Spring Photos - Mulching the Front Vegetable Bed

This morning's weather was fantastic. But when afternoon began, we had wind speed up to 100km/h. It was quite scary! After we mid-morning walk, I hurried to do some work in the garden - staking the passion fruit and my grape vine so that their branches/stem wouldn't break.

Hubby and I put on our masks and starting to level the soil and  mulch the front vegetable bed. I also planted two tomato sweet grape plants.  Finally done!!! :

The grape vine is looking so good! Love the glossy fresh green leaves and the flowers that have appeared. Within a week, the bare vine is covered with lush green leaves! Such is the magic of spring! Even my wisteria has put on a full head of leaves! And the pixzee peach tree too!

Carolina Black Rose Grape Vine in its Pot.

New leaves and new flowers for Carolina Black Rose grape vine.

Parsley thriving in the lemon tree pot :

Flat leaf parsley in the lemon tree pot.

Gai choy or mustard green in the front garden Patch

Another harvest of my gai choy/mustard green.

Okay now an update on my hydrangeas.  These were dug up from my previous garden, planted into pots and now I have found a new spot for them - next to the car port.  They were stricken by powdery mildew but done well after fungicide treatment :

Rainbows in our Backyard!

This morning after all the work, I fixed up the nozzle and watered the garden.  And we were so excited to make double rainbows with the fine mist. My boy was having so much fun.

Before all the fun, we planted some watermelon seeds.

And then some native daisy seeds.

I caught a snail and we studied it.

I spotted a spider web on the pomegranate tree and asked my boy to spray the web with water so we could see the fine water droplets.

Four stringless pioneer bean plants have emerged.

Harvested a big basket of pak choy.

And a basketful of spinach too. (Picture could not be rotated not sure why)

And a big basket of gai choy for soup again!!! Yummy!

Yesterday we had homeschool out on the front patio table as the weather was superb.

And we harvested arum lilies and dutch iris bronze perfection plus a few plum tree twigs in our tall vase.

Fresh Gai Choy/Mustard Green & Pak Choy Green

I have sown this patch with gai choy/mustard green and pak choy seeds towards the end of winter in August.  They were growing at snail's pace until recently when spring came and the weather warmed up. They are yelling out to me to harvest them.

The spinach in the planter in front of the raised vege patch are almost ready too.

This flowering pak choy has overtaken Big Fig in its pot. Big Fig does not seem to grow well this spring, its leaves rather shrivelled and there is only one fig in sight. The flowers of pak choy is is mildly fragrant and an attraction to bees. I am letting the seed pods formed so I can harvest more pak choy seeds.

Such a beautiful sight of the artichoke flower emerging among its architectural silvery leaves.

So here is some harvest of my gai choy/mustard green. My friend taught me to cook it with some roast chicken pieces (I used the wings and drumsticks), tamarind pieces and dried chillies.  And true enough, there is no bitter taste from the vege. The dish tasted sourish and spicy and very nice!

I also harvested some parsley for meatballs and baby pak choy for miso soup.

Pak Choy Green & Gai Choy/Mustard Green

All the pak choys that I have planted in winter are ready for harvesting....those in the large pot,

The baby ones in another large pot,

And those in the raised vege.  The gai choy/mustard green are also ready for use in cooking.

Updates After Our Trip

Our family just came back from a week of getaway - to Mt Buller for the snow and to Sydney + Nelson's Bay.  With a hobby such as gardening, I had to do all that I could to keep it going fine before I went away.  I was happy that not one plant died on me when I came back. The pak choys and gai choy/mustard green in this patch are growing well.

My propagated strawberry plants have done well too.  Before I left, I placed pot dishes under the pots and water them well. Whatever excess water was collected in the dishes and the plants get their water throughout the week from absorbing the water in the dishes.

This is galangal ginger which I bought last autumn from the Melbourne Flower Show. I have removed their plastic protection so they would not get frosts. They dont look too good now but I am quite confident they will take off soon.

I germinated some rocket seeds which were given by Bunnings when I went shopping.

My lemongrass with its plastic protection removed.  Surely looks better than without protection.

Found a herb growing in Figgy's pot.  I thought it was a coriander but it turned out to be parsley.

