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I browsed a different nursery this weekend and found rocket and garlic plants. I planted out the rocket in my peas bed. I didn't label which peas were which and they're developing at different rates and shades of green which is exciting! They are telephone peas, green feast peas and Chinese snowpeas and are now two months old and very resilient, despite several heavy frosts. They developed some rust-like brown spots on their lower leaves, but I can't work out whether they have rust or have been frostbitten. Anyway they seem happy as there are no predators in the winter and they're are wrapping their curly tendrils around the string supports I made for them.
I need to organize some shade loving plants and maybe companion plants for the grapes in the front yard. It is tricky though.. I live in an inner city area (if you could call it that - I don't feel that where I live could really be called a 'city'). Since I moved into this house, I've tried to keep the front yard as tattered and trashy as when I moved in, hoping to discourage thieves from taking a further look inside. This strategy didn't work as I was broken into a couple of weeks ago, so today I cleared away some of the rubbish that people throw over my fence. I'm going to give it the same love as the back yard, and take out some home insurance!!
Earlier in the week I visited my parents house. Last time I was there. I planted some tomato, chilli and eggplant seeds in pots for my mum. Their climate is warmer, and the tomatoes look great ! Chillis/eggplants are a little bit slower.
We bought a larger fridge so that we can learn to
preserve our garden produce which is exciting. The extra vegetables
had sometimes gone to waste as we have been learning to grow things. My
little old fridge that I bought in 1999, which survived 4 share houses
and knew the eating habits of 24 people intimately, will be traded in.
Have any of you used a food dehydrator, and would you reccommend it? I
could sun-dry food just as well, just wondered how it compares.
I'm worried about my kumquat bonsai - I will have to ask Slimezilla for the pre-bonsai talk that I never had! Its soil is sometimes dry when I check it, and I have no idea how to look after it. If any of you remember the karate kid, the above pic is Mr Miyagi's bonsai room..
Hi all! Do not be mistaken - these aren't my veggies, this is the picture from the seed shop of the seeds that arrived today. We'll have to see whether my summer peppers will look as cute as this picture! I'm new to peppers, and I thought that it would be fun to buy the mixed seeds and wait and see what color that they will be. I also got purplette onion, Louisiana long green eggplant, green dragon F1 cucumber, mei quing choi F1 pak choi, stutttgart long keeper onion, purple pole bean and snowpea goliath.
If you have grown any of these please tell me some stories - did they grow abnormally or get sick? Were they easy peasy? What to watch out for? I love hearing ppl discussing their vegetables and I've only grown most of these in video games! As a virtual farmer, I got to see all of the stages of vegetable growth in pixels, but not irl.
We got up early on Sat to go to the farmers markets. We're trying to learn about the seasons and eat locally grown, fresher produce. So we bought some veggies and australian native flowers. I soaked the vegetables for pesticides when I got home.
We did lots of gardening as it was unusually warm. The pomegranate and avocado that we bought recently were still in their growing bags from the nursery, so we potted them. We're renting our house so we have to grow our trees in pots and dwarf them a bit so that we can take them with us to future houses. It's also better for these trees because they need free draining soil and we have heavy clay soil. I ran around testing the soil pH in the different garden beds today - the soil was acidic when we moved in, but we have managed to make it neutral over time.
I'm still confused about my strawberries: I didn't cut them down because they are still fruiting! It's late winter and there are lots of strawberries in progress. Will letting them live increase their susceptibility to diseases? I thought they were supposed to die! anyway, that is an ongoing mystery..
I mulched all of my fruit trees and berries with lucerne, and gave the trees and garden beds some seaweed solution. I gave my asian greens and winter lettuces some fish emulsion, and also gave some to my peas because I don't want them to flower until after the last frosts. 6 weeks until spring, but there could still be some spring frosts. We planted out a sago palm and moved some clover to areas of bare lawn - we have been under water restrictions for many years here due to drought. Lawns have had to be sacrificed but clover seems very immortal.
Today we went to see a friend who we found out works at a nursery. We bought a flowering quince, a bare rooted 2-way grafted apple tree, a few native Australian plants and ground breaker solution. He took 70% off everything which was exciting. When we got home we potted the tree and we found out that the naughty local possums had eaten our mustard green manure.
There are varying climates in Australia, but I currently live in a temperate area. I'm growing the fruits that need winter chilling but I'm dreaming of the fresh fruit of hot summery places! There are things that I just can't grow here or at least not grow well. Especially right in the middle of winter! It's heartbreaking to taste the fruit in the shops and even sadder when the fruit has come a long way and suffers in flavour for it.
Rambutans here are overpriced and old. I used to eat fresh mangoes, dates, pomegranates, papyas and honeydews when I lived overseas. I even ate durians. The shrivelled tiny star fruits in the shops here are unappetising. Lime and lychee drinks - not financially viable! Bananas are expensive because there was a typhoon in the banana growing areas. Earlier this year I visited a fruit farm and spice gardens in Malaysia where I tasted dragon fruit and my new favourite is the wax jambu or water apple. Above is me at the farm gesturing to a plant that I forgot what it was!
