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.