shiukopuppy's Blog
shiukopuppy's posts about: snapdragon
Oct 2, 2007 | 6:25 PM PST
Tags: cottage garden , snapdragon , viola , faerie garden
Well, still struggling along with the cottage garden. I've been weeding the native garden because somehow in the last couple of weeks, it has been overgrown by long grasses. It's nice to know it's warm enough for them to grow. We've decided not to let it happen again by mulching, and this will also mean less watering.
Here are some of the 'cottage' flowers that are blooming: snapdragons, and a viola. I love snapdragons, I played with them a lot during childhood. I never thought of them as dragons; to me they looked like goats. Wouldn't it be nice to plant a faerie garden? I'll try to find out which plants the faeries like. :)
Oct 1, 2007 | 3:28 AM PST
Tags: cottage garden , snapdragon , viola , peas , snowpeas
Well, today I did lots of work in the garden that didn't seem to amount to much! I started by casting some lawn seed on a tiny patch of earth that I had prepared. The lawn will only be a few square feet as we have had drought here for many years. The soil was full of worms, so hopefully the lawn will survive. I mixed in soil wetting granules and organic lawn feed pellets. Then I covered the seed with straw, which my partner and I have noticed that the council does when they sow lawns.
After that, I checked on my peas & snowpeas and pinched out the extra shoots. There are lots of little pea pods and flowers which was exciting. But there was a much more pressing task - a clover outbreak in the front yard. The clover in the front yard had grown halfway through the onions bed and had started growing those prickly little burrs on them (I think they are called bindi?) My partner and I tore them out for a while. This bed used to be a circular flowerbed. I had planted snapdragons earlier in the year but we must have torn some of them out. I moved some violas from another bed to fill in the spaces.
I have to say - I HATE English cottage gardens... but I'm renting a 1920s cottage, and as the last year has gone by, I've been finding that English style edgings and borders do suit this place, and I've been buying little flowers and lavenders etc and letting that style influence me. It's terrible, isn't it! ;)
Sep 3, 2007 | 4:12 AM PST
Tags: green manure , choi sum , pak choi , kai laan , oats , companion planting , organochlorides , pesticide , Bokashi bucket , almond , snapdragon , coriander , mint , spinach , lettuce
After all of my uploaded images were deleted, I lost faith in garden
blogging. But I have done my grieving and am going to try again because I've had lots of fun hanging around on gardenguides. How have you all been? :) I've
also been busy preparing for Australian spring lately which left me little time for computer distraction..
During the last month, my boyfriend and I bought a cheap greenhouse and set it up in the backyard. There are shelves for his bonsai trees and cuttings and I have filled my side with seed trays that will grow my companion plants, herbs and vegetable seedlings. I've also sown lots of flowers and sprinkled some flower seeds over the lawn.
We sent our garden soil to a lab to test for organochlorides - if that goes well, we will get a couple of chickens to move in. If there are pesticide residues here, we will have to do without them. We also invested in a Bokashi bucket which uses beneficial bacteria to prepare compost, and prepares meat, citrus, eggshells for composting too, so there is minimal waste. Spring bulbs are flowering and cherries and plum trees are starting to blossom!
LOVING UPDATES on my pre-existing plants:
Almond tree: the buds are swelling, and it looks like the flowers will be pink and white!
The snapdragons look like they will also burst soon..
The nashi pear buds are also swelling but I have had to protect the buds with paper bags because the possums decimated all of the leaf growth last year.
Coriander, mint, spinach, lettuce, peas and flat leaf parsley are thriving. Onions are growing along steadily..
Asian greens - mibuna, pak choi, kai laan, choi sum, mizuna etc. are doing very well.
The green manure (oats) is almost ready to be dug into the soil to prepare for the gray water lawn.
And my garlic is growing! So satisfying.. ^_^
