The Hellebore sternii is looking beautiful and growing well in this slightly difficult place under the solar panels.
Author: Cath
I'm working on transforming around 3 acres of paddock into a garden. I'm only here a couple days a week so the result so far is more like patches of garden.
Our water is rainwater collected off the roof of the hut, the house, and greenhouse, and the power comes from solar panels.
We try to grow enough tomatoes for frozen and bottled purée to last through the year, and enough kumaras (sweet potatoes) and pumpkins. We can generally harvest fresh greens of some sort.
Brined Olives
These olives are almost the last of a big batch which have been sitting under the table for the last year in jars in a box with a towel over it. The brine has to be changed every so often and if they were hidden away in a closet it would never get done.
First Iris of Spring
With Satsuma plum, Rosemary Chef’s Choice, and Austin Rose Strawberry Hill in the background.
Asparagus
Tonight we ate the first asparagus from the plot we made last year. It was delicious, milder than the asparagus I’ve had before, served with parsnip purée. That’s it until next year! The rest of the shoots have to grow into plants.
Plum blossom and daffodils
This is one of the plum trees that grew from prunings used as pea sticks. It’s the earliest to flower and has early red round fruit so I think it’s a Billington. It’s underplanted with daffodils Nona, Annaliese, and Funky Monkey which is the one with the little orange cup. In the background is Narcissus Early Cheer and the evergreen miniature comfrey Hidcote. This creates a dense ground cover with pretty blue and pink flowers.
Tulips, Pumpkins, and Rats
Coming back after 3 weeks away,the daffodils are just starting to come out and the tulips were ready to be moved into a sunny spot to flower, so I think all I missed was 3 weeks of rain and cold. The tulips which were either red or dark purple last year seem to have made a few yellow or yellow and red ones this year. I pulled most of the flower stems off before they could set seed, so I’m confused. I suppose this must mean that some of the little bulbs were from seeds rather than clones? Or more likely some of the mixed batch I planted in the garden several years ago made their way back into the fridge with the potted ones.
The grass is a bit long and the weeds have grown and the citrus has continued to ripen.
And the rats had moved into the hut and had a party, leading to lots of laundry and cleaning of drawers. For some reason they chewed off a large chunk of the rubber seal at the bottom of the door of the little fridge. The fridge was open and empty so I’m not sure what the point of this was.
Several of the pumpkins (winter squash) which looked perfect on top are going mouldy on the bottom, and the rats have eaten through the skin of another one, so it’s time to make another batch of pumpkin ‘soup’ for the freezer – what we make is more like pumpkin mash which can be made into soup with the addition of milk or stock.
These were self sown from the compost last year, they popped up with the tomato seedlings and I let them grow around the tomatoes. Not ideal for either of them really, I was continually battling back the pumpkin and pushing it off the tomatoes. In the end however the pumpkins did grudgingly take off over the lawn and down the bank and did much better than the year before, probably by stealing food and water from the tomatoes. In fact I’m surprised there were any seeds in the compost to grow from they did so badly the year before. They seem to have stayed true to the type which I think was Ironbark, as I see I have a half used seed pack of these.
Frost – and Grevillias, Osmanthus and Macadamia
We have had 3 frosts in a row now, good hard ones, and one a couple weeks ago, which burnt the leaves of my cutting grown hibiscus and plumbago.
The original plants I took the cuttings off are still blooming in the city, so obviously it’s a lot colder here. I’m glad, it will knock back the bugs and kikuyu grass. The weather has been fabulous of course, clear and really warm during the day.
I planted more penstemon Hidcote Pink in the Coral Garden, moved a sucker of Nik’s rose which is a single wine coloured rugosa up to the Mabel garden, and weeded around the Chartreuse de Parme. It usually gets miners lettuce coming up around it, but maybe it was too weedy, or maybe too dry, there’s none I could see.
I found a Margaret Merrill rose almost dead on the driveway, covered with a pile of weeds. I’ve moved it to the new garden on the upper Dorothy path next to an Iceberg, which is still flowering beautifully. This rose is growing on an area where I’ve thrown weeds over the last couple years, and it has made all the difference in improving the soil.
Yesterday I planted some ‘Happy Cherub’ lavender (Stoechas) and Arabian Nights Lavender (English), under the Fig tree at the start of the upper Dorothy path.
