Heronswood Garden

This morning, our family headed to Dromana to visit Heronswood Garden for its Harvest Festival. It was an eye-opener seeing how organic gardening is done, without chemical pesticides or fertilisers - a goal which I hope to work towards. Also visited the rare thatched roof restaurant/cafe, took a tour in the historic house and had a picnic. The main entrance.

Part view of the historic house.

Garden view over Port Philip Bay.

The historic house from part of the garden.

Board walk which Samuel had fun on.

Another side of the historic house.

Some harvest on display.

The room upstairs.

Wonderful view of Port Philip Bay from the dining room.

View from the back of house and swimming pool.

An orange tomato

Not sure are these paw paws but they do look like except the shape is rather angular.

Squash.

A dwarf avocado with glossy new leaves.

Brocoli-looking flowers.

Asparagus ferns.

Spacemaster cucumber.

Chocolate capsicum.

Artichoke.

Another dwarf Avocado tree on the left bottom.

Grape vine on the arch.

A nectarine tree.

Not sure what fruits these are hanging from the tree.

Some flowers.

One of the vege patches of the mini plot.

Samuel is taking a break.

Another stretch of the grey garden.

Tomatoes in netting for seed collection.

The arch with the grape vines...and us in the autumn sun.

Two of the vege patches.

Another two.

Olives on the tree.

Flowers.

Some citrus tree.

Tomatoes.

Chillies.

Golden Marjoram.

Capsicum.

Interplanting of nasturtiums and thyme.

One of the purple eggplants.

Scarlet runner beans.

Sweet-smelling Angels' trumpets.

Really Is An Avocado Plant!

I cleared up the mighty red tomato bush this morning. With only two tiny fruits on it (some looted by possums, some eaten by my dogs), it's not worth keeping it. I have been rather curious with a plant growing in the midst of the tomato bush and after cutting the bush down, I was able to dig a little to check if this was an avocado plant. Right instinct! It certainly was. I think I must have buried one last winter or spring with all the vege scraps from the kitchen. It is already 15cm tall. The large seed was still in the soil. I know avocado trees take donkey years to grow and fruit, say at least 10 years. And I will be fortunate if it ever fruit! So I have shelfed the idea of growing avocados after doing some research and reading forums on it. However, recently I read something by Jackie French, who says an avocado tree can be trained to be in a large pot in-house, where it serves as an ornamental tree due to its beautiful green glossy leaves and expensive look. That is quite tempting, though I always wanted useful trees that produce edible fruits. Pots and pots...Notice the fly screen barricading the vege patch behind the pots? I had resorted to that because recently Marco has decided to venture into the patch due to boredom. Upset is an understatement. He uprooted one of my flowering capsicum, snipped some tomato branches off, knocked over the laundry hamper covering the fruiting capsicum and stomped on my oriental radish seedlings. I only managed to salvage my seedlings. It was a distressing moment given I have put in so much effort.

The avocado plant with seed still in tact. The tomato bush cut down, the avocado plant growing just close by.

Seedlings of oriental radishes growing fine, saved by me after being stomped down by Marco.

My little experiment of growing avocado from seed here on the window ledge. Been waiting for a long time.

Vietnamese Mint roots super fast, within a few days of standing in water.

Big Day Work

Warm and still day. A good day to do major gardening and so we did. We spent a good 3.5 hours at our new property.

1. Clearing all the bark mulching revealing a layer of weed mat. We did one stretch today. Pulled up all the rose shrubs which are not growing very well due to neglect and the drought. Dug only three holes as that almost killed my husband. Probably another seven more to go for that stretch. Add composted cow manure. Planning to grow hedges. I like the spittosporum shrubs, either the silver or the golden sheen. They make good tall hedges (at least 1.5 metres) if pruned regularly in the first few years to establish bushiness. I would love to establish a privacy screen for this large area to house my fruit trees (tendatively planning persimmon, fig, nectarine, grape, peach, apricot) and flowers (sunflowers, daffodils, nasturtiums are among my favourites). Of course, not forgetting my beloved herbs and veges. It's going to be an exciting journey establishing a wondrous green haven right at my door step!

2. Pruning the lavendar on the left side of the patio. We bought a pair of Friskar Pruning Shears, a super light one and it made work easy. I do hope the lavendar bushes on the right side of the patio will survive as I think I have cut into too much of the old wood. One book 'The Complete Burke's Backyard' says they will almost certainly die. I hope not. :( But well, there are a lot of lavendar on this property and I jolly well can grow some other fanciful plants if they really die. A grape vine? Good idea!

Lavender trimmed on left of patio

Lavender cut back way too much into old wood on right of patio.

3. Fertilising the 3rd vege and 4th patches (below) in the backyard with cow manure and blood and bone. Then covering with weed mat after watering. The unidentified vine (below) growing at the corner was rescued by me previously as it was overwhelmed by the sprawling parsley. I cleared the corner of parsley, fertilised the area with cow manure and gave the vine a stake. Today, it looked very well.

One of the vege patches in the backyard. Researching now to assess if the dwarf fig can fit here.

The unidentified vine. Either keep it or may replace with passion fruit which can climb the green wooden wall.

4. Harvesting a bucket of parsley which have filled up patch #5 since the the last harvest few weeks ago :

5. Mulching around the olive tree.

6. Mulching around the plum tree.

7. Weeding. That's Samuel's job. :) He was pulling up the easy weeds which had triangular leaves and pinkish flowers while I handled dandelions and lamb's tongue which sprouted up among pebble-mulch. Tough weeds!

A tiring but fruitful time. Looking forward to more work before we finally can move in in December.

The Neighbouring Onion Has Sprouted.

Fine sunny weather today. Went to the library with my son and did reading up. Got a parking fine because I was two mins late. :( Anyway, I did a little gardening work today. I used Mancozeb Plus Garden Fungicide on two pots of mints which were having powdery mildew here and there since the day I potted them. Even with pinching off affected leaves, it did not help very much so I resorted to fungicide to salvage the mints. As I was inspecting the plants, I was happy to announce that the 'neighbour' has finally sprouted too...I mean the left onion. :) I also finally got down to making a cage for my buk choy which were always attacked by egg-laying white cabbage butterflies. I cut down the leaves today and fed them to my earthworms. I am pretty sure it will deter the butterflies now unless they are going to bomb my buk choy mid-air with their eggs! The cage is made of galvanised wire and is rust-proof. Here's how the cage looks like :

I just read a book about the importance of standing large pots on bricks or any support you can find. This helps with proper draining of excess water during watering :