This morning while I deadheaded the rose bushes and gave them a little post-flower pruning I noticed that there were 2 galahs happily munching on seed in the front yard, oblivious to my pruning and loud snip, snip, snip.
galah goes nom nom nom
Posts tagged Garden
Today’s jobs…
This afternoon…
From the seed box: the zucchinis were getting too big so 4 of them got transplated out of the seed box and into a bed. Grass clippings were added to the soil. Some wire mesh was put over the top so birds don’t scratch around. 1 zucchini seedling remains in the seed box.
The corn (although corn don’t like being transplanted, I thought we’d give it a go) got moved to the back of the zucchinis in the bed. A small pane of glass was put to the windiest side to protect it a little.
2 big rockmelon seedlings from the seed box got moved into a bed, and 2 big watermelon seedlings also got moved.
From the co-op: the baby, baby tomato seedlings we got from the co-op (only a few days after germination) were getting mighty big so they got moved out into the bed with the zucchini. The top half of some empty soft drink 2L plastic bottles have gone around the seedlings to give more humidity and protect from wind. 5 were planted out, and there are 3 seedlings in larger pots remaining.
Grass clippings were added around the sole zucchini that came up from seed planted directly in the bed. It now has flowers.
The cherry tomato has baby tomatoes growing. There are almost flowers on one of the other 4 growing tomato bushes.
Mulched all the backyard trees with lots of straw left over from the strawbaling.
Transplanted the sunflower seedling.
Pulled out the chinese celery and collected some seed. Saw an albino spider hiding among the grass-like stems.
We were very late with all of the seeds – we still have 3 tomato seedlings waiting to be big enough for bed space, some aparagus seedlings and some little watermelon seedlings.
Let’s hope we have enough time to water and that things start growing!
Next planting
Well, we had few successes with our last lot of seed planting – probably as a result of our lack of watering due to a busy end of term 3 and some early summer weather.
So, we started a little seed box and are hoping to raise some more now.
Today some more radish seeds went in, along with some organic daikon radish seeds and some more butter beans. Let’s hope they come up with more success. The radishes seem to be hardy enough – especially since we had 2 radishes grow whereas no other seed came up from the first planting.
The tools in the shed.
Surprise cauliflowers
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! 
The spring growth.. the harvest begins
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).
The vegetable patch
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!
Pretty Flowers
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.
Rainbow Tree: now in pot
Instead of sitting on a table, it now has its own pot that we got from the place on Marion Road. Yay!
Start of the vegie patch
With the help of some old bricks from mum and dad’s house, we have started a raised bed vegie patch. Eventually we hope to have a 4 bed rotating vegie patch.
I started by lightly digging up some of the big bits of grass, but I think this was a waste of time.
Then we laid one row of bricks. About 8 bricks by 7 bricks.
Then we put down some newspaper. We only had 3 messengers so I think we’ll have to save up more paper for the next bed. The paper was put down 2 pages thick and overlapped onto the bricks. We put the second layer of bricks over the newspaper edges to secure it.
Then, I put down 2 wheelbarrow loads of a mixed assortment of mainly old leaves and grass clippings. On top went some seaweed from Brighton and then a light sprinkling of lime and dolomite for sweetness. This is what it looked like.
Then mum and dad brought some more bricks and we put a third layer of bricks down.
I did a layer of sugarcane straw, a layer of compost mulch, a dusting of lime/dolomite, a layer of sugarcane.
To plant, I added Marion council organic compost (compost made from Green bin ‘waste’ collected in the Marion council) and planted directly.
There are 7 cauliflowers, a chinese celery, a daisy and two rows of peas (covered in mesh which is held down with some bricks so that the birds/dog/cat don’t dig up any seedlings when they grow.)
Then it started raining. Here’s what it looks like now.
