Hooray! Hooray!

The peaches are nearly ready!
And this year - they are going to be MAGNIFICENT!
We've had a sneaky early one - and it was just about the best peach I've ever eaten!

The crop isn't as big as last year's but there are still a lot of them!



Photos: Home - 27th Mar, 2011

So Cute

Aren't baby vegetables CUTE?
I grew this one from a seed - it's about 4cm (1 inch) long.
It's the first zucchini I've ever grown.
It's called Midnight and it's especially for containers (I ran out of room in the vegie patch!).
I planted it on 26 Jan - so just 2 months from seed to vegie.
And the schtinkin cabbage butterflies won't touch it!


Photo: Home - 21 Mar, 2011

Hepples

Remember Gabriel Gate - that french chef fellow who used to be on Bert on the tele and talked about hunions and hepples and cooking in the huven?
Well, that rather took my fancy and forever more, to me they will always be "hepples".



Anyway...
Guess what I know about growing hepples?
Nuthin.



Well...
Remember I spoke of how about 3 or 4 years ago we wanted to buy an investment property in a country town but we accidentally ended up living in it? Well, we had another crack at it about a year ago and bought a lovely brick home built 45ish years ago by Mr and Mrs Pendlebury.
One of the wonderful things about the Pendlebury's house was, that it was built on nearly half an acre and it had a street at the front and a street at the back.
That meant that half the yard and the house could be for the tenants and the other half - the huge backyard and garden shed could be for us!
And there I could plant all the stuff that wouldn't fit in our own home yard.
So far, at Pendlebury Hill (see what I did there? It's on a hill and the Pendleburys built it - genius!), I've planted a Quince, an Olive, a Pomegranate, Raspberry Canes, a Blueberry bush, a Dahlia patch, and the beginning of a rose garden.
(This is to accompany the White Mulberry, the Black Mulberry, the Lemon, the Navel Orange, the Washington Orange, the Emperor Mandarin, the White Nectarine, the Tahitian Lime, the Kaffir Lime, the Bay tree, the Passionfruit vine, the Grape vine and the Loquat I have already planted at our own house - and the rose garden, and the vegie patch and the 35,000 (maybe an exaggeration) different ornamentals and natives! Lawdy, lawdy, I've been busy the last 3 years!)



Anyway....
before he died last year, Mr Pendlebury dropped in to see me and wish us well for the future and we got talking about the garden.
He told me about the two apple trees he had planted and how they had six different varieties growing on them.
Isn't that amazing?
You can just splice different fruit onto one trunk and they will all live together quite happily doing their own thing.


So....
because I didn't really know anything about caring for apple trees and at the time I was a little pre-occupied with other stuff - I pretty much left them to their own devices for the last 12 months.
Ha!
As if they needed my help!
The two little trees are FULL of apples.
Stupidly, I didn't ask Mr Pendlebury what exactly the different varieties were.
I'm pretty sure I've got a Granny Smith.
A Golden Delicious.
A Red Delicious.
Does anyone know what these ones might be?





Photos: March, 2011

Dirty Little Blighters

I'm frequently at war with some dastardly critter in my garden.
Presently, it's the white cabbage butterfly Pieris Rapae.

I quite like the butterflies - they flit all over the garden and make me feel all "English Country Garden".
But they lay eggs - LOTS OF EGGS!
And the eggs turn into caterpillars.
Fat green caterpillars.
And the caterpillars chow down on my nasturtiums and Bok Choy and Cauliflower and Broccoli seedlings.
See those eggs there on my Bok Choy?
They are EVERYWHERE!!



Having had a rather nasty dose of cancer in my household already, I am loathe to use any toxic chemicals on the food we eat, so I will always search for a low-impact remedy to control pessstssss, bugsss and aphidssss (anyone remember good old Allan Seale and his sibilant "s"? I loved that ad - I wish someone would put it on youtube).

Anyway......
the interwebs suggested egg shell halves might work.
Apparently, cabbage butterflies are territorial and they think the eggshells are other cabbage butterflies so they fly away and find somewhere else to lay eggs.
Lots of people have had great success with this method.
I didn't think cabbage butterflies could be that dumb.


So half a carton of eggs later.....
it turns out Ararat cabbage butterflies are of a superior intellect.
You'll notice they indulge in no pretence, they laid their eggs right next to my deterrent.

