Impatience and Hydrangeas

I cheated. I bought the worlds biggest hydrangea bush on the weekend. 

I've been watering and caring for my little mail order seedlings all autumn and they've barely grown. And my two transplants from last year are not doing so great either. So when I spotted this gigantic beauty in the nursery at Capalaba Produce where I was meant to be fetching chicken feed - I gave in to all notions of being patient and just bit the bullet and bought it.

And I knew exactly where to put it - this ratty looking garden bed gets morning sun and afternoon shade which suits hydrangeas perfectly.

Mr Tchotchke loves lending a hand in the garden

Wa - lah! Who doesn't love a before and after shot? I topped up the bed with lots of organic sugarcane mulch to help it retain moisture.

It's so fluffy! I'm sorely tempted to lop off a few blooms to bring inside. I think I'll give it a few days to settle in.

At first I felt a bit guilty for giving in to temptation and not sticking it out with my seedlings - plus it was the single most expensive plant I've ever purchased. But I figured it could be an early Christmas pressie to myself - and it was just as much as a few bunches of flowers and would provide me with far more enjoyment. Let's hope I can keep it alive until next year!

Summer already?

We're still a few weeks early - but it feels like summer is already here.

What's new in the garden? We've finally got some passionfruit growing.

We planted the vine almost two years ago and its sustained a few possum attacks but it just kept bouncing back. I love the passionfruit flowers - they're so crazy looking.

I've had a runty little hydrangea on this transplant.

And corn! That's a first too.

And our cauliflower is staring to do something. I think its trying to make a cauliflower. But who really knows. Its been in the patch since the beginning of winter not doing terribly much but I've left it there because it looks pretty impressive.

I always thought it was a winter vegetable - but it seems these summer days is getting it hot under the collar.

You Have Good Soil!

I often find myself blaming the soil when a plant in our veggie plot doesn't do well "oh we don't have very good soil, there are big chunks of clay, the builders dumped cruddy soil there, blah blah blah."

I know - boo hoo. It's too late to dig it all up and start again so I just do my best adding compost (all that dirty straw from the chicken coop goes into the compost heap), mulching, watering with worm juice and seasol, and chucking out the big clay clods when I come across them.

But I read something encouraging this week.

I've had Organic: Don Burke's Guide to Growing Organic Food for a little while, but like all good books  - its seems to reveal something new with revisit.

In his chapter on soil preparation - he notes that you can't buy great soil in Australia - that soils sold by nurseries are alluvial silts (which according to old Donny fail to develop proper soil structure and won't allow roots enough oxygen to breathe).

My fave bit was:

"Your own soil is good. It is the best soil that you can ever get. Work that soil up with compost, manures, gypsum etc and it will be perfect. So many people say that their soil is no good because it is clay. Clay soils are amongst the best soils in the world! Never let any of your soil leave your property. It is pure gold."

Good old Don. So - no more blaming the soil. Which I guess leaves the rest up to me...

A Ripe Mulberry

I've always had a soft spot for the English luxury house Mulberry (I share my surname with one of their gorgeous satchels and often fancy it was named after me) but now I'm developing a thing for the actual berries too.

After reading this post over on Mud Pie I was hungry to sample the fruits of my own tree. It had been covered in berries for weeks but they were all green - so last week at the first sight of one turning red I plucked it from the tree and hungrily gobbled it up. It was tangy and bitter and not quite ripe. I hastily googled how long it takes for mulberries to ripen - and discovered than unripe berries are hallucinogenic. Great. I panicked for a second but thankfully I didn't spend the rest of the evening in a psychedelic stupor.

So I was a little more patient for this second berry and actually waited for it to turn black. 

Doesn't it look divine? So plump and glossy! I'm happy to report it's flavour was a huge improvement from the first under-ripe mulberry.

Apparently mulberries aren't commonly available in stores because they're so delicate and would get bruised in the packing and transportation processes. Although a part of me thinks that the farmers just never have enough to sell - the berries simply get plucked off the tree and eaten straight away!

