june flowers

Along with the winter vegetables, here's an update on the winter flowers.  The snowflakes are going nuts - every winter their clumps get thicker and thicker (this is what they looked like last winter).

My species tulips are just starting to wake up too.  I start watering them again in the winter, knowing they wake up quite early.  The first growing tip has appeared!  Can you find it in this photo?

My colmnara orchid is still growing away.  They seem to rotate between putting out flowers and putting out new pseudobulbs.  I bought it last year in August just when it was blooming.  It doesn't look like it will blossom again by August, it's still working on several new pseudobulbs.  But I can't complain as it seems to be green and happy!  Maybe I'll visit the orchid show again and get another pretty orchid in bloom.

My three hellebores are blooming one at a time.  The first ones are coming in very pale this year for some reason; last year they were dark purple-black.  Maybe the next flush will come in darker?

On the other hand the second plant appears to be coming in dark.  The third one's sulking a bit but I know it will get there soon enough.

The nearby gaura has finished and is looking a bit scraggly.  After this photo I went in and trimmed them back a bit.  One of them had a bit of dead growth which I cut out, I hope that doesn't mean it's dying.

I haven't shown you the succulents in ages.  I went through a phase where I was growing quite a few, but I decided they're rather boring plants.  They grow very slowly and don't change much; I like a plant with a bit of personality.  But this little bowl of succulents has slowly filled in.  I like that in the winter the ones on the left turn red.

That's about it in the garden at the moment!  That and major pruning but that's not very interesting for the blog.

june veggies

It's been a pretty quiet winter in the garden.  I haven't planted many veggies this year but I thought I'd show a few pictures of what is growing.  As with last year I'm growing one Tuscan kale plant.  It's taken a while to get going, but it's now just big enough to start picking leaves for minestrone.  For some reason the white butterflies have left it alone this year, even though they decimated the Chinese cabbage I had growing next to it.

I'm also growing two pots of Oregon spring snowpeas.  They're also just starting to set pods.  I think they really appreciate having the teepee trellis this year.  They're bush-type peas but they still need some support.

My parsley plant has gone absolutely nuts.  Parsley's funny like that, it creeps along slowly until one day you realise you've got a triffid in the yard and there's nothing you can do about it.

My chilies are also still pottering along.  They're still ripening up, although more slowly in the cold.  It's also starting to look a bit yellow, but I'm not sure if I should fertilise it in the winter.

Finally, my twig lost all of its first flush of fruit but it's still holding onto a later flush.  I don't know if they're mandarins or tangelos though.

Unfortunately the other graft is suffering a bit of die-back on some of the new growing tips.  First the young leaves went, now they're turning brown.  I hope it doesn't continue!

1, 2, 3 simit!

OK so I've got one more post to make, inspired by my time in Turkey.  On nearly every street you could find a man selling simit, a sort of sesame bagel.  They were so good I had one almost every day!  When I got home, I did some searching and found a recipe to make them at home!  This is the recipe I used:
1 1/2 c water
1 1/4 t salt
4 c bread flour
3 t instant yeast
1 T molassas
1/4 c warm water
1 c toasted sesame seeds

I made the dough in my bread machine; otherwise knead the dough and let it rise for about an hour.  Afterward, punch down the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.  Divide dough into 24 pieces and roll them into 14-inch long snakes.  Twist two pieces together and press into a ring.

Here's the next step.  First preheat the oven to 280c (it needs a while to warm up).  Dissolve the molasses in the warm water.  I toasted the sesame seeds in a wok on medium-high heat - stir them constantly so they don't burn.  Next dip the rings in the molasses, then roll completely with seeds. 

Let the rings rise until they get puffy like this - 10 to 20 minutes depending on how warm the room is.  Bake in the preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

They should look like this, but don't let them burn like I did!

autumn photos

I'm alive, I promise!

I was on a wonderful holiday in Turkey for two weeks; three weeks and 500 photos later, I'm only halfway through sorting them all!  So I've been neglecting both my garden and this blog.  Here's a bit of an update.