So you can see that I love to eat!! This is a major motivator in the garden. Hopefully one day I can garden in a tropical setting. And I comfort myself that I get to grow a lot of my current plants that would not survive in the tropics. As spring is nearing, I am checking all my fruit/trees' health.
GUAVA: Died back completely this winter, but I read somewhere that they recover well.
GRAPES: Still can't figure out how to prune them - it has been a few years of struggle..
NASHI: Had some rust or something last summer. I have dealt with that. It's about to bud-burst!
POMEGRANATES, ALMOND, COFFEE, BERRIES: Still very dormant
AVOCADO: Looks cold and sad!
LIME: Going crazy, looks to be outgrowing its container
LEMON: Not looking very motivated..
STRAWBERRIES: Now they are working very hard :)
Slimezilla and I went to some bonsai nurseries in Sydney on the weekend. Bonsai is Slimezilla's hobby, and mine is the edible garden. I accompanied Slimezilla as he bought lots of starter trees and different pots.
I don't really know that much about bonsai. Although bonsai are cute, I have always been more interested in vegetables. Anyway, this time, I came across a kitchy little fruiting kumquat in their nursery! I could not resist it! I bought a few mame (tiny) bonsai pots to raise a few miniature fruiting trees from seed. I think it's very hard work and it's something I know little about, but still willing to try! I will also embellish my trees into little scenes, in a bunjae/penjing style! I bought some tiny scholars, contemplated pots with in-built lakes and will consider some stork or buffalo in the future!
That aside, I bought an avocado sapling and a red seedless grapevine. Still very much winter here, we have had terrible frosts and I worry for the peas I was so proud of in this blog! I can't wait for the days when I can stay outside as the sun sets, and not shiver into the house!
Speaking of my house, last night, some delinquents tried to break through my front door with some garden rocks and a butter knife. It was very scary, they stood back and tried to come inside until we turned on the lights. They managed to use so much force that the broken glass travelled several feet into the house. Anyway the garden has been violated, I am mourning for it, and I am thinking of redesigning the front yard to get rid of heavier things that can smash windows with.
The soil in my garden has been neglected for years and is too compacted to grow anything. We made veggie beds by digging in several lots of compost, gypsum, mushroom compost, pea straw and animal manures. They are slowly improving.
The lawn is not growing, there is just dirt.. I decided to concentrate on a small patch of lawn - only a few meters squared - and make that a symbolic lawn (I'm also worried about erosion). I applied gypsum a few times, but I also decided to add a green manure to the soil to break it up a bit.
What I have found out about green manures: they are dug into the soil while still healthy, some add nitrogen to the soil, keep the soil active, improve its structure and suppress weed growth. Oats and mustard don't add nitrogen but this was all that I could plant at this time of year. Here is a picture of my young oats and mustard growing where I will sow lawn seed in the spring!
It's winter in Australia and very frosty with misty days. I used to do nothing in the winter, just play playstation, watch movies and ignore the garden, growing only herbs and lettuces on the window sill. This year I decided to see what could be done at this time of year.
Herbs wise, I have planted some coriander (cilantro). It's doing very well; in the summer it often went to seed. I also planted lots of onions. Usually I only grew spring onions and shallots (yum!) but recently I tried growing red onions and they were so delicious that I planted out white, brown and red onions again. I bought some flat pickling onion seeds but they need to be sown in warmer weather, alas!I planted several varieties of winter hardy peas. I was pleasantly surprised as they are now a few inches tall. Winter spinaches are doing well, as well as pak choi, choi sum, gai laan and shungiku. Some winter lettuces are also growing but they are very small.
I also bought some dormant plants - raspberry, red currant and black currant canes. An almond tree, a couple of olive trees and I bought wintry flowers: snapdragons and foxgloves. Today I want to buy another pomegranate tree and a multigrafted pear. It's been busy and I never would have thought that a winter could be this fun.
My old sharehouse is where the gardening bug bit me. It was in the city but was lovingly restored and had a farm theme - there were parts of farm machinery hanging on the outside walls, stable doors opened into our courtyard garden, several raised garden beds, a spare veggie patch, fruit trees and a chicken coop. We decided to get some chickens for the coop. A grape vine grew over their shed, and they enjoyed eating the leaves and the grapes.
The chickens were adorable, they started as chicks and grew up into hens. They gave us delicious eggs. Being very curious, they mananged to break down their fence to explore. They made their way through the whole garden and ate all of the vegetables, lawn, garden beds and anything else that they could find. I let them do it - I doted on them.
The most destructive thing that they did was to scratch the ground and plants up until there was nothing left. It was cute at first. They liked to explore the neighbourhood while i was at university. I used to walk home and find them foraging in the vacant lot and the nature strip near my house. If it was sundown, I would follow them up the driveway as they returned to their plundered garden to sleep.
But one day, when I got home, one of my chickens was missing her tail feathers!! I realised that their independence and curiosity was also a danger, and quickly repaired their fence. I let them out daily with my supervison and as their presence in the garden was reduced, I realised that the real estate agent (who was terrifying) would make a fuss about the wasteland they had created. It was a rude shock to realise that the manicured lawns and shrubs were very seriously damaged.
It was up to me to fix up the garden. And gradually this task that took a couple of years became very enjoyable.
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