Garden, Bird Rescue & Heronswood Garden

The coriander that I bought has produced many seeds due to the hot weather. I dont mind since I do not use the herb every day so it will be good for it to self-seed and make new plants at Patch E. Same goes for the continental parsely :

I bought a malnourished-looking chilli fire from bunnings (since it was only $3) and hope that by putting it in the ground (front garden) and fertilising it, it will take off from here :

I am protecting it with a tree shield from my dog and pests :

My sun king sunflowers are growing strongly but the first flower that opened does not look too glorious :

Three pots of lemon grass planted next to the sunflowers are transplanting well. I have added rooster manure and mulched with sugarcane :

Bird rescue. Marco my dog found a baby bird in our front garden. Not really knowing what to do, I got it into a carton. Boy...his parents came and made a lot of noise looking for their baby.

I have no idea where the nest was and decided to take it to RSPCA. They said since it was not native, it would have to be put down. However, the nice guy also told me that this baby has already left its nest and its parents would be feeding it on the ground till it could fly. Cool lesson learnt. I decided to bring it back and return it where I found it, so that its parents can find it again and do their thing. This little bird got me really busy :

We went to Heronswood Garden again. Beautiful weather. Here's two pretty pictures, one overlooking the beautiful tranquil sea :

And an abundance of grapes :

Patches A, C, D & E

The recent warm and long day time have made growth explode in my garden.

At patch A, the three purple king bean plants and the tomato beef steak plant are growing. I cannot seem to see any tomatoes developing at the moment even though there are flowers. I did not remember having trouble with my Mighty red tomato. Puzzled, I consulted fellow blogger 'Scarecrow' and she gave me this useful link : http://www.grow-tomato-sauce.com/tomatopollination.html

Putting veges and edibles aside, I am feeling really proud of this pot of Annabel daisy. It has grown in size about 6 times.

My beloved capsicum plant is developing its fruits steadily. It is ahead of most plants because this is its second season. Feeling more secure with it in a larger pot.

This is one of 5 calendula officinalis plants I have germinated. They are subject to caterpillars like many of my edible plants in the garden but with much vigilance, I have picked and squashed most of them. This one is budding already!

My strawberry delight at Patch C is doing well in its pot although also subject to caterpillars. Its strawberries are very sweet!

Lemon Verbena at Patch C is also doing well and I have allowed one stalk to flower just to see how the flowers look like.

Wow my lemon grass at Patch C which initially did not look like it was going to make it, has actually gone into growth spurt! Hopefully the eggplant supreme and passionfruit panama gold will speed up in growth as well or they could be overtaken by the lemon grass!

After treating my kaffir lime plant at Patch C with chelated iron (not much organic solutions for this), it leapt into growing beautiful healthy-looking new leaves and more fruits and flowers almost immediately...indeed it was iron deficiency!

Eggplant Supreme at Patch C is also doing well except having its leaves munched on probably at night by some insects. In the day, I cannot find any bugs on it.

This is Patch C : strawberries, kaffir lime, eggplant supreme, lemon grass, passionfruit, lemon verbena, capsicum and pixzee peach. Quite an assortment of plants cramped together.

This is Patch E : coriander and continental parsley both flowering and seeding. I did not care as I am surely alright for them to seed and grow new ones, which means new supply of herbs. There is another clump of lemongrass and my pot of bay plant there.

I was cleaning the dusty leaves of my three cyclamens when I saw this. A search reveals them as the fruits of the cyclamens. I read that using seeds is tough so I am just going to leave them alone. I wonder if there are corms in the soil. Hopefully! So that cyclamens can cover the whole of Patch D and under my pomegranate tree and grevilia. They have glorious blooms! See http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/09/golden-sheen-pittosporum-and-cyclamens.html or click on 'cyclamen' label on right side of my blog.

Some Digging and Planting - Apricot, Kaffir Lime, Egg Plant and Thai Basil.

It has been raining and raining and raining. I am grateful for the rains though not really for the chilly strong winds. The rain softened the ground substantially and provided lots of watering for my new garden. I managed to dig the hole on the front garden for my apricot Moorpark and planted it into the ground. Drainage over this spot does not seem excellent but I will have a go and see if this apricot will establish itself well : As per my earlier entry, after coming back from 2.5 weeks of overseas trip, the pot of kaffir had produced lots of new leaves but at the same time, its potting mix has become home to thousands of ants which I had killed drenching the mix in pyrethrum. Older leaves were falling at an astounding rate and I assumed that the kaffir lime needed nutrients. I fed it with with Osmocote, a slow-release fertiliser with hope of easing its problem fast but soon the young leaves started crinkling. Gosh! Over-fertilising? Poisoning? Last resort : plant it into the ground! :

Crinkling/Shrivelling of leaves (above & below)

Here it goes into Patch 3 (above)

I bought a pot of thai basil and eggplant supreme from IKEA while there to shop for storage solutions. Planted them near the kaffir lime :

Marco my dog trampled on and nibbed off the parsley on Patch 6. Well, I might as well pull them off since I hardly use parsley and there are so much of them. I also bought a pot of coriander and planted it next to the leftover parsley :

Revamping the Patch Next to the Garage.

Today's weather was great...sunny enough, not cold enough to make me hibernate, so I put on my garden gear and spent two hours at my new house doing a tiny area next to the garage while my son went kinder. The 'tiny' area did not turn out to be too tiny after all. I could not finish my work in one go but was pleased with what I have done, at least getting all the irritating weeds out the of the patch. I removed the old rotting existing weed mat with all its pebbles and replaced it. Weeds were growing all over the old mat. A new weed mat, a few layers, will help stop weeds from growing for months. I was also glad to see a few fat earthworms in the earth. That is a good sign.

1/6 of the tiny area with weeds growing among the pebbles and rotting weed mat beneath. Clearing the pebbles and laying of new weed mat...half of the tiny area done.

5/6 of the area done. 1/6 of it was planted with daffodil bulbs after loosening soil and adding blood & bone and composted cow manure.

A bucketful of parsley harvested.

Leftover parsley growing at shady Patch E.

After working at the tiny patch next to the garage, I raked up all the fallen leaves of the plum tree at the main lawn. I am intending to use them for leaf mould. Also dug up some baby dandelion weeds. I am a little optimistic seeing some of the lawn seeds sown some time back germinate. Although new dandelion weeds have sprouted as well but I only found two dandelion flowers to pluck off. If things remain this good, I would be able to save thousands and not have my lawn re-done again.

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I cooked a pot of seafood hotpot for dinner using the parsley and rosemary and thyme from my garden. Hmm it was yummy! Here's the recipe for sharing :

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200g boneless white fish fillet (cut into 2cm)

150g prawns (shelled)

6 mussels (frozen ones are easy to use)

2 squids (cleaned and cut up)

1 tbsp olive oil

1 large onion (cut into 1cm)

1 garlic (crushed)

A few sprigs of thyme

A few sprigs of rosemary

Chopped parsley (for garnish)

400 g can canned tomotoes

1/3 cup white wine

1 tbsp lemon juice

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1. Heat olive oil and fry onion till soft.

2. Add garlic, tomatoes, rosemary, thyme and white wine and simmer.

3. Add fish when broth boils. Allow to cook for around 2 minutes.

4. Add the prawns, squids and mussels and allow to cook some more.

5. Add lemon juice and parsley.

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This dish is simple and quick to prepare, healthy and yummy and goes well with pasta or rice.

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.