Crinum

When I was at the zoo the other day I noticed all their Crinums were in flower, so figured mine wasn't going to muster up the effort to do likewise.

I was wrong! It has split itself into two plants AND each plant has a bud!!!!!!!!!!

Pics will be forthcoming."

Update on Entertaining Area

Over --------------->> there in the sidebar is a section of links to posts about the development of my entertaining area.

The plants have been in for a year now, so I thought some updated pics were in order.

The paving has become stained due to the bore water. The path of white-ish stones has become stained from various things that drop from the tree - mostly it's the dead flowers from the tree that cause the staining; looks like I should have gone for a dark stone instead of light colour.

Cuphea in front of Dietes, Gardenia behind with Philodendron (ferns under Philo):



Dietes and Cordylines:



Up the path:



Top area:



Fernery:


Long Shot:
November 05-


December 05-

Plants Beginning with E

ladytreemaker 's Online Photo Album -

Added one sole entry to E:

Eiffel Tower Rose
(so called as it is long-stemmed)

Plants Beginning with D

ladytreemaker 's Online Photo Album - D

OK, so I've had a few days off, but am back to updating the photo album of plants. Just now added the D plants:

Daffodil
Daisy
Dietes Bicolour
Dietes Iriodes
Day Lily - yellow and organge ruffled.

Plants Beginning with C

ladytreemaker 's Online Photo Album - C

This is good - it's making me organise my un-named photos on my computer.

Added the C album tonight. It includes:

Camelia
Canna (red)
Cape Gooseberry
Celery
Cherry Tomato
Clivia (organge)
Coriander
Crinum (common name Spider Lily)

Enjoy the pics!

Plants Beginning with B

A to Z Plant Photo Album

I don't have many plants that begin with B it seems.

Added to the album pics of:

Babiana
Black Pansy (gotta see it to believe it!)
Black Kangaroo Paw (I know its an anigozanthus, but many would look for this instead)



Also been adding photos to old posts regarding the entertaining area. Methinks I will have to change the side bar link for it .. perhaps a heading and the various relevant posts.

Plants Beginning with A

A to Z Plant Photo Album

Added to the photo album:

Agapanthus
Agonis Flexuosa (Pepper Tree)
Alstroemeria (Pricess Lily, Peruvian Lily)
Alyssum (Sweet William)
Anigozanthus (Kangaroo Paw - Black/Green)
Arum Lily
Avocado
Azalea
Azola (floating water plant)

New Things!

If you look over there ---------> in the sidebar under Links you'll see that I've been re-organizing some things.

I was running out of room on the server for my main web site, so I've moved a lot of the gardening stuff (ie mostly photos) from there to other places.

The A to Z pic of plants in my garden will be added to as time allows.

There will be more posts on the Entertainment Area Development, but I've run out of bandwidth to upload more pics to Flickr this month - just as well there are only 4 days until a new month starts!

I'll do a post when I update those areas, so you'll know if there's something new to look at.

My gardenias have rewarded me with four open flowers Yipee!!!!!!! I love love love the aroma.

In the meantime go have a look at the new stuff, let me know what you think.

Finally!

After about 6 years of variously nurturing, neglecting, nurturung, having given up on ..I finally have a flower coming on my water lily!!!!!!!!!!

So far it's just a bud poking it's head through the water, I have no idea how long it's going to take to open nor how long it will stay open for.

There will, of course, be pics!

Very Pleased

Very pleased I am that I forced myself out in the weird afternoon weather and planted:
2 types of lettuce
1 type of cucumber
1 type of squash (yellow)
1 capsicum plant

All after having tilled over the soil and added blood & bone and NPK blue.

Why so pleased? Cos tonight we were blessed with rain :) Glad I didn't leave it until tomorrow.

Tomorrow is get the lawn beetle day!

Free Mulch!

I Love my Council Depot
Having been to the local fair recently I found out I can get free mulch from my council.

Today being 'day off', and the council depot only open from 8-3 on weekdays meant that today was mulch day.

So I grabbed Thunderbolt three shovels, a rake and garden gloves and off we went - have to provide own trailer and own labour.

Had backed up the trailer to the mulch pile (which was enormous) and just about to get the shovels into action when along came a friendly coundil worked in a bulldozer and filled the whole trailer in one scoop YIPEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd also bought a trailer load of cheap mulch from the local landscape suppliers as they lend you a trailer .. the trailer by itself from the garage was going to cost the same as a trailer-load of mulch - so I have two trailer loads of mulch for just $30!!

I've re-mulched the entertaining area, and with the dietes in flower yet again (and the fowers are gigantic!), it looks fabulous :)

Now deciding what to do with the mulch from the council .. it's very rough (it's from when they prune the street trees), is mostly wood chips and has some rather large pieces in it, plus it looks fairly 'green'.