This autumn has been a real stunner in Melbourne, after a wet summer and a cold snap.  Unfortunately I missed the best of it, by the time I got back a lot of trees were just past their prime.  I missed my crepe myrtle's show entirely and after all the effort, missed the best weeks of my white anemones!  But my little maple put on a real show this year, it's the first autumn it's really shown off.

The time last year I was still referring to the poor thing as the "sad little maple" and it looked like this!

Big improvement, isn't it?  The oakleaf hydrangea is also looking very handsome, I reckon there's more red in the mix this year:

Compared to last year (the leaves did lose their green eventually but didn't gain the reddish hue):

I also had a little surprise come out of my giant elephant ear colocasia.  I've seen the flowers on my Amazon Queen colocasia before, but never seen them do this!  I'm not sure if it was just that the species type was more mature than my Amazon Queen or what, but it made a cheerful bright seed pod that looks a bit like an exploding triffid corn cob.

Finally, a quick snap of my lovely little colmanara hybrid orchid.  I took the advice of the grower I bought it from last year; when it finished flowering I put it outside on the porch.  It's grown several new pseudobulbs over the winter, and doesn't seem to mind the cold or the added sunlight from the low winter sun.  It's getting a few black spots that I hope are not mold!  No sign of new flower spikes though.  I wonder if I'll go to the orchid show again this year, and if I'll take home another orchid from this hybrid family.  The whole family seems to have drop-dead gorgeous flowers, and it seems to be pretty easy to care for.  But the real test will be whether I can get it to flower again!

That's all for now.  It's definitely winter now which in the garden is a time for reluctant maintenance in the cold. I've only got a few winter veg to look after this year so it's mostly a matter of raking up the rest of the leaves and getting through some major winter pruning tasks.  So you might not hear much from me for a little while, but I'm still here!

anemones at last

I decided a while back that one of my planned additions to the garden were white anemones (also called Japanese windflowers).  They're just so graceful and charming in the autumn garden after the heat of the summer has passed.  But I didn't realise just how hard that would be to achieve! 

Garden shops tend to sell plants like this when they're in flower so they're more appealing.  So as I saw the anemones flowering in my neighbours' gardens I starting asking about anemones in my local garden shop.  It took them a few weeks before they got them in ... and they were pink.  I've got nothing against pink flowers in general but to me, pink anemones just don't have the magic of the simple, clean white ones.  So I looked around at other garden shops.  Pink.  I checked back at the local.  Still pink.  Bunnings?  Pink.  I had a chat at my local and found out that they'd called every one of their suppliers, and only one had white anemones and they weren't yet big enough to sell!

So with atypical patience I asked them to put down my name and waited for my anemones to grow in some distant nursery somewhere.  Every weekend for about a month I'd stop by, just to check if they were in yet.  At last, just before Easter I got a message on my phone that started with "now don't fall out of your chair, but..."

At last they'd arrived!  As soon as I could I stopped by and sure enough, there were the little baby anemones.  And also some big, beautiful two-year-olds covered with perfect white flowers.  Now usually I'm patient enough to buy the small plant and wait a year for flowers, but not this time.  I'd waited long enough.  They weren't cheap, but they were mine!

Here's the "before" picture of where they went, in the back western bed. 

And here's the after - one on each side of the vitex bed (it's hard to see the one farther from the camera).  I took out a few more tufts of the liriope; it's a tough little plant and a good contrast but boring and worth sacrificing for these beauties.  Next year they'll grow even higher, their flower heads dancing in the breeze.

I'm really starting to be happy with this corner of the garden.  The vitex is growing incredibly quickly and the hydrangeas are powering along slowly but steadily.  The Japanese maple is doing so much better in its new home and the brunnera "jack frost" (just to the side of the nearer anemone) is happy too.  I'm amazed at how big the elephant ear colocasia has grown in that back corner, so it's obvious that the two small ones at the corner of the square bed are going to have to move soon.  And I've let some wild violets take seed behind the vitex to give the dichondra "silver falls" some competition.  The marigolds and ageratum will die down over the winter but they're still going strong for now.