I realised I am not the only gardener who uses styrofoam boxes for gardening. I used this box to place the 'Kao Kee' vegetables which I am trying to propagate. After using the leaves for soup, I made a mix of propagating sand & compost, trimmed their stems, stuck them into the mix and watered them. I covered the box with plastic and stood the box in the shade while we were away.

Here's how the stems look like. Hopefully, they will root and give me Kao Kee vegetable for soup.  I have no idea what the English name for this veg is.  I only know the dialect name for it.  It is yummy when cooked with pork liver and wolfberries.

Just found out that one of the two original green globe artichoke plants is having a flower!!!

Four of my 12 sweet corn seeds have germinated. That was very long time but I guess we didnt have much warmth to germinate the seeds with the cranky unpredictable spring weather.

Busy Saturday

It was a really busy 3 hours I had out in the garden last Saturday.  I :

• pruned my chilli padi plants.
• thinned out my pak choy and gai choy/mustard green seedlings.
• built a shade for my transplanted green globe artichoke plants & trimmed them.
• sowed sweet corn and other vege seeds.
• sowed lucerne seeds for green manure.
• did watering.
• deadheaded my daisy bushes.
• deadheaded my King Alfred daffodils. 

I told my boy that this spring I would not grow any tomatoes.  We ate the frozen ones from last season really slowly.  One reason is that the frozen tomatoes thawed really badly.  They are so mushy that I could only use them for soupy dishes.  I have spoken too soon.  I found a few tomato seedlings growing in the big fig's pot and in the pixzee peach tree's pot. That was mid-winter and they were looking really purple and frozen.  They must be from seeds from the compost bin.  And they must be tomato silvery fir since I only grew that variety.  My first instinct was to let them die in the cold since I had no intention to do tomatoes.

But then two of the seedlings caught my eye, I knew I had to keep them. They were the two strongest seedlings. They looked really healthy, though purplish out in the freezing cold. What a tragedy to let them die when they were trying to survive!!! So I prepared two pots and pulled them out and planted them. I placed a newly-bought plastic cloche on them and let them get some sun.  With a little tender loving care, they are now no longer purple and looking even better.  Okay, tomatoes for the next season...

New chives emerging from the soil. Oh I just loving seeing life spring forth from the dead ground!

Our only plum tree has the whole tree full of white blossoms this year.  I sure hope to eat more than 10 plums this summer/autumn since we really did only had 10 or so each of last two years.

Very pretty white flowers lightly perfumed.

My Tung O plant (edible chrysanthemum) survived winter unscathed.  I gave it a light prunning to open the plant up and remove the browner branches.  I use this vege for steamboat/hot pot or Japanese Miso soup.  It is nice by me but my hubby doesnt want too much of it.

This is the shade I have set up for my green globe artichoke plants.  The weather forecast a really warm end to winter and I knew that my divided artichoke plants could not make it if I do not build them a shade.  Imagine, a shade in winter! Sounds crazy! Well, they have been recently divided and replanted and kept wilting in the day, so I knew a whole week of warm sunshine would do them in. After building the shade, I also remove more whole leaves and halved some of the leaves, leaving only baby leaves behind.  I also watered them with a few rounds of seasol during the week and checked them every few days. That should make sure they really survive.  Now I am glad to have divided them in winter.  Imagine doing so in spring or summer, they would have die for sure.

A really trimmed artichoke plant, staked.

Here's the patch where I have sown sweet corn.  I used plastic fruit containers as cloche and weighed them down using decent sized white stones.

I deadheaded the King Alfred daffodils right out of my son's bedroom.  Now all they need is some good fertiliser to help them make bigger prettier flower heads for next season.

My chilli fire surived winter with the plastic protection.  Since it has now turned warmer, I removed the top plastic for it to get some sunshine.  I did that for my chilli padi plants too.

I had to thin out the pak choy and gai choi seedlings heavily in this raised vege patch because greedy me oversowed by a great deal! The remaining seedlings here are just about 1/5 or less than what I have removed! The work almost killed me.

I sowed some yellow capsicum, kang kong (water spinach), egg plant, cucumber and lady's finger seeds.