Damage in the Heat Wave.

This week's weather is going to be really cool, hovering around 20 deg cel only! Last Saturday, we just had the heat wave that went up to 46! It was horrendous and I was shuffling around doing damage control like an ant on hot bricks. It was certainly hot and scorching early in the morning. This was what I did : 1. Moving my pots of herbs to the side of the house. 2.Shading as many vegetables I could with 4 umbrellas (that's all I had and I am going to buy more cheap ones!) 3. Watering all of them including the lemon and peach trees to give them a good start in their fight against the sun. 4. Tying some to stakes so that they can resist the wind. The wind was so strong (45-50km/h). I resorted to using bricks to hold them to the ground over the vegetables. For those which I had no means of shading, one can imagine what happened. Here are some pics of those which cooked and almost cooked under the sun. All the sunflowers could not be shaded since they were so tall. All were exposed to the mercy of the scorching heat and strong wind. The petals and leaves were kind of burnt.

Some of the leaves of the tomato were scorched even though I tried covering the bush with black plastic sheets made from clean garbage bags, which was battered by the strong winds.

My lovely purple king before the heat wave. It actually survived the other week's heat wave reaching 43 deg for 3 days.

My purple king thereafter. I could not shade it properly due to the stake and it got fried.

Part of the melon plants were scorched as the umbrella was blown off. However, most survived and looked fine the next day. I am almost giving up hope on them as there were dozens of flowers but only two fruits so far. One actually turned yellow and dropped off. The other is left but I am not very hopeful it is going to develop further. The melon plants are just trailing everywhere and taking up the vege space.

Propagating Rosemary and Can-o-worms.

My little gardener with Marco and Smokey.

My Can-o-worm farm parked in the garage is doing well. This a peek at it. Not looking forward to Saturday, where temperature may soar to a 43 deg again. :(

This lemon tree was suddenly in a bad shape. Not sure if it was due to the extreme heat last week or a nutrient deficiency (as I have not done a thing for it before). A lot of leaves yellowed and dropped, as did the lemons, both large and small. I have tried to water it around the dripline and fertilised with less than a handful of citrus fertiliser. Hope that helps!

A strawberry? It is a deformed tomato, due to either too hot or too cold temperature during pollination, and will produce poor quality fruits.

Tip : Misting flowering plants in the early morning provides humidity and this favors pollination from bees.

This surviving Purple King is growing its way up the support without much help on my part. :)

The Rosemary Propagation Mid-Summer Experiment :

5 stalks of rosemary soft wood cuttings in jar of normal tap water.

5 stalks of rosermary hard wood cuttings with soft wood on top in jar of normal tap water.

Some water was poured away after a few days, retaining a little and fresh tap water topped up. Jars are placed near indirect sunlight as window sill. No rooting hormone used.

Result : It took 20 days before I could see roots appearing on any stem.

5 hard wood cuttings rooted. 1 soft wood cutting rooted. Rooting zone : nodes.

Conclusion : Hardwood cuttings have the highest chance of rooting. Contrary to some books which say that hardwood cuttings should be taken in autumn and softwood cuttings to be taken in summer, the hardwood cuttings in my experiment all rooted in mid-summer where else the only one softwood cutting rooted pathetically.

Tip : It is useful to wrap the cuttings and jar in a clear plastic bag to reduce transpiration (water loss through evaporation) from the leaves. In my case, I did not do so but it still worked in this hot summer climate.

A Long Long Entry...

Harvest a good handful of tomatoes from the bush. And several chillies (gone into dishes).

Harvested a lot of vietnamese mint from the flourishing herbs.

The little bay tree has been repotted again. I was greedy and had repotted it into a really large pot and then read that it was not good for a little plant to be in an oversized pot, just because I wanted to save some work later. So now it is in a 30cm diameter pot and still doing fantastic...showing some new leaves actually. I had harvested 3 for my chicken breast roast.

My friend Fina gave me these pears which fell off her tree prematurely during a very strong wind. I could not feed my worms since they were so hard. Blending them would be too tough, so I decided to experiment by soaking them in a pail of water and standing under the sun. Not sure what I will get in the end, probably some rotten pears soon.

