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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

In the Garden- February 2012

With Perth's recent heatwave, my poor garden has been suffering. We lost our entire cucumber and zucchini plantation. The zucchinis had some nasty mildew issues which had affected fruiting, so it was no great loss there, but my cucumbers! They were doing so well, then after a few hot days, there were no traces of the plants. Alas, the rest of the garden is looking good. Here's a glimpse of what's going on in my garden at the moment.

Rhubarb. I've never grown rhubarb before, and to be honest I thought it would be harder to maintain. Basically I water it, I harvest it and I make crumble. It seems to like the darker, damper corner of the vege patch which is great because I couldn't get anything else to grow there!

These onions are the result of spring onions we didn't pick. They are quite small so I might pickle them.

An abundance of self-sewn basil sprouted from last year's crop. I love fresh basil and try to harvest enough while it's in season to freeze and dry some to see me through to the next season.

Unkempt flat-leaf parsley. This stuff grows prolifically, and I rarely use parsley, but I do like how it fills in the gaps between the grape vines along our fence.

What a beautiful segue to the grapes! We have 5 vines around the garden and this year we have lots of fruit on 2 year old wood. There are several varieties of grapes, but most of the tags have been lost so eating them is a bit of a surprise, particularly as 3 of the vines are intertwined and you can't tell which one the fruit is from. The girls are loving their daily grape harvest at the moment, and the chickens love finishing off the bunches we were a bit slow to pick.


Last year we bought established mandarin and orange trees, in the hope of early fruiting. They need much more fertilising than we first realised, and also more water than Perth's water restrictions allow. Despite a rough start, the mandarin tree has sprouted a few small fruit which I'm hoping will grow to an edible size!


We used our own compost around the citrus, and have had a few pumpkin vines sprout up. Here is a new pumpkin I found the other day.


We don't have many flowers in the garden, but we do have a few lovely frangipanis at the moment, and a beautiful cassia fistula (otherwise known as the golden shower tree) which is in full bloom at the moment. The lawn is currently littered with its pretty yellow flowers.
























I know my blog hasn't attracted many followers yet, but if you're reading, I'd love to know what's growing in your garden.

4 comments:

  1. Most of my herbs karked it in the heat-wave, but I've got some new mini-paws in ("bush gems") and some very fluffy purple "Mulla mulla" to remind hubby of the Pilbara. Mostly, I've got lots of rocks, which we will landscape into something!

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    1. I had to google it, but now I know what it is, fluffy purple Mulla Mulla sounds lovely! Rocks don't mind the heat :) Thanks for stopping by!

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  2. Celia from Fig Jam and Lime Cordial was having trouble posting a comment, so she emailed it to me:

    Pam, you seem to have the reverse problem we have in Sydney - we just had rain, rain and more rain, and hardly a sunny day in between! Our curcubits have suffered, but for the reverse reason - although powdery mildew has been playing havoc here as well. Because of the wet, the slugs are just starting to move in now.

    Having said that, we harvested our one and only cauliflower yesterday, which was great, and our rhubarb is also still going strong! :)

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  3. Sadly not much is growing in my garden at the moment. The veggie patch when to rack and ruin whilst I was stuck in Perth with Possum :(. We overhauled it and then the dogs decided to do some gardening of their own and since then we haven't bothered. Sad but true. The grapes survived and we harvested what the dogs didn't eat, same with the passion fruit. Can't wait for the new dog proof veggie patch & chicken run... One day :)

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