'Tis the season

Autumn this year in Perth has arrived really late. I like to get my garlic in the ground in March, but I still think there's a bit of time left if you've been meaning to plant some and just haven't got around to it.

Here's the garlic I planted starting to come up.

The best garlic to plant is locally-grown so go to your fruit and veggie shop or veggie markets and pick up a few bulbs, break them up into cloves and choose a sunny spot to plant them.

Just remember to dig in a generous amount of manure into the soil and plant them, pointy side up, about a finger deep.

The green shoots should come through after a couple of weeks. Just leave them until around October/November and you'll be ready to harvest... lazy gardening at its best!

A frangipani of my own

Happy new year!

 

I hope you're looking forward to a year of garden adventures and maybe I can provide a little inspiration along the way.

 

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely and surviving the heat, we're eating corn, zucchini flowers and lots of cucumbers. I planted my tomatoes really late, so they are just coming along now and I'm making basil pesto as the plants grow out of control. The beagles have been out hassling lizards and finding cool patches of dirt to lay in.

 

To start 2014, I thought success story might be just the thing to share with you.

You may remember in April last year, I tried to overcome my frangipani envy by planting some cuttings.

I went against online advice and planted tall cuttings in the hope I could get bigger trees, faster.

I am really pleased to show you that the cuttings all took... I have three flowering, flourishing trees! They are already about 1.5 m tall and spreading their beautiful perfume around my courtyard.

Here's one of them:

This was me in April collecting the prunings from a friend's tree:

Considering the price of frangipanis this size in a nursery, I think I did pretty well. And my friend had better watch out because I'll be coming back for more cuttings as I plan my back garden. But, that's a different project I will keep you up to date with!