photos we are having quite  a bit of sunshine.  The plants seem to have got used to all the rain and are wilting midday,

My bok choy, radish and lettuce are coming up nicely, but seem to have long curved stems before the plant starts.  What could be causing this?  We have had a lot of rain lately and consequently very little sunshine.  Here you can see the detail on the radish stems.  They also dont seem to be developing a bulb. I went though all the bok choy and mounded up the soil around the bases, so they were no longer falling over drunkenly, and removed some and planted them elsewhere so that they have room to grow.  I just left the radish alone, should I do the same thing to the radish?  Did I plant the seeds too close to the surface? I also have a cucumber already - wow they are quick! The garlic chive flowers are so pretty and attract bees and butterflies.

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 greenery. I tend to put plants here

Floridagirl made a comment in my last post that she wondered whether a lipstick plant would grow in her part of the world. From searching the internet I have discovered that my lipstick plant actually originates from Southeast Asia and is called  "Aeschynanthus radicans 'Crispa' Family: Gesneriaceae this came from: ttp://toptropicals.com/catalog/uid/aeschynanthus_crispa.htm here is the content: Aeschynanthus is a large genus of Old World tropical herbs. In many respects, they are analogous to the genus Columnea in Central and South America -- both are most often trailing epiphytes with fairly large and showy flowers that are frequently pollinated by birds. The appearance of the various Aeschynanthus species varies widely. The original 'Lipstick Plant' has hard-surfaced shiny leaves, with bright red flowers that emerge from a very dark red tubular calyx, in a fashion reminiscent of lipstick emerging from a tube. It is an epiphyte that grows in the angles

There is always lots of colour in my garden, but it seems more so once the sun comes out!  The lipstick plant  has such different flowers! then my favourite heleconias never stop... and I never tire of them. The bromeliad is lovely on its own,and then tiny purple flowers erupt from the center. the cocoa zingiber goes red before it begins to collape from the lack of heat and humidity.  It will be back again next year.

I cut back more of the pigeon pea side shoots allowing all this lovely sunshine onto the vegetables seedlings that survived the rainy onslaught.  I wove those shoots in and out of the uprights creating a sort of rustic cucumber trellis.  The helconia branches I kept for plant supports have rotted, so that idea has been shelved.  Oh well, you live and learn. I planted some more lettuce seeds, more beets and silverbeet.  those are the seeds that came up and drowned.  The bok choy, radish, cucumber and gemsquash have done ok.   I also transplanted some tomato seedlings into the ground, planting them deeply so that they can form a good network of roots.  They are in the framework behind the row of cucumbers. I was left a couple of Malay apple trees when the gardening group met at my place a couple of weeks ago.  I gave one to my neighbour as she has a bigger yard than mine.  Then I had an idea to create an espaliered tree against the back fence.  I have never done this before, but a fe

When we first moved in here 14 months ago, the front area looked a bit bare and unwelcoming.  Not at all what I wanted The shadecloth provided quite a bit of shade, but what I wanted was a more tropical green area to provide privacy and create a welcoming garden type atmosphere. I extended the mondo grass line to create a tropical garden.  I want guests to get a sense already in the front, of the tropical paradise that lies beyond. Hubby liked the idea of having a privacy screen, so that you couldnt look right into the house from the road. As it started to take hold I realised I didn't want the golden cane there, which could become huge and then very difficult to remove.   All the other plants seemed very happy there and have filled right out - maybe too much?  I might need to thin some out. Over the weekend I decided to take down the shade cloth.  We do not use that as a car port unless visitors park there, and it was looking a bit "daggy" (dont you love that Aussie w

A while back I posted a series of progression photos for the heleconia flower.   This time I want to share the same sequence for the red ginger. At first the flower appears at the very tip of a leafy branch.  Every branch has a flower that forms on the tip of it, so it make for a very colourful and prolific plant. This opens up into a lovely red flower, which grows bigger and longer over the course of a couple of months. Eventually shoots start to form at the base of the flower, as you can see to the left of this photo. These can be propogated by a method called layering, when you would bend this down and secure with a type of large staple into a pot of soil.   I imagine what happens in the wild is this flower would eventually get heavy and fall down and lay on the ground where roots would form.  I propogated all of mine in this way.

The garden and I were very happy this weekend when the sun came out Of course these tropical plants do love the wet season and flower profusely.  The continual wet does bring on lots of insects and bugs - mainly mosquitoes!  Most of the weekend was spent tidying up a little and putting a few more seeds into the vegetable patch.  I lost a lot of little seedlings simply because there was too much moisture.  I do believe the wet season is drawing to a close.

Venturing outside during a break in the unending rain, I found a discarded fairy dress.  My gosh, it looks as though she just stepped out of it right now.... is she still around here somewhere? Oh, no, it must have been just a fallen flower, look how many there are around.. I do like to think though that if there were fairies that needed a new party dress, that they would know they were welcome to come and dance in my yard anytime.

I had a four day weekend (I know, I love that fact that we have so many public holidays in Australia :)  I took my MIL to church at my favourite little church in Port Douglas for the Easter service,  You look out at the ocean through big glass windows behind the altar.  It sometimes can be hard to concentrate....  but we were drenched by the time we got home.  this is what happens when I walk outside.... some of the plants are very happy though- the anthirium just loves all the rain.. And so do the ground orchids... and even the pigeon pea are flowering, although they do seem to be dropping off a lot of their leaves which are turning yellow.  I dont know if they do that before the peas form, or if it just because of all the rain and no sunshine. They are such beautiful flowers right now we have had two hours without rain, I have put some washing on the line and hope that this really is the end of the wet season. 

I am always interested in giving something new life instead of having it ending up filling the landfill. Sooo.... my hubby found this wheel rim lying around and asked whether I could put it to some use.    I have been hankering after a bit of a water feature, I know, I know, I dont have the room, but still, could I line this with some rubber or something, then plant a water lilly?  I would have to have some fish or things that eat mosquito larvae - is it too small?  Water features here can sometimes cause huge problems, maybe it is better to leave the water feautrue idea alone.  Should I go the other direction, since it already has drainage holes, and plant some colourful pansies or some nasturtiums in it? I do love the shape, and colourful flowers against the black would be good.. I am thinking outside the bedroom window would be a good spot, and we do need some more colour there, and there is sunshine there.  Stay tuned.....