'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!

Bug city

A few months ago I decided to plant some flowers throughout my food garden for a few reasons. Firstly, because they're pretty and I can cut them and bring them inside. Second, because I was frustrated at the nematodes and thought if I can't grow vegetables, what can I grow? And most importantly because they attract insects into the garden. Bees for pollination and everyone should be doing all they can to keep bee populations healthy while insecticide sprays on crops are wiping them out and they are vitally important to food production. (rant over) Also all the other bugs we have keep a neat ecosystem going so that no one type of bug will take over and destroy crops.

Here's some of the bugs visiting my garden over the past week;

I have a couple of spiders that I like to leave in the garden. I threw a slater into his web. The spider didn't seem too interested in it, sadly.

And this mantis was about 5cm long and was trying to hitch a ride around on my arm the other day. I haven't seen one of these so big since I was a kid. I hope he eats slaters.

Beans!

 

My first broad beans of the season:

 

They're a little bit late. I know this because my neighbour has picked, podded, frozen and dug the remains of hers back into her soil already and planted out tomatoes on top of where they were. I only have a small patch, mainly because I don't like broad beans all that much. Until now. My experience of broad beans in the past has been giant beans with the outside a kind of grey colour and boiled to a soggy mass. I have decided that if you pick the beans really young, they are sweet and delicious!

 

For dinner the other night we has this delicious broad bean bruschetta, an adaptation of a Donna Hay recipe. We brushed slices of sour dough with olive oil, grilled them, then rubbed them with a clove of raw garlic, like you would for bruschetta. Then spread on some soft fetta, topped it with beans quickly blanched in boiling, salted water and then sprinkle dover some gremolata (finely chopped parsley with lemon zest). It was really tasty and the beans were delicious;

Even Mustard thought it looked pretty good and insisted on watching us eat every single bite with a mournful expression on his face!

 

I'm now watching closely for the next lot of beans to grow to the right size for picking!

It's cactus!

Gardening isn't for everyone. And when all else fails you can try this:

                                      

I picked up this fantastic knitted cactus at a craft fair in Perth recently. I know it's not a real indoor plant, but at least I can't kill it! The beagles probably could if they got their teeth into it, though!

Magnificent magnolia

How amazing is this magnolia? It belongs to a neighbour of mine and it's so beautiful I had to take a photo of it a couple of weeks ago.

I didn't even know I could grow this sort of magnolia in my area of Perth. I wonder if the gardener has created the perfect microclimate on the other side of the ivy-covered fence for it? I'd love to explore the rest of his garden!

It's this time of year I promise myself that I will plant my leisure garden (the backyard, as opposed to the food garden in the front yard) with flowering deciduous trees.

From our backyard we have a view of a row of ornamental plum trees and a flowering pear planted in our neighbour's yard. Up the street is an almond tree that spreads drifts of petals up and down our street like confetti.

And of course, down the laneway is the beautiful magnolia tree. Here's a photo I took more recently of the same tree:

All these trees are losing their flowers and the greenest of green shoots are appearing everywhere, a sure sign spring is here. Now I have my heart set on planting some of these trees in my yard so that every day while I eat my breakfast I can watch their bare branches burst into bloom, watch the petals littler the ground and then watch as spring turns them green again..

Back to my roots

Growing up on the farm I spent many childhood days picking mallee roots. We'd head to a paddock that was going to be cropped and hurl the dry, gnarly roots into small piles. Then Mum or Dad, or later my siblings or I would drive the 'ute', a thundering F100, around the paddock. We kids would be standing on the sideboards or sitting on the tailgate as we made our way from pile to pile. When we got to each pile, we'd all jump off and throw those mallee roots onto the back of the ute before jumping back on the running boards and heading to the next pile.

The mallee roots of course would be unloaded into our wood pile and used through winter to light the fires to keep us warm, light the kitchen stove and heat our water.

I don't have a big open wood fire in the city, and I certainly don't have a wood stove or water heater, but I still have a use for those mallee roots.

My wonderful Mum and Dad were coming up from the farm last week, so I asked if they would mind bringing me a couple of old, weathered mallee roots for my native verge garden. See how good they look:

 

 

 

They already look right at home among the kangaroo paws! The good thing about using the rocks and roots in this garden is that it gives it some structure, so even when it's not all flowering, it looks like a vaguely naturalised scrub.

 

 

 

 

It also gives the little lizards somewhere to play and hide. I look forward to watching all my tiny plants grow up amongst them.