Perfect Petals

After the flower failure in my last post it's nice to have some more successful blooms to display. (Although I've decided that roses must be like pancakes - the first one is always a dud).

The below gerbera was a gift last year that I repotted into the below teacup saucer-pot. It promptly shrivelled up and died, and got taken over by various weeds. I'd like to think it was some innate inner gardening know-how that guided me to nurse it back to life - but I simply left it to its own devices over the past few months - and shazam! Up popped these two lovelies.

In other garden news these amaryllis (spent a while googling red trumpet flower bulb to figure out what they were called) have sprung up again - they were quite the surprise last year.

Are you noticing a trend? Why is it all the neglected plants seem to flower beautifully and the ones I dote on behave like spoilt brats?

Hey Jude (The Obscure) Why So Glum?

My new David Austin rose (and first attempt into the world of rose growing) - the curiously named Jude the Obscure -  has been going well so far -  progressing from a depressing bare rooted stick to a lovely leafy bush much faster than I expected (8 weeks!)

It's even popped out a promising bud, which has grown into a tennis ball sized bloom that I've been excitedly monitoring each day. I took this photo this morning.

So when I arrived home this afternoon - a mere 10 hours later - to find the lovely bloom looking like this....

... I was a little disheartened. It was pretty warm today so I'm hoping that it was just having a little sulk. I gave it a good drink this afternoon so fingers crossed she comes good tomorrow.

Going Bananas for Spring

Look at what I spotted peeking out from under a banana leaf on the weekend..

Finally a banana flower! It's been about 20 months since we feasted on our last lot of bananas - that tree has since come down and this is the sucker that's popped up to take it's place. It's pretty slow progress - at this rate I won't be profiting from the high banana prices any time soon..

These are some other flowers I'm excited to see - it's the solanum potato vine that we've grown over the chicken run. It's been a vigorous grower and has done a good job covering the ugly steel mesh in a relatively short time, but it's never flowered! I've always wondered what it's lacking and why it wasn't flowering - I guess it was just biding it's time and maybe waiting for spring.

Garden Update: Winter Lemon Buds

My citrus "orchard" has been decidedly lacklustre since this photo back in March.  

The dwarf Meyer lemon has made a few attempts since then at popping out a flower - but I kept removing it since I thought the plant's energy would be best spent growing sturdier instead of trying to make a lemon. Eventually I decided to let nature take its course and look at it now..

It's covered in little buds! There are far too many for the little tree to bear but I'm tempted to leave it alone and see what happens.

Hanging Chicken Feeder and Tres Chic Tomatoes

I spotted an extra little friend in the chicken coop last week (let me give you a hint - it rhymes with house..) and realised that we needed to re think our hanging feeder set up.

Mr Tchotchke knocked up a great little hanger from the mesh roof of the coop - and when I queried how it would go in the rain - he repurposed an old light fitting to act as shield. Not bad hey? 

Charlotte likes it.

My Mutant Zucchini

So here is our first zucchini, just lounging around on a deck chair.

In case you didn't notice.. its a little odd looking, fatter at one end, slightly withered and puny at the other.

A little web research has helped me determine that it's been incompletely pollinated. I found out here that "When pollination is incomplete the fruit develops unevenly because the ovary wall enlarges more adjacent to fertilised seed." It goes on to mention that in cold growing conditions female flowers open before the male flowers so there isn't enough pollen present.

Since Mr Tchotchke hand pollinated it he's considering a little soft music and candlelight before his next attempt.

I'm hoping that it's similar to making pancakes and the first one is always a little wonky, but the next one will come good.

The Cottage Garden Nursery & Gillian's Garden Cafe

Today after the markets we stopped into The Cottage Garden Nursery at East Brisbane. I literally drive past it every weekday on the way to work - but hadn't popped in for a few years.

Hydrangea Blues

I've got the hydrangea blues.

via Martha Stewart

Look how gorgeous Martha's hydrangeas are. I'm jealous. I desperately wanted hydrangeas for my wedding last year, and even went and bought my own plants - determined to grow my own flowers when florists all over Brisbane were adamant the blooms wouldn't be available.

