Calendar of Garden Activities.

17-19 October 2011 Lawn and garden watering in the mornings due to hard windy weather.
18 October 2011 New top soil (free from neighbour!) for two areas of garden.
18 October Planted yellow capsicum seeds.
19 October - Scorching windy days. Leafy greens and hydrangea mild wilting.
19 October 2011 Fish fertilizer for calamondin cumquat and eureka lemon.
19 October 2011 Epsom salts for calamondin cumquat (testing for Magnesium deficiency)
20 October 2011 Lawn and garden watering in the morning. Temp 30 deg cel, windy and hot - sown    Peacock's ladyfinger/okra seeds - sown more coriander seeds.
21-22 October 2011 Cloudy and drizzles and at times showers. Hooray!!!
22 October 2011 Pruned Big Fig (Fleming's Brown Turkey fig), Yellow Peach tree and Carolina Black Rose Grape Vine. Wanted to experiment with pruning deciduous branches apart from winter and see the results.

While we were looking at our yellow peach tree few days ago, we spotted a lovely lady bug. We welcome lady bugs but that made me suspicious. Upon closer examination, I realised that most young shoots of my peach tree have been infested with green aphids (pests) :

I took a few days to think about what actions I should take to destroy them. The tree is a little big for pyrethrum spraying. This morning as I was examining the leaves again, I found baby lady bugs (pic below) on the leaves.  They were not a great number compared to the aphids but I was very pleased to see them. I read they eat even more aphids than their adults. I showed my son how the lady bug babies looked like, much like some spidery creatures :

'Big Fig' (Fig brown turkey) was naughty this year, not a fig in sight. So I decided to chop off one branch :

 And watch what the cut branch will do :

I think I have successfully propagated my Thai Basil from cuttings.  They are not withering since propagation at least 2-3 weeks ago. And if I am not wrong, some stems are actually growing new leaves. Celebration!!!

Today's harvest : a basketful of pak choy for chix macaroni soup. The picture uploaded could not be rotated. It happened to a picture of spinach recently. Hmmm same basket...maybe that's the problem?!

These are the tender flower stalks of pak choy. Yesterday my friend Fina came for morning tea.  She brought her parents to see our garden.  Her Dad pointed out that the flower stalks are very tender and delicious, so I harvested them too.  I have too many pak choy flower stalks and they will give me way too many seeds (perhaps millions!) so it is good that I can eat them instead!

Our lunch today : Chicken macaroni soup.  In the pot are my wonderful tomato silvery fir which I have frozen from last summer/autumn and bay leaves from my garden. Yummy!

Summer...What's Happening in the Garden?

It's my second summer doing gardening. I welcomed some good rainfall on Tuesday and it is showering a little again today. Samuel and I found a ladybird on one of the chilli padi plants. I am not sure if that is the one I rescued from Coles supermarket few weeks back. It could well be. It seems comfortable on the plant and then I realised that there were actually aphids on the underside of some leaves. Good fellow..hope you have a great feast and get rid of them!

All my five calendula plants are doing great, flowering. Also some withered flowers have already produced seeds.

The two common mint cuttings took off fantastic and are growing fatter each day.

One nasturtium seedling emerged.

One strawberry delight runner growing into a new strawberry plant after I buried it in a small pot of mix. This way, I can keep having new plants without having to buy them. More runners developing from the mother plant.

A baby cucumber emerged from the vine. Several male flowers also have bloomed. I am trying to expose the two cucumber vines to buzzing bees for pollination as they are quite obscured by the pots and netting.

Another capsicum ripening to a bright orange. The smaller ones are ripening first. The two larger capsicums will get to grow larger before ripening. Cannot wait to snap a picture of that happening soon! Meanwhile more capsicum flowers are developing.

My purple king bean plants are also producing flowers.

And a baby purple king bean too!

Strawberry delight...yum...I harvested them before the earwigs did.

All three tomato silvery fir plants are doing great and putting on fruits. I had to prune off a lot of leaves to allow better air circulation.

I hammered a nail on top of the fence and used a string to secure the trellis for the bitter melon and cucumber (burpless). In summer during heatwaves, the wind can be extremely strong.