Am thinking of putting it under the clothesline ... but want to put down newspaper first to try discourage the weeds. Not sure how much of the area will get covered either :( hmm should have gone back for another trailer load methinks!

Anyway, happy mulching those of you in the southern hemi-sphere.

Gardenias

A few weeks ago I put fertiliser on the gardenias, camelias and azaleas.

Now 4 of the 8 gardenias have heaps of yellow leaves :( Why only the four? I've used that fertiliser on them before and used the same one on all the plants - so why only those four? I don't get it.

Dietes are flowering again! I'm really liking these plants, flowers about every two weeks.

5 Weeks Into Spring...

Pepper Trees - noticed from the upstairs window today that one of them is covered in flowers!!!!!!!!!!

Chinese Tallow and Liquidambar are both 'in leaf'. Liquidambar is also in 'seed' so have many seedy thingys littering up the place - it's almost as bad as when it looses its' leaves but worse - cos when these seed thingys get wet they stain the paving and stone path :(

Peach - is in flower, but only on one branch, obviously got the pruning wrong last year.

Hippiastrum - now there are three flowers on the ones in the pot and two in the ground!

Frangipani - hasn't put on any leaves for the season as yet, wonder how many flowers I'll get this year.

Azaleas - one brave plant has put on some new flowers, after I thought they'd all finished doing their thing!

Lawn - the fertiliser spreader mustn't do so well on the 'down run' of the lawn, I have not-so-wonderful stripes of less-than-green lawn. Maybe next time I'll do both accross and up/down and end up with a chequerboard lawn!

How to Kill the Weeds?

It's an absolute corker of a Spring day today!!

I have to work out how to get rid of the weeds in the vege patch.

The problem is the bird netting that I put on the ground to stop the cats from using the patch as their toilet - it stops me from being able to dig/pull/scratch out the weeds that have now grown.

I think I'll try spraying them, but will have to block off the vege plants to do so, otherwise they'll cark it too.

Or maybe I'll just take the netting off as the plants are now established, meaning that the cat digging will not be the problem it was at the start.

Missed Some Things..

Azaleas - all flowered reasonably well except one plant,didn't have even one.

Dietes - are in about their fifth blooms, they're great! Seed heads have formed so I'll be eagerly awating to harvest them.

Was a Good Girl today and made fruit fly bait for the nectarine tree and also took off a bucketful of immature fruit.

Camelia - finished, was happy with the flowers.

Gardenias - are looking slightly pale, so I've fertilised them. No sign of buds :(

Cape Gooseberry - cut off the older canes a few weeks ago, there was already lots of fresh new canes and they continue to grow weel; they already have flowers and fruit.

Hippeastrum - I have two flowers! Didn't expect any this year due to having disturbed and pulled babies off the bulbs.

It's forecast to rain for the rest of my holiday week so I probably wont get any more gardening in.

Biiiig Day in The Garden

I have lavished such attention on my lawn today that I'm sure it will die of fright.

Involving about 5 hours of work on the front lawn I:
* aerated it by hand, with a garden fork (I do not have a small lawn, and fully expect my arms to drop off when I get out of bed tomorrow morning)
* pulled out the worst of the flat weeds - there were lots of them
* raked up said flat weeds
* mowed the lawn
* fertilised
* turned on the sprinlers to find one not working, about an hour later and much swearing and cursing (well not really, I'm not the swearing type) they were all working
* watered the lawn for 20 minutes.

Now if the silly thing doesn't grow well after that then I'm about to give up!!

In other garden news:
Mango - is starting to flower. Gave it some NPK Blue in honour of the flowers.

Peach - is flowering, but seems to be only on a spike growing from the base of the tree. I'm not sure whether it's below the graft or above ... will wait and see what eventuates.

Nectarine - is in fruit .. may spend some time tomorrow taking off some of the fruit and maybe make a fruit fly trap.

Hyacinths - tallest flowers I've ever had on them. Not as many flowers on the spikes as I thought there would be though.

Freesias - flowered and finished.

Vege patch - seems to be doing fine, however weeds are starting to grown and with the bird netting (to stop the cats digging) makes it impossible to weed . The Pak Choi seeds have sprouted but no sign of any corn.

Avocado - flowering.

Pruning Leucospernum

I pruned the leucospernum last year with trepidation .. would it survive?

It did indeed survive and put on new growth where I had pruned it. I was very cautious and only took one years' growth off. It is about to flower at the moment, not as prolifically as before, but flowering nonetheless.

When this flowering season has ended I intend to prune it again, though this time it will be a harder prune - fingers crossed it survives again. The bush really needs to be considerably smaller, it's gotten out of hand and encroaches on the parking bay in the driveway.

