Posts tagged Back yard
October 8, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, chives, herbs, radish, vegetable
While the peas and cauliflowers are charging along, the chinese celery has gone to seed with its huge leaves still dwarfing the patch.
The radishes that were planted from seed are starting to appear.
However, the sunflowers, corn, cucumber, watermelon, rockmelon, pumpkin, chilli, basil and beans are not yet appearing. A lone zucchini plant has appeared from seed. The leeks are struggling, and the chinese mixed veg (bok choy, chinese cabbage etc) needs a lot more water and care than we give it. The capsicums are all doing well. Of the tomatoes we lost a couple to start with but the remainder look okay now. The eggplants all collapsed – we’ll have to try them again another time or perhaps plant them in containers in a more sheltered area under the verandah. The herbs under the verandah (coriander, parsley, brami, baby spinach, garlic chives) are looking okay too. When we remember to water them, that is.
Garlic Chives: they died down completely when we moved house, but have come back of their own accord with no hassles.
October 8, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, daisy, grape, plum, trees
Thanks to Ed for the grape vine (sultana) that he gave us – it is now g for green.
Once our rainwater tank is installed on the 22nd of October, we’ll be able to plant the grape vine so it can climb up and around the tank. We’ll also find a passionfruit to climb on the RWT, and maybe even a kiwi if it will handle our climate.
All of the fruit trees now have green on them. The peach has about 5 blossoms, and the plum and almond are starting to look almost bushy. I’m just glad that none of them died over winter or suffered too badly from our rough planting.
Also on the growing front – some MASSIVE daisy bushes. So HUGE in fact that one of the bushes has fallen apart from the weight of the leaves and flowers. Woops!
October 8, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, cauliflower, Garden, magic, vegetables
When I planted the cauliflowers in June in the first vegetable bed, I didn’t think they would grow much since it was fairly late (if not completely out of) season. They grew lots of leaves and got to be big plants, but there were no heads forming so I thought I would have to just pull them out the the ground come summer. However, secretly forming and growing were some cauliflower heads that really appeared when I came home from Quezon City. Yay! We have cauliflowers! The magic of the garden – that we could have VERY late season cauliflowers forming in every plant. The heads are even of a reasonably size. Magic.
Just look at that beautifully formed magical cauliflower! 
October 8, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, Garden, peas, vegetables
When I came back from 2 weeks in the Philippines, I was delighted to find that our peas plants had grown, flowered, and now had pea pods. The pods are one by one becoming ready to pick. Yum!
The peas took about 115 days, or 3 months and 23 days, to go from seeds in the ground to ripe pods ready to eat (planted 8th June, first harvested 1st October 2008).
September 7, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, Garden, vegetables
Filled up the beds with compost…
…and planted seeds and seedlings.
Bed 1:
In bed one are the peas (growing at the back), cauliflowers, chinese celery, mint) with a space for 2 rows of soy beans, then a row of butter beans, a row of red pioneer beans and a row of windsor long pod bush beans at the front.
Bed 2:
Bed two contains at the front a row of sunflowers (seed), a row of radishes (seed) then some space for cauliflowers, broccoli and cabbages to be planted a bit later, then a row of asian greens (mix of chinese cabbage, bok choy and pak choy), leeks and brown onions, fancy lettuce, celery and rocket (gone to seed).
Bed 3:
In bed three we have (from the front) green capsicums, a row of chilli (seeds), a row of sweet basil (seed), roma tomatoes, big tomatoes, eggplants.
Bed 4:
Bed four contains (from front) butternut pumpkin, beetroot, cucumber, carrots, watermelon, rockmelon, zucchini, sweet corn and asian greens.
whee!
August 17, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, cauliflower, chinese celery, gardening, lettuce, marigolds, peas, vegies
The peas are still growing and now have some stakes and jute string to climb along.
We were given this plant as a little seedling at our housewarming. It was labelled as Chinese Celery. It doesn’t have much of a stalk, but it’s leaves are huge and going everywhere. Maybe it’s not celery after all? It’s really huge.
The cauliflowers are also growing, but only leaves. I’m pretty sure they were put in too late to grow heads. We’ll see what happens.
The rogue marigolds are everywhere. They came up from mystery seed in the potting mix and are crowding out the little native in the middle and the daffodils around the sides. Mr Gnome is doing okay amongst the marigold crowd.
Meanwhile, the lettuce (from seed) in the pot, along with the potted parsley, is doing fabulously. The baby spinach, strawberry and coriander are suffering from the cold, I think.
Time to start thinking about spring/summer seeds…
July 1, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, bulbs, flowers, Garden
Some bulbs from last year (dug up and brought with us to our new house) and some from Penny are starting to flower.
Here’s a fragrant and delicate Jonquil flower, planted from Penny’s massive bulb stash.
Here’s a daffodil, surrounded by masses of little marigolds yet to flower. The marigolds came up from mystery seed hidden amongst the pot, and are almost drowning out my plant from the start of school Staff Day this year.
The Cyclamen from mum when we moved into our new house is still looking great, although gardening books tell me that it should be looking bad about now… while some flowers are dying, there’s still lots of new growth.
July 1, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, pea, vegetables
Oooh.. they’re getting so big now…
We raised the wire mesh up a bit to give them more room to grow, but still there to give them protection from cats/birds that may want to eat them all.
This photo is about 23 days after the seed was planted.
June 29, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, fruit trees, strawberries, vegie patch
Being mid-late June, it was time to venture back down to Perry’s Fruit and Nut nursery to collect some bare-rooted trees that were dormant an sitting in their ’sandpit’. We bought a plum, peach and almond.
This is the bare almond. The plum and peach look pretty much the same…
As a special deal, we got 10 strawberry runners for free. We also bought a caper and a blueberry variety that is suited to the Adelaide plains (low frost for setting) that needs a pot as they require acidic soil that is not naturally found in our area.
The strawberry runners have been planted in a narrow ridged bed that has a low brick wall around it.
Now that all of the fruit and nut trees have been planted for now, it’s time to focus on the vegetable patches.
The first bed that has cauliflowers, peas, mint, chinese celery and a daisy is doing ok. The cauliflowers, being very late, have barely grown but the peas are about 5 cm high now.
The second bed has been layered (cardboard, straw, compost, grass and leaves, lime/dolomite, mushroom compost, straw) and is waiting for something to go in it. Then perhaps a third, fourth, maybe fifth bed, maybe a herb spiral…
June 18, 2008
· Filed under Garden · Tagged Back yard, gardening, peas, raised bed, vegetables, vegies
It’s taken about 10 days, but now I can see little green shoots from the pea seeds that we planted in the first raised bed.
No photo – they are very small and not that exciting.
