shiukopuppy's Blog

It's been a while since I posted as it is winter and not much going on..! I don't like posting a blog without photos which has hindered my writing - and unfortunately I still have no photos! Lately, gardening has solely been the process of raking leaves.

From the garden I'm eating rocket, coral lettuce, mizuna and pak choi which have been firm and flavorsome. I've been planting more lettuces and they don't seem to be minding the frosts. How soon before spring can one start planting things indoors? In 3 weeks, there will be a garden fair which I will be attending - am so excited!  I've been waiting impatiently for spring.

I have been browsing seed websites and have ordered the following: Chilli Pepper Thai Hot, Eggplant Little Finger, Onion Spring Frosty, Pak Choi Riko, Tomato Green Sausage, Coriander Spicy Asian 

It's been cold and gloomy but we are still growing plants. The strawberries I have only seem to produce during winter and spring so we have lots of young strawberries! We ate our green mangoes and they were delicious! And we still have some limes to eat. The lemons are almost matured and the olives are still turning from green to purple in the greenhouse. The madarines are getting larger all the time and the Asian vegetables, lettuces, rocket and shallots are still growing, but slowly. I can see lots of flowers forming on my native Australian plants, so at least there will be winter flower displays!

I spent my weekend in the futile effort of raking up leaves. It is at least healthy, if pointless! :) I trimmed the raspberry, red and blackcurrant canes and tidied up and fed all the strawberries blood and bone. The fruit tree buds seem to be swelling, but my boyfriend says they do that in winter. He must have learnt this from one of his bonsai books? He pruned and trained some bonsai this weekend. So we had a nice weekend!

This is a garden surrounding a temple that we visited - the gardens have been there for centuries. This photo was taken on an overcast day in spring. We were unlucky on our sightseeing days because we had light rain and clouds. Here is the wikipedia link which has better photos:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K
inkaku-ji

This is a karesansui zen garden. It was made of rocks and gravel with some moss as well. We sat and viewed the garden for about ten minutes. The longer I sat there, the more details I noticed about the garden. It was very crowded here, despite the drizzle, as this garden is very famous.

I wish I'd taken more photos in japan that were garden related! But we spent most of our time in Tokyo.

I started gardening to grow vegetables that were unavailable. There used to be an Asian grocery store in the neighbourhood that sold a small selection of fresh vegetables unavailable anywhere else. Since it closed, we have had a drought of these vegetables, unable to find them at the Korean, Chinese and Indian grocery stores that are around. Finally, a friend told us about a store that was in a suburb we had never been to. It is kind of far away but they sold beautiful succulent, ripe vegetables unavailable elsewhere:

Thai eggplants (small and large)
Water spinach
Lotus roots
Fresh bamboo
Banana hearts
Longan
Pandanus leaves
Kailaan
Various Choy sum types

I would love to be able to grow some of these one day.

I left my camera at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago, so it has been impossible to show what's been happening in the garden. Also, it has photos of our trip to Japan - some of which might be interesting to share. We couldn't take photos in the bonsai nurseries (of which we visited several), but there are some pictures of gardens. I will get the camera back on the weekend.. feels like forever.. i hate posting without photos..

This weekend, I bought some spring onion, mint & peas seedlings. We also ate our lone pomegranate which was tasty. I think it will be worth keeping the tree (it is contained in a pot) to take to my future homes. Other than that, I keep dreaming of living in a warmer climate while everyone else here enjoys spring! :)

Hi all! Well, it's been a while, and it is autumn/winter here.. the garden is slowing down. I have some limes still ripening, and I have 3 ripe mangoes to be eaten. The mandarins are getting much bigger, the olives are turning and there are some green lemons. It is sounding very fruity, as the only vegetables I have left are the pak choi and spring onions.

I've been playing a new version of the farm game that I love.. I have grown some virtual turnips. And that's my news for the time being. Talk soon! xoxo Shiukopuppy

 My chickens have finished moulting and are starting to lay eggs again! And my autumn seedlings are sprouting away - all of them have germinated. It has been really hot lately so I haven't had much chance to garden. I did plant some pansies in one of my vegetable patches and the possums ate all of my snowpeas right down to the ground.. they dug under the greenhouse and got in that way! I've seen some rozellas visiting one of my trees regularly, but they appeared to be moulting or mangy. I didn't manage to get any photos but they are worrying me in case they are sick. My limes were lovely. I have some small mandarins - i hope they reach maturity soon! And I'm hoping it doesn't get too cold too soon. Enjoy spring on the other side of the world! :)

 
It's the beginning of cooler weather. Where I live, the cool weather begins even when it's officially summer.. Anyway it's time to live vicariously through everyone's spring and summer blogs! :) Here are my shallots.