Now, I'm going in for round 2 - a little concoction of molasses and pure soap.
I've heard the caterpillars would rather starve than eat leaves coated in molasses.
Whaddya reckon?
Is it gunna work?




Photos: Home - Feb&Mar 2011

The Amazing Pinkie Rose

When we bought this house 3ish years ago in a Victorian country town, it was originally intended as an investment property.
It was a pretty daggy house but it was in a great position and was structurally sound.

We didn't have a lot of money for renovations, so anything we did to prettify the appearance from the street, had to be achieved via the garden.

Anyway...the house had these weird brick pillars holding up the little front verandah.
They were very u-u-u-ugly.
Our options were to replace them, paint them (which always looks like a lame attempt to beautify) or hide them.



At our house in the city, I had a lot of success with a Climbing Gold Bunny.
When it was in full flower, it used to stop people in the street and they would take photos. It was extra special coz my Grandma gave me $20 when we first bought our city house to buy a rose for the garden.
I loved my Grandma.
And she loved roses.


So I thought some climbing roses on the pillars might work - to hide and distract.
But there was concrete on the ground along the front of the verandah.
I didn't know if it would work, but I got Dad and Vince to cut 2 square holes in the concrete in which I could plonk a couple of roses.


And guess what!
The Pinkie Roses love it!
Their roots stay nice and cool and just moist and the leaves bake against the bricks.
Absolutely ideal.
It never fails to amaze my Mum - "I can't believe it grows out of that little hole in the cement!"
They are a real show-stopper.
And the great thing about that is, when people walk by and you are in the garden, they will comment on it and that is such a great way to strike up a conversation and get to know your neighbours.
Especially the older ones, who always have good stories.


Oh yeah - and we loved our little investment property and the little country Victorian town so much - we packed up our city lives and moved into it.
Best decision - EVER!


Photos:
1,2,4&5: Nov, 2010
3. Oct, 2007

Green Zebras

It's all Green Zebras and Black Russians around this joint at the moment.
These two tomato plants have been incredibly successful in the vegie patch this year.
Tomatoes really are quite easy to grow.
You just plonk 'em in the vegie patch - stake them as required - splash a bit of Seasol on them every now and then and that's about it.
They don't really taste any different from red tomatoes but I'm always up for something of novelty value.
They come from my "go to" vegie man - Diggers.
Next year I think I'm going to go with one of those fat brain looking ones and some little yellow cherry ones.



Last year I made 37,000 jars of different jams and chutneys.
My absolute favourite was Peach and Tomato chutney.
I only made a couple of jars and really only made it for my Dad.
But it was fabulous - especially with cold chicken.
So when our peaches finally are ready - usually April - I hope I have some tomatoes still growing.




Photos:
1. Feb, 2011
2&3. April, 2011

Do the Funky Chicken

Summer - 2011
A magpie having a shower under the hose out on the footpath.
He was having the best fun.


Photos: Feb, 2011

Abracadabra!

Look!
I grew these from sticks.

My first propagating experience.
Next year they will be tall enough to hide that weird ugly fence.
What IS that kind of fence? - looks like something used in a pig pen.
I was hoping they would be purple but they are kind of pinky mauve.
I think I might have to acidify the soil a bit more to get them purple.
They are past flowering now.
There's a few stragglers.
They'll get a haircut soon.


This is them the same time last year (in the picture below).
Haven't they grown a lot?




photos:
1. iphone - Feb, 2011
2. Feb, 2011
3. Jan, 2010


PS. Comments turned back on, by special request!

Should I?

Summer 2011
The BBQ table found at the tip.
Should I paint it?
Or should I live it a bit rustic-like?

There's no bricks holding up the bench anymore.
It's got 6 legs now.

I think I may have hit the saturation button a bit hard - look at those orange roses - they are glowing!



Photo: Feb, 2011


PS. I turned the comments off on this blog, coz I'm easily confused.
Sad, but true.
I always miss comments when they are posted here and I hate to miss them.
The freefalling blog is "where it's at" when it comes to blog comment action.

Teeny Tiny

Isn't it the most adorable thing?
It's a teeny tiny punkin (that's what Dad calls 'em).
Our next door neighbour Ally gave us a punkin seedling from his garden a little while back.
Now it's growing out the back near the white mulberry tree.
And it's made it's first punkin.
I've never grown a punkin plant before.
I don't even know what kind it is.



Photo: 22 Feb, 2011