Some leaves on the Cayenne Pepper are showing this - yellow spots, yellow streaks along the vein network. Not sure if it is over-fertilising, nutrient lack or? Anyway, noticed this after repotting the plant into a large pot as the one it came in was getting too small for it.

Apart from the yellowing leaves, there are quite a few chillies.

Wow! My ever-wonderful Vietnamese Mint and thai basil are doing so well. They flourish more with harvesting. I am waiting for the mint branches to lengthen before I do cuttings out of them. Harvested some thai basil for my chicken mince dish.

The mixed basil are doing fine in the pot. Hope those growing slowly will eventually grow bigger and stronger.

Yesterday's weather was milder...about 30 deg celsius and windy. I had to relocate the portable pots again against the wall to avoid the wind. That is the advantage of growing things in pots.

My lavender bee pretty has produced lots of green tender new growths but the back was not and I cut it back further. Hoping that the growth will balance out.

The largest sunflower I had was cut and placed in this vase. I gave it to my mentor today and it created a positive commotion in church. Hehehe..as it was indeed a very large one and some of my church-mates thought it was fake!

These are some of the harvest from my little garden. From left : Rosemary, thyme, few bay leaves on the tomato, tomatoes (which did not look as good as I wished) and thai basil.

The melons are extending out a lot at the vege patch, lots of flowers. The fruits are very tiny and I have a feeling they will probably not grow. I did not provide the sufficient nutrients for fruit production and I know to have reasonable fruits, there must be some input. It's okay. I am happy enough seeing them growing and bees visiting at the vege patch.

The other pot of thai basil did not have very good leaves so I just let it flower. At least 5 stalks of flowers now. Above's one of them.

The largest tomato from the bush. Not sure why it did not turn red. It was orange and already soft. I plucked it and shared it with my golden retriever who finished his portion with one gulp. Sweet!

The caterpillar (pests) has nice colour right? Soft cute little thing. And a yellow line running down its back. Found it attacking my pak choy. Poor pak choy has been subject to various caterpillars. I found another four similar ones today and got them in a box with some of the pak choy. Going to feed them fat and use them in the spray. Heard this long-ago method works to repel caterpillars.

On the second and third day of the heat wave reaching 43 deg celsius, I relocated the smaller pots to the left side of the house where they coped better out of direct scorching sunlight. This move proved to be a wise one.

The capsicum plant - one seedling which I potted and doing well. Some of the leaves were eaten by probably a grasshopper before the potting.

A fellow blogger has two worm farms died in the heat wave. So sad!!! I was concerned and hurriedly checked my worm farm in the garage. Thankfully, they were coping fine. Found some in the collecting tray and some in the liquid! Quickly drained the liquid before any drowned. Found a dead one but just one! Fewh! I dug through the contents and were glad that they were found. All my precious ones and costly too haha...

My thai basil close-up...looking good! The successful one out of five which I grew from stem-cuttings.

Hottest Week of the Century

Weather Forecast says this week could be Melbourne's hottest time of the century! Temperature is expected to be 41 degrees celsius today. I woke up really early despite late shopping the night before. Had to give the plants a good watering before the heat came. Yates Multi- Nutrient Plant Food was on sale and I bought a bottle for my garden babies. It is made up of Chicken Manure, Blood and Bone, Seaweed extract and Fish emulsion and providing Nitrogen, Potassium, Phosphorous for good plant health. I prepared 10L of it and fed all the plants before the sun came up fierce. Here's a picture of my first sunflower :

Here's the two gorgeous Mighty Red ripening daily :

The shallot in the pot has produced two clusters of flowers on tall stalks. Before the sac burst, it really looked like an alien waiting to erupt. Here's a close-up after the sac burst and I am anticipating the look of the opened flowers.

Surprisingly, found a caterpillar feeding on the potato leaves which I thought are poisonous.

The buk choy look so much better now since their growth is not hindered by tiny caterpillars feeding on them.

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.