Also more Grevillia: Drummer Boy, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and a light green one, rosmarinifolius, which is similar, around the Feijoas on the upper Dorothy path.
I have split up some of the small yellow flowered knifophia and planted them at the start of the Jack path. I will add some more of the burnt Orange, which have just finished flowering.
We also bought another Jack Hum Crabapple and a Golden Hornet. I will move a couple of the accidental cutting grown plums off the driveway and replace them with these. I will add some compost at the same time as the soil is terrible there.
I bought 5 more Kowhai, the coastal one, Chathamica. The others are doing well so far.
A Litchfield Angel rose, which I’m not sure where to plant, and a bunch of Keith Hammet dahlias on sale, Mystic Magic, Mystic Enchantment, and Seeker, which have dark leaves and will go in the nightTime garden along with 2 dark leaved Heuchera – Black Taffeta.
We also bought a Maroochydore Macadamia as a companion for our other unnamed one given to us by a neighbour.
Last but not least, I bought 2 Osmanthus fragrans, which are supposed to smell wonderful in Winter. The are a relative of the olive, and I think the leaves can be used for tea. They look a bit like baby holly trees. They should grow to a shrub or small tree, and need nice soil and moisture – so I’m not quite sure where they are going yet.
More Rain, Daffodils, and Dahlias
Wow we expected rain in the early morning – but it was heavy noisy rain on the tin roof in the loft from 3 am to around 6 am when it started to taper off. We had received 63 mm when I checked around 7 am.
It rained on and off all day. The total rain since last night was 71 mm, so 110 since last Monday am.
I took cuttings of scented pelargoniums and penstemon Hidcote Pink, and planted daffodils, coral bells, and liriope under the plum by the hut. Daffodils were mostly pink and white and orange – Funky monkey, Nona, Hot pink, and Annalise. I also transplanted Stock and some lettuce and silverbeet and weeded around the self sown peas growing from the pea haulms I put around the tomatoes (these will probably be Carouby).
The Tip Dahlias are flowering brilliantly. I spotted a couple of big clumps of these at the rubbish tip and brought one of them home – the other one went to the woman running the tip that day. I expected they must be some really ugly horribly invasive dahlia, or why would someone bother to dig them out and take them to the tip? But they are beautiful, deep purpley red with bit of green at the centre as they open, changing to yellow as they mature.
Rain and new plants
It’s Friday night, and there was 44 mm of rain in the rain gauge. Lots to do so a quick list.
-transplant stock seedlings from where they have grown in the garden
-review autumn seeds, plant kale and others
-transplant self sown lettuce and red silverbeet
-plant daffodils, liriope and coral bells
-divide and transplant red hot pokers
-divide and transplant salvia uliginosa
-dig up comfrey and plant more mustard and lupins
-take cuttings of pink penstemons and mauve
-divide any other perennials
We picked up 10 bags of organic chicken poo on the way. There was a bit of a mixup in collection, so I got the chance to stop at a ‘wholesale plants’ place while we waited. I got lots of plants of Liriope and Heuchera. I think the Liriope is ‘Muscari’ – it was called ‘Muscat’, and I think the Heuchera is ‘Sanguina’ although the sign seemed to say ‘Strangler’. These are pretty pot bound and have Oxalis in them so I am pulling them apart into small plants and cleaning them out before planting them with the daffodils.
I have found a good orange tomato and have the seeds fermenting in a jar on the windowsill along with passion fruit seeds.
The passion fruit plant is coming into its 4th year and is heavily loaded with around 30 or more fruit. It’s in a sunny but exposed spot, but well drained, next to a drain and a magnolia grandiflora and between 2 gravel driveways.
Mushrooms!
An inch of rain last week and a centimetre ( half inch ) yesterday have given us two big feeds of mushrooms for breakfast. We might even get another pick tomorrow evening.
The mushrooms are growing in the neighbour’s field on the cold side of the hill. One of the circles is huge and therefore I assume very old – it’s about 10 metres in diameter or maybe more.
I keep trying to get them growing on our place and we did find a few growing on the edge of the driveway, probably from ones we sprinkled around last year. I have tried planting a few of the riper ones again in the asparagus patch and will continue with that as well as on the drive.
Absent Gardener 