So I've been tearing out the summer vegetables and preparing for winter/autumn. The tomatoes, eggplants and zucchinis have come out. I found a pumpkin and watermelon plant that didn't fruit. Perhaps it wasn't warm enough. The empty beds have been mixed up with compost, blood and bone, manures, wetting granules, seaweed pellets and organic fertilizer. I planted some shallots and bok choy from the nursery and I have planted seeds of baby spinach, mizuna, mesclun, bok choy, kailaan, mignonette and komatsuna.

My Tahitian limes are ready to go into cocktails! And the lone pomegranate is almost ready. There are some leaves turning these days and my chickens are getting their winter feathers ready. And that's about it from me!

I have a little mango growing in my garden.. It may not make it to full size, but it is still an inspiration!

 Last weekend we went to the local native nursery and bought some more plants: banksia, wattle and a native grass. I took over my ex-onion bed and planted them there. Although I'm going to leave this desperate and unloved lot within the year, I wanted to leave some more drought tolerant native plants for the birds to enjoy.

This weekend, we were in Sydney and checked out a nursery there to see what plants we could grow next year on our balcony. To my excitement they had dwarf banana trees and lychee trees! ! My dreams of a tropical balcony will come true very soon! ^_^ Above is one of the natives I nurtured when it finally bloomed.

I found a photo from my first garden in 2003.. it was a window sill garden! I was growing mizuna, mitsuba, komatsuna and some succulent plants. I had a new Japanese cookbook and had to grow these vegetables because they were unavailable in the shops. Finding the seed was a challenge.

These days you can get mizuna, mibuna, tatsoi and pak choi at the nurseries which is good. I still have to grow my own gai laan, vietnamese mint and choy sum. We grow lemongrass, coriander and kaffir limes at home because they are expensive at the vegetable shop.

Anyway now I'm inspired so I'm going to go to the nurseries and buy seedlings and I think I'll cook some Thai and Japanese this week! :)

Voila cucumbers and eggplants. Does everyone find the growth of eggplants to be agonizingly slow? They seem to fruit so much later than other chillies/tomatoes.. I think I'll have to buy the advanced plants at the nurseries in the future, because growing from seed is so slooow! We also have a short summer here so I tried starting them off indoors during late winter.. but had no success..

We've made plans to move to Sydney next year, so we'll have to learn about container gardening as we won't be able to afford living in a house. I've enjoyed trying out veggies in the ground but it will come to an end. We will definitely take the olives, pomegranate, citrus, mango and bonsai collection with us. I forgot to mention that I have some raspberries and red currants growing. Not ready to eat, but cute nonetheless. They will be left behind when we move as they will not thrive in Syd. I will also have to leave the apples, pear, almond & cherry behind.

Well it's been 19 busy days since my last post.. We've been eating onions, beans, lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes from the garden. I planted purple beans that turn green as you cook them. They were delicious and are still growing. The olives and mangoes are growing steadily, as is my lone pomegranate :) . My Tahitian limes are quite large but still a dark green.. I'm not sure whether to harvest them as they are darker than the ones in the shops. My native plants look very well adjusted to their conditions.

Garden progress aside, I've been having lots of barbeques and enjoying the view of the garden from our porch. It's very dry here so it is sad to see the lawn drying and dying, but we can't waste our water...! I've also spent a lot of time reading on the porch (and ducking inside when scary people walk past). My chicken is broody so we are going to organize to get a fertilized egg for her to have a baby. And that's all that's going on in my neck of the woods! ^_^ Hope everyone is having as much fun ! xoxo


 

My partner found some baby cucumbers in the garden! They are lebanese cucumbers that I grew from seed - so I'm very excited!! This year, growing from seed hasn't been very successful. My eggplant seedlings didn't survive and my lettuce seedlings are growing extremely slowly. I suppose I have had a lot of success with flowers, tomatoes, peas and beans, but not chillies, herbs or eggplants. It's strange because my successes were the opposite in the previous years where I grew a bed of chillies and even succeeded growing herbs indoors. Anyway, these are my very first cucumbers. Are there any pests I should be watching out for?

Above is a close up of my callistemon bush (where the flowers once bloomed). I love these little thingies !

I've tried to get some gardening done this weekend, but it's the middle of summer and the heat has limited my gardening hours to the evenings - and has wilted the garden :) I fixed up the herb bed this weekend..

We tore out the coriander that had gone to seed and pruned the parsley that has grown out of control - over a foot and a half high and wide (too much for us to use and it also overwhelmed most of the basil). We went to the garden centre and bought more coriander, parsley, spring onions, thai basil and sweet basil. I've put the herbs into the bed and now have to set aside time to plant the shallots. Anyway it was a satisfying day! I love herbs!