crepe myrtle

I'm posting this for my sister in Texas.  Is this a crepe myrtle?

I ask because I remember you telling me that they're so common in Texas you were downright sick of them.  Well guess what?  They can't get enough of them in Melbourne, because they're pretty and they tough out the drought like a champ.  Councils love to plant them along roadsides, just like this one just around the corner from my house.

If you ever want to run a business, perhaps a crepe myrtle export nursery would be a goer.

fat little pumpkins

I've lost even more pumpkins, even after taking over pollination.  It appears that they have to be at just the right stage to pollinate - too early or too late and it's no good.  At least I know what to look for now.  If they pollinate properly, by the very next day you can almost tell that they've grown; the day after that and they're definitely bigger.  If they don't pollinate, they stay the same size on the vine for about a week before dropping off.

Having said that, I think I've got at least a half-dozen that pollinated and plenty more that haven't reached the flowering stage yet.  And three of my pumpkins are already huge!  Look at the size of these little beauties.  Though I don't actually know what size they're meant to get in the end...

They've gotten about to the size where I had to start thinking about extra support.  They are up on the fence after all and if they get too heavy they might break off the vine!

I'd heard of using old pantyhose but I don't wear them enough to have spares.  I had an old t-shirt I was going to slice up, but then I got worried.  Would it be bad for the pumpkins if their sunlight was blocked?  And if they get wet in the rain, will the t-shirts stay damp and rot the pumpkins?

So the bird netting got put to yet another purpose.  I took a piece I'd already cut off and cut it even smaller.  Voila, pumpkin hammocks!  It must be a good life, to be a pumpkin on a fence.  You get to hang out in the shade and breeze, then get cradled in a hammock.

can grafts re-grow?

I mentioned in this post that I ordered a multi-graft citrus tree but the lime graft broke off in transit.  Well, if I'm really, really lucky, the lime graft is growing back.

That little stub is the lime graft, and that tiny branch appears to be growing from it.  However it's also likely that it's growing from the root stock.  When you graft onto root stock, you always want to remove branches from the root stock.  They're very vigorous and hardy (that's why they make them into root stock) but don't usually produce good fruit, and tend to sap all the resource form the branches that do.

I'm not 100% sure how to tell if that branch is growing from the lime or the root stock.  I'm checking with my favourite garden forum where there's at least one expert on fruit trees who might know.  But I'll be so happy if it is the lime fighting back!

pollination issues

The first several pumpkins on my vine shriveled up and fell off.  That usually means they weren't pollinated properly, and so I took over hand-pollination.  Which is working fine, but did make me realize that I have almost no flowers in my yard.

In my zeal to plant fruits and veggies, I may have neglected those all-important little bees.  A lot of what I grow doesn't need pollinators - herbs and lettuce you eat before they flower, tomatoes and chilis self-pollinate.  But still, bees are important for fruits and some veggies.  So I took a trip to the garden centre and bought some marigolds for the back garden.

They're pretty cute, I like the rusty-orange colour.  And it's my first venture into the annuals, flowers that are around just for a season of show and then they're gone.  You can see the pumpkin vine to the upper-left corner.






But it also made me think about a narrow bed near my back veggie patch.  It's got a row of dwarf agapanthus and cordylines, courtesy of the previous owners.  I really don't like the cordylines - those purple things. To me they looks sruffy, they always seem to be covered with spiderwebs and aphids, they turn that nasty shade of yellow on the older leaves.  The contrast is very striking but well, the cordyline don't DO anything.  You can't eat them, they don't make flowers, and they're ugly.  They aren't exactly earning their keep.







So I took another trip to the garden centre and came back with lavender.  Lavender is great in this climate.  It's quite hardy and once it's established it takes the drought really well.  And in the spring and summer, it's covered with flowers that bees just love.  The variety I got is an English type called Munstead that should say pretty small and compact.  No, it doesn't look like much now, and here's why.

I needed four of them but at my local, lavender is between $10 and $20 each.  But they had a few in the $5 "budget" section.  It's where they put the ugly plants, the ones that have passed their beautiful flowering stage.  Some plants never recover, but many simply go through a cycle of ugly before re-growing or re-blooming the next year.

So I scrounged these four scruffy lavenders.  I was quite happy they even had four of the same type.  But as you can see they are all past their prime and never got a proper grooming either.

So I sat down for a relaxing half-hour doing what I like best in the garden - pruning.  I cut off all of the flowering heads and most of the lanky growth.  Some of them had quite a lot of dead growth too, and all of them had little buds of new growth just waiting for their turn.  So when I was done they looked like this.

