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!

Rhubard, Ginger & Space Ideas.

Today's an extremely windy day. Winds up to 45km/h and temperate 21deg cel. We had a relaxing day - swimming in the morning, lunch at IKEA, then back home to do some gardening. Hubby helped me to put up some fixtures so I can put my strawberry pots up and clear some more space for planting. I also planted some edible ginger (from market) in two 40cm deep pots in a mixture of propagating sand, premium potting mix and mixed manure.  I hope to be successful at growing ginger for consumption.  I also planted a Sydney Crimson rhubard which I bought from Bunnings two days back :

Good space idea (above) - fixtures on beams to hold pots.

Another good space idea (above) - brackets on wall to hold pots. Their weight should help them not to be blown off by strong winds, today's wind condition will be the test.

I sliced the ginger (quite cheap this time of the year) pieces where the green buds are and placed them in a shallow bowl of water for a day before planting.  Here is where I obtained the information about planting ginger  : http://www.tropicalpermaculture.com/growing-ginger.html

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.

Bird Watching & Flowers

Recently, my son and I have gone more into bird-feeding and bird-watching. We have scattered some seeds around the grevillea tree (back garden out of the kitchen window) and also under the plum tree (front garden out of my son's window)

So far we have attracted two spotted-neck pigeons which come regularly.

And two non-native mynahs. Here is a picture of all four under the grevillea tree feeding.

One of the mynahs decided to take shelter on my neighbour's toilet window when rain poured.

Then yesterday we had two honeyeaters feeding on the grevillea flowers.  I only managed to take a rough shot of one as the other decided to fly off.  They are fast-moving birds.

I have many flowers in bloom now but I want to highlight a few here :

This is my pyrethrum daisies in a rough terracotta pot.  I bought the seeds from Diggers' Club. They did not flower last year but this spring they have rejuvenated and are putting on flower buds. Fortunately I was patient enough not to throw it out.

I harvested my first proper artichoke green globe flower  for salad last Saturday.  Not bad testing especially the heart. I ate it with whipped mayonaise and white balsamic vinegar.

 This is a picture of my edible Chrysanthemum (Tung O) plant. It survived winter very well and growing taller. It also started to form flower buds but I had to remove them in case flowering affect the leaves.  The leaves are what I harvest for soup (esp in steamboat/hot pots) or miso soups.

Some of the leaves have a funny curvy track on them.  I reckon it is some leaf miner?? Not a big problem as I removed most of the affected leaves.

 My two 'rescued' Tomato Silvery Fir are getting stronger and are having flowers.

Here is an inedible flower.  My first few Dutch Irs Bronze Perfection from Tesselaar have bloomed. Pretty things!

Product Study : Orgran BuckWheat Pancakes & Lavera Body Spa

This morning, my son and I made buckwheat pancakes for breakfast. He asked me to buy this from the health shop on Sunday. The mix can make 10 pancakes and cost about A$3.75. We used half of the mix. Here are the ingredients : stone-milled buckwheat flour 49.7%, rice flour, maize starch, tapioca, raising agents (monocalcium phosphate, bicarbonate of soda) I had to add water, milk and egg as per instructions. 

We ate the pancakes with strawberry jam and golden syrup (as I ran out of maple syrup). The pancakes were rather spongy and very fuss-free to cook. It would surely taste very bland on its own as no sugar was added. Overall, I quite like them.

And a cup of lemon verbena tea to go with it. I dried the last season's leaves and they stored very well.

On Sunday we also bought some other products.  Our family uses body moisturiser a fair bit due to the dry climate here. The lower parts of our legs suffer the most dryness. This is a new brand 'Lavera' from Germany.

Here are the ingredients and the list looks rather impressive for $20. It comes in lavender, coconut and orange. We decided to try the orange.  It has a mild smell and we love it.