Neither plant did too well - I mistakenly put them both in full shade. Both are still hanging in there so we'll see what happens this coming summer. In the meantime - look at what I spotted in the Garden Express catalogue in this month's Gardening Australia...

Garden Update: Peas, Radishes and Zucchinis

I spruced up a bare patch in the veggie garden this afternoon with these sugar snap peas. 

The last batch of bean seedlings I bought were (unbeknownst to me) the dwarf bush variety which disappointingly didn't climb up my pretty support frame. I've left these uncovered so if they make it through the week without being eaten by a possum I'll be amazed.

Winter Camellias

I'm not a big fan of cold weather - but one thing to look forward to in winter are my beautiful camellias.

I captured the first one here but now I've got a whole bush with enough to snip and bring inside.

Last year I cut a few branches and tried my hand (unsuccessfully) at propagating them - seeing these blooms makes me want to try again.

Choko-licious

After regaling his co-workers with tales of our veggie garden Mr Tchotchke was gifted a sprouting choko from Sheila the lovely accounts lady.

It's not a pretty fruit but it promises to be a vigorous vine (according to my trusty Yates Garden Guide) 

Green Walls

I took this snap at the rear garden area of The Gun Shop Cafe last weekend - it looks like their green wall is made up of plenty of different herbs and nasturtiums in terracotta pots. 

Green walls seem to be a quickly growing trend - especially in corporate offices and restaurants.

Greenwall by Michael Hellgren (Sweden)

But my favourite green walls are the more organic kind - looking back through my travel photos I realised I'm quite prone to snapping foilage covered buildings.

This one is from our honeymoon on 5th Avenue in Playa del Carmen Mexico.

More Garden Work: A Stepping Stone Path

So even after our big gravel job the other weekend (here) we still weren't done in the garden.

When we were at Tingalpa Landscaping Supplies we also bought some pavers to make a stepping stone path to the chicken coop. 

What Else is Happening in the Garden?

Remember the tomato seedlings from this post? Those pics were from back in March - and they didn't look too different through April and May I can tell you now. I brought them outside, I brought them back inside, I put them in the sun, I put them in the shade - they didn't grow. 

At last I got so frustrated I plucked them out of their little trays and put three of them in the veggie patch - I knew I was meant to wait until they'd grown way bigger to transplant but they literally hadn't developed any further leaves for over a month.

Two weeks later look at how well this little one is going!

And Mr Tchotchke planted some supermarket Sebago potatoes a few weeks ago and their shoots are coming up now too. We had some real success with potatoes last year so I hope these ones go forth and multiply.

On the weekend I transplanted the rest of the struggling seedlings into the veggie patch to see if it would spur on some growth also.

Well they haven't been eaten by possums yet - that's a small victory in itself.

More Garden Work: Landscaping Under the Deck

There was more garden work to be done this weekend - the ugly bit of dirt under the deck need some attention.

So off we went to Tingalpa Landscaping Supplies to source some gravel and pavers. I have to say we've been to a few landscaping supply yards over the past few weekends and without a doubt we got the best service at TLS.

Here is there delivery truck dumping half a cubic metre of Brown Gravel (20mm) on our driveway.

Here's the ugly before shot.

We'd bought weed matting and timber edging to keep the grass out and the gravel in - and Mr Tchotchke and my Dad had lots of fun putting it in.

I think my Dad had an episode with an sloping shelf as a child - because everything needs to be 110% level, even and square. I think I get some of my slightly OCD tendencies from him.

And here's the finished area. Its looking so much better now - but still a little bare. I'm considering bringing the stripy deck chairs down to this area and adding some potted plants.. everything's always a work in progress!

Autumn Flowers and the First Camellia

Our camellia bush has been covered in buds so I was so excited to to come across this first bloom today.

This rogue purple orchid has popped up between a tree and some undergrowth.

I think this is another type of orchid - the colour is so vivid an lovely down the side of of house.

And a sure sign that it's getting colder - our poinsettias are blooming! We've got two huge bushes of them but this was the only head low enough for me to photograph.