Now I couldn't just let you go with only that distant view of the anemones, could I?  I've been playing with my new smartphone recently and having a ball with a camera program I downloaded that lets you set all kinds of old-fashioned filters on your photos.  So here's a whimsical photo of the anemones to finish on.  I hope it captures for you the beauty that attracted me to these simple, pure, white anemones.

winter veg

Growing vegetables in winter is, in many ways, so much more rewarding than in summer.  No scorching heat or humid mold, just slow-growing, rewarding greens.  But in the autumn, you still have to fight the dreaded cabbage white butterfly, whose babies would just love to feast on your seedlings.

This year I'm trying something new.  I've planted out my Tuscan kale seedling into the big tub and made a teepee of double-layered bird netting.  It looks messy, but it should be thick enough to keep off the butterflies (but light enough to let in the sun).  So far, so good!  By the time it outgrows this setup it should be cold enough that the butterflies have passed.

I've also got a few Chinese broccoli (gai lan) started, I just love them in stir-fries but they're not always in the shops.  I'll try successive-planting, and you need at least two or three plants per harvest for a proper portion.

I'm also planning on growing a few snowpeas this year.  I've learned a lot about growing them.  Thing one - you need a BIG pot!  It's not worth bothering if you're using small pots.  It's also not worth growing "climbing" peas in pots, they need heaps of room to spread out.  But even bush-type peas like a good support to help them grow.  You also need to know that rats will eat pea seeds and possums will eat young sprouts. 

So with all that in mind, I've planted a good bush variety (Oregon spring) in my largest pots with my pyramid frames.  I've also planted two bushes.  So I'm expecting a good crop this year.

I'll probably also try a few out the back where the melons usually grow, but I've not usually had luck back there between the possums and mildew.  Otherwise, that's about it this winter except maybe for some salad greens.  I've given up on the broccoli; they take too much space, time, and fertilizer for only a few heads.

I am, however, very impressed with my firecracker chillies, they're still going like crazy and I've had to give tons away.  So I've decided to try to "over winter" it - it'll die off quite a lot but with some luck and care, it'll recover in the spring and be well advanced for next summer.

new climbers

Over a year ago I planted creeping fig on the western fence to cover the ugly corrugated metal.  It got to the point where the climber looked like this.

I was getting frustrated at how slowly they were climbing upward and how much they were forming little clumps on the ground.  But when I had a closer look I found out why.  Turns out the little grabby-pads on their leaves can't grab metal!  So they can't actually climb up the fence.  Gee.  Wish I'd known that 18 months ago.  What a waste of time and money!

So I did a bit of research and decided on Chilean jasmine, Mandevilla laxa.  It's a hardy, shade-loving vine with small white flowers that should form a nice dense cover.  So far they've shot up quite quickly, despite fighting off heaps of aphids.  I've strung some wire across the fence in a zig-zag to give them something to climb on.  They climb by twisting their stems around things, so I think I need to string up more wire if I want a thicker cover.

Let's hope by next summer there's a bit of a lush cover and some lovely white flowers!

beautiful mona, hydrangeas and bees

My plectranthus Mona lavender has really come into its own!  Just look at all of those flowers.

I've got a little bud vase inside and picked a few.  It made me realise something I hadn't noticed - the "face" of the flowers is beautifully patterned.  You just can't see those details from above.

My oakleaf hydrangeas are also looking lovely.  They put out a second flush of flowers mid-summer and they're starting to colour up beautifully. 

I'm also realising this year the value in having autumn-flowering plants.  I've started to notice so many bees on my salvia, basil, gaura and the last of the lavender.  They probably appreciate this last feast before winter.

citrus' little helper

Recently the garden's been overrun by aphids, including on the new growth of my designer twig.  I found heaps of these little critters all over my tree and had a bit of a panic because I'd never seen them before.  They looked kind of like a ladybug only smaller and they had some strange white powder on them.

Thanks to my friends at OzGrow garden forum, I found out it's a yellow-shouldered ladybird, one of the many "good" ladybugs that chows down on aphids.  I've never seen so many ladybugs on one plant, and they sure did a good job - the aphids are gone!  Good thing I checked before I sprayed.

No more melons

Just reporting back that the melons just didn't ripen.  The vines were completely dead so I had to pick and chuck out the melons.  So disappointing.