Also mulched the cucumber vines and bitter melon vine with sugar cane mulch.

Between the bitter melon and cucumber vines, I am preparing the soil for my buk choy and silver beet. Not a lot of space but I will try to squeeze in space for some leafy vege.

Buk choy seedlings waiting to be transplanted.

Purple buk choy seedlings.

Bay - A New Candidate in the Garden.

I caught this bug climbing up a wall in the house and wondered if it was a lady bug since it really does look like one except the strange brown-gold colour. I wrote to 'Ladybirds of Australia' and Adam told me that it is a leaf beetle of the family Chrysomelidae feeding on eucalyptus.

http://www.ento.csiro.au/biology/ladybirds/authors.htm is a good site to identify lady bugs in our gardens. This one is a good one which feeds on fungus. I found it on my vegetable patch! :) http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2408773.htm is another great site to learn about lady bugs - the good and the bad and the evil. And I thought all of them are good!

Harvested 11 pieces of my precious vietnamese/hot mint for a meat dish. Yum!

Very pleased to say that my lavender is a survivor in spite of being under the hands of an inexperienced non-green-fingered gardener like me! I think the pyrethrum I gave it could have really burnt the leaves. Could have been too generous and too near with the pyrethrum when I tried to deal with the pesky whiteflies attacking it. Brutally chopping much of it, though it was already summer, proved to be a good thing (kept my fingers 'crossed')(Refer 9 Jan 09 - Keeping Check). It survived and has been putting on green healthy leaves. I never gave up on you. Please dont give up on me. :)

Bought this bay from Flower Power...only $2. No harm trying to grow it. I have re-potting it inot a gigantic pot, being hopeful that it is going to grow into a potted tree for my new house! In cheap potting mix + blood and bone + seasol + dried danelion leaves (at base). It was shaded by a large box for a few days before being fully exposed to the summer sun.

A few of the Mighty Red tomatoes are turning orange. It is really exciting to see that and I hope possums would not ruin my joy by stealing them in the night. Look at the shine! No pesticides or chemical sprays on the skin!

My largest Sun King Sunflower is due to open its flower soon, revealing its yellow petals today. Interesting to find out that they will face the rising Eastern sun each day.

Mixed basil germinating well in the pot. It will interesting to find out what sort of basils I have got and how they finally look like.

The two groups of capsicums are doing fine. This clump has been thinned out severely. The other clump has been attacked by grasshoppers or some leaf-eating insects but are good still.

This Purple King bean plant of two is doing well. I think the other one is going to die, looking at the way it is developing.

Another Hot & Scorching Summer Day.

Another scorching hot day! I had put up some form of defence system today for my plants - umbrellas! And lots of watering. Set up 3 umbrellas and amazingly, those plants under them are not scorched down. Those which did not have umbrellas certainly bore the grunt of the heat and sunshine. Fortunately, towards evening winds were strong and there were no casulty. Caught another grasshopper (pests)! Wonder what I can do to deal with them. They hop about and I had to be really quick in catching them. Spotted a yellow bug on the sunflower and it seems like a lady bug. My newly repotted rosemary is producing new soft growth, a good sign. I reckon I would have to change it to a larger pot soon as I read that their roots grow quite deep.

A picture of the remaining batch of greengages.

The tomato sucker which rooted standing in a jar of water for more than a week and planted into potting mix with blood and bone, seasol and crushed egg shells.

A new pot in my garden - cayenne pepper. A birthday pressie from Fina. What a pleasant surprise!!! :) I have tried unsuccessfully to grow chillies..twice the seedling stunted after being 1 inch tall. I have concluded that the problem must be the quality of the seeds.

More Photos of My Garden Babies.

Rosemary after re-potting.

Ladybug on a plum leaf. Thai Basil after planting into soil. Tomato flowers. Wonder what these could be. Wonder what these are.

Possibly rockmelon plants from the seeds and pulp I have buried.

The clump of seedlings in front could possibly be Capsicum seedlings emerging (whose seeds and pulp I had buried end of winter)

Sunflowers seedlings spaced out.

Ladybug on the mint leaf.