Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Another Pot of Mint, Ivy and Re-potting Cayenne Pepper

It is a gloomy day with light patchy rains. I took a closer look at my cayenne pepper to find the potting mix infested with thousands of ants. I wonder if they are responsible for the horrible state that my cayenne pepper is in. So I re-potted the cayenne pepper with premium potting mix and cow manure and seasol. Hope it helps to re-establish itself before I plant it into the ground in my new backyard. The neglected pot of ivy has produced new light green leaves though after quite a long time. It should grow much better being in the ground. I am thinking of propagating this ivy for planting at a shady stretch in my new garden : I potted on my small pot of common mint as it is already congesting its 10cm pot and wilts quite often. Looks like I am getting lots of mint nowadays and I am seemingly obsessed with it hahaha, four pots in all excluding the two lots growing on the vege patch :
The pot after potting on in a 30cm pot.
Pot of mint (before potting on) congesting its 10 cm pot and often wilts (above) and same pot originating from 3 cuttings (below) I am fighting occasional powdery mildew attacks on these mints (also my rosemary) but if the air-flow around the pots is good, the situation should be under control. The only thing I had better improve is the garden hygiene I am practising. I rarely isolate any problematic plants nowadays and simply pinch off affected leaves. That may send a lot of invisible mildew spores scattering all over the garden. However, it is really not easy since I cannot seem to find proper locations for plant isolation.

Monday, August 10, 2009

My Dream Private Garden

I am in the process of designing my dream garden - one that produces edible crops, one that have an assortment of favourite flowers for use as well as for admiring, one that I can go to whenever I need some moments of undisturbed solitude, one that my dog and children can run in and run on, one that is self-sufficient generating its own compost/fertiliser and collecting its own rainwater...I can only imagine the many things I can do in this beautiful haven. It will take a few years before my pittosporum golden sheens reach density and height for such privacy. Meanwhile, I will concentrate on planting things that I had wanted to plant and get the garden in order for a start. I simply adore the look of an edible grapevine whether it is creeping on the roof or grown in a large pot. I will do something similar soon like that in the picture : a grapevine with herbs/flowers grown at the verandah. I already have decided on the spot in my new house. In fact, there are three possible spots. For a start, the vine would be very small and it takes patient years for it to reach the looks of that picture.
I love daffodils. This picture shows clumps of them growing under trees. I am not going to have that many but certainly daffodils will be flowers that I will keep. In fact, I have already planted them some time back. See http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/08/time-for-flowers-at-our-new-house.html and http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/07/one-more-month-of-winterhows-are-some.html and http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/07/daffodils-pushing-out-of-soil.html . They are showing well for now.
Look at the hanging bunches of Wisteria! They are gorgeous. In fact the pink or purple ones take my breath away. They look like hanging bunches of grapes! Not growing them at this point as I am not sure where in my front garden can I accommodate such a big tree.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Some Side-tracking...My Garden Visitors

Few weeks ago, I talked about two garden visitors who came regularly since I started to feed them bird seeds. Few days back, only one of them came back and his/her partner did not. I got a bit curious as to what had happened. I was telling my son that perhaps the mummy bird has laid eggs and is hatching her eggs while her partner comes for meals. And perhaps they even take turns to come back for meals but we just could not figure out which bird is which. The other half (above) coming for meals on his/her own for a few days.
Finally we spotted both of them again together yesterday. It was nice to see them both. :)

Friday, August 7, 2009

Golden Sheens

I did not sleep well last night. The winds were horrendously beating the bushes and trees outside my window and the rains fell intermittently. I was seriously thinking about my Pittosporum golden sheens. These two days' winds reached 55km/h and I wondered if any golden sheen had already been snapped into twos. I wondered if we had chosen a bad time to plant them.
_________________
When Samuel was at kinder, my friend Pascale and I visited the golden sheens. Thank God they were still standing in place but several had slanted sideways. I quickly took out the stakes and garden twine I had just bought and tied the golden sheens into place. Hopefully this will help with standing against the strong winds till they pass today.
_________________
I had planned to water the golden sheens with my collected rainwater and seasol today but with the rain, I wont need to.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Speedy Winds

The wind speeds today can reach 60km/h and I prayed that none of my new golden sheens would be snapped down. Yesterday morning I discovered that my mosquito plant/citronella geranium had been snapped into two. It has a woody stem and is growing rather tall for its light pot. The previous day it was blown over as well. It was already budding to flower soon. Sigh, I snipped off the broken part and hope it will regrow again :
I trimmed off my thyme as I noticed that they seemed to be budding as well :
The cayenne pepper still doesnt look so good even after feeding of charlie carp or seasol or time-release fertiliser :

"All that mankind needs for good health and healing is provided by God in nature...the challenge of Science is to find it." - Paracelcus, the father of Pharmcology, 1493 - 1541