Certainly not pretty, and with a bucket full of trimmings.  But they'll get another flush or two of new growth this year.  Maybe even some flowers.  And certainly next year they should be fully flowering.  Not bad for $20.

I do sort of regret that they're not the dramatic contrast that the dark purple cordyline were.  They'll be more of a compliment to the agapanthus, rather than a contrast.  But I do think that eventually they will look quite lovely.  And of course, they'll do a very important job supporting my fruit and veggies.

fig wars three: return of the figs

At last!  At long last, at least some of my fig nets worked!

Three figs.  And one of them was split and not really edible.  There was a fair bit of late-spring rain that swelled them up quite a bit, more "big and bland" than "small and sweet".  But the flavour was still lovely, and suggests that if the autumn is drier than the main crop will be supurb. 

I think I mentioned that I wasn't sure if I liked figs.  Well I do!  They're not the best fruit in the world but they are quite lovely and I'm glad I finally saved a few from the birds.

Only a few, though.  There were another several figs that I had wrapped up in netting but it just didn't work.  All the birds did was land on the branch, pushing down the netting so that they could peck at it anyway.

Almost all of the breba crop has ripened and been eaten, but there are still another dozen left.  I've taken off the net bags and moved them to other branches, trying to learn from my past mistakes to maybe save a few more before this crop is over.  But it's also reminded me just how many figs there will be in the main crop in the autumn - literally hundreds of figs.  I just need to exercise some patiences until then.

compost ain't a pretty thing

It's not terribly glamorous but I thought I'd show you my compost bin. We have a little round tin on the kitchen bench where we put all of our veggie scraps and paper towels. I also add leaves from the garden and sometimes strips of newspaper. The thing that really gets it going though is lawn clippings - a bit of cut grass really starts it "cooking".

There's a bit of a recipe to "cooking" compost. You need a balanced mix of soft, green things (like kitchen scraps or fresh grass) and drier, brown things (like dead leaves or newspaper). It also needs to stay slightly damp, and it helps if it's warm outside. And the main bit of work is you do have to mix it up a bit at least once a week. But personally I find it rewarding, I've already gotten a bucket's worth of compost to put on the rhododendrons.

Oh and if you thought it wasn't much to look at from the outside, the inside's no better. This is a mix of grass clippings (already pretty far composted) and grape leaves.

going to seed

The term "going to seed" means that your plant is flowering and making seeds.  It usually refers to vegetables or herbs, and usually you want to eat them before they "go to seed".  I thought I'd show you the spectacular show that lettuce puts on when it goes to seed.

This was my beautiful Frilly Pink lettuce.  We got one day of 30 degree weather last week and BOOM by the end of the day it had the characteristic cone-shape forming.  That cone shape meant it was forming a stalk to put flowers on.  Oh well, my rocket (arugala) is reasonably-sized now.  I also planted Red Flame lettuce but I'm having some issues; only one seed germinated and it's since died, not sure why.  I hope the rocket works out, I'd hate to go back to having to buy lettuce.

fig wars two: alexa strikes back

I got tired of birds eating my figs the day before they were fully ripe, so I tried once again to net the tree.  First I strung a full net along the back side of the tree, tying it on securely.  But I didn't actually think that would do much - they just had to fly in from the other side and they'd be under the net eating my figs.  So I got creative and made net booties.

I have my friend Heather to thank for this idea.  Apparently in Queensland they make mesh bags you tie over banana bunches to protect them from fruit bats.  I asked at the B-store and they didn't sell anything like that, so I made some myself.  I took a second bird net and cut out some large squares, then stitched together one side with outdoor twine.  I dragged them over the ends of branches with figs that were near-ripe, then closed the end around the branch.

To be honest, it's a pain in the bum.  Each of those bags has one, maybe two figs in it - a lot of work for just a few fruit.  But that's just the breba crop.  On the tips of those branches are another 3 or 4 of the main crop which will ripen in the autumn.  So if this works, I can either keep them on all summer, or take them off now and re-use them closer to the autumn.

Unfortunately one bag has failed so far.  It wasn't closed all the way and the fig was awfully close to another branch, so either a bird climbed inside the bag or just pecked it through the netting.

But the rest of the bags seem to be working.  Here's one of my beauties - it looks ripe but I'm going to give it one more day.  I think it's safe, or else it would have been pecked open by now.  Next to it are two of the autumn crop slowly ripening.

I can't wait to try them.

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a place for everything

The garage is more or less my zone.  We're not really power tool people and I'm the one who likes the garden, so I've taken it over.  I finally gotten around to putting in a bunch of hooks so I can organise my clutter and keep it off of the bench.  Here it is, my beautiful, almost-organised garage!