The trick seems (probably not a trick for well-seasoned gardeners, but it is for us novices!), as I guess it is with some plants, to prune only to a stem that still has leaves on it. If there are no leaves then it wont start growing from the pruning point. I think I'll have about two years growth in most places that I can take off - in other places it might be three.

Before Pruning:

I love City Farmers!

A common cry throughout Australia for the last few years I guess.

Having planted the vege patch last week with rain forecast for Wednesday night the rain never really happened, so I watered it Saturday morning - of course it rained Saturday night and today! Ah well, it's all still alive and growing and that's all that really matters.

Snail pellets were definately a good idea and I gave them some Dynamic Lifter type fertiliser today (hopefully to be watered in tonight by more rain).

BUT my vege patch has a problem - of the feline kind. 5 cats live at the abode behind mine (I'm on a corner) and two days after planting the patch they had started using it as their latrine :(. So on Friday night I dropped by City Farmes to get something to deter them.

Picked out a powder that is mixed in a watering can, was $12-something. Then the man at the counter suggested an alternative - bird netting. At $3.00 a metre and 4 metres wide, I only really needed one metre ... you just lay it on the ground, cut out holes for your plants and hey presto, el-cheapo solution less offensive than a chemical solution! Supposedly when the cats now start to scratch on the ground they will feel the netting and not keep digging.

Is yet to be seen if it actually works as I only put it down today - and with the rain I'm not sure how much the cats will be around the next few days... but we will see.

It impresses the heck out of me when a person who works for the store suggests something that is going to mean me spending a lot LESS in their shop than I was otherwise going to .. mind you I am pretty much a regular and known by name by many of the staff in there, so maybe that has something to do with it, either way I was impressed.

Spring is Coming Down Under!

10 days to go until it's Spring, and we had a great taste today of what is to come.

Inspired by the great weather I've had a busy day; I'm sure I'll be paying for it with aches and pains tomorrow!

I dug over three garden beds and planted:
*celery seedlings - I don't think I've ever tried to grow this before, will have to start buying milk in cartons for the blanching process.
*cherry tomatoes (seedlings)- always have good success with these.
*roma tomatoes (seedlings) - tried them for the first time a few years ago and were more successful than standard type tomatoes, so here's hoping.
*sweet corn (seed) - have never had a lot of success with these, usually end up with small stunted ears, but I had some seeds in the shed so thought I may as well put them in.
*pak choi (seed) - have done alright with these in the past from seedlings, don't know how they will go from seed.
*lettuce (seedlings) - don't usually have much success with these either, but I'm persisting!

Thought about putting in some vine type vege/fruit as well - watermelon, squash, cucumber and zucchini, but didn't. Think I want to put them in an area by themselves where they wont get top watered, so will have to do some retic before I plant them. Am going to put these on the opposite side of the paving to the entertaining area garden ... where they might one day be a pond, but wont be for a long time yet, so I can play with the area for now with temporary plants like veges.

Speaking of retic I'll have to give it a whirl sometime soon and see how muny sprinklers need cleaning/replacing.

Garden Update ...

Camelia - second lot of flowers out, still more to come.

Azaleas - Charity (lightest pink, behind the big tree) flowering well, Snowflake flowering too but not as well.

Dietes iriodes - some have set seed!! They will definately be harvested and sown.

Gardenias - no flowers nor sighting of buds :(

Clivia - mamma certainly flowered. The flower stalk is short but it's a great flash or orange in the garden.

Lioriope Mascari - the ones in the ground looked very sad, dead ends on the blades but most had a bunch of new growth coming from the middle so I gave them all a fairly severe hair cut. Some have put out babies.

Sweet Pea - as well as the red and white flowers I got the palest mauve, a deep purple and a deep red too. Am pleased with how they went, might do that again next year (tepee in a pot).

Babiana in pots growing vigorously but no sign of flowers, may need to fertilise differently.

Potatoes in tyres harvested - a goodly crop this time.

Beans - all pulled out of the ground, they never recovered from whatever hit them.

Still finding bindii in the lawn, not so bad since getting out there gets me out of the house and into the beautiful warm sun.

Nectarine is heavily in blossom, will have to be better at pulling fruit off this year so another branch doesn't break off. Wasn't sure how it would go this year considering the heavy prune I gave it.

Leucospernum - putting on some flowers. Again, wasn't sure whether it would as I pruned it last year. As the pruning didn't kill it I'll do it again, further back this time, once the flowers have finished.

King Protea - don't like it's shape at all, will try to take cuttings and see if I can grow a new one.

Pruned the mini standard roses, think I need to put them into the sun.

Might have to go to Waldecks and finally spend my gift voucher tomorrow!