Africanaussie

After a bit of a dry spell in November and December, the wet season seems to have arrived in the Wet tropics.   100-200mls of rain every day means the ground is wet most of the time.  Hoses are wrapped up, and nature waters the plants.  Bugs love this weather, some plants love it, some do not. I moved my orchids away from the back fence where I think they were in too much shade.  I love them like a green wall on either side of my mural.  They are easier to monitor and two of them are  getting ready to flower.! One branch on the yellow one has opened up! I have always been a "set and forget" type of orchid grower so am surprised and delighted when they flower. The area where the lady slipper orchid vine had rather taken over was cut back and the flowers are certainly enjoying a bit more sunshine. The wet season is not for the faint-hearted, and only the most robust veggies grow at this time of year.  I planted out a few more as...

I have been wanting to try planting according to the moon for ages, and carefully marked on my calendar that the first weekend in April was the prime time to plant root vegetables.  The time of the waning moon, when the gravitational forces pull the roots down into the earth., supposedly giving them a good start in life. Then I threw my back out -a common side effect of gardening! I remembered the seed tape I had made years ago, and wondered if that would not be the answer to my dilemma.  Nothing is actually better for my well-being than sorting through my seeds and imagining huge harvests. I sat on the couch and laid the strips  out onto a wooden board.  Spraying with a seaweed spray as I went along to give those little seeds a taste of things to come.  I have pretty tight spacing, and stagger the seeds to get more in.  I start picking leaves when they are still small, so they can be pretty close together.  I already have tatsoi going down the o...

We have had flooding and rain, and more flooded roads and mudslides.  It was a busy week last week  just trying to get around!  some of the plants though are in their element with all this rain.  The dragonfruit has burst into flower again.  I think this is the third flush of fruit this season!  It is supposed to be part of the cactus family which I thought didn't like too much water.  Shows what I know! Here you can see the native bees which gather around pollinating the flowers.  There are also green ants, so not sure if it needs both, but they definitely do their job well! The flowers open during the night and then by the afternoon are just a hanging bunch of petals.  Short but sweet life!  Off to the left you can see the flowers that flowered the night before. This is the most beautiful flower, followed by very tasty fruit! I know I do go on about the dragonfruit , but this yummy goodness on my yoghurt is what is to ...

I am very excited to be preparing the raised beds to grow my vegetables this year.  I grow from seed so do not want to miss the beginning of the growing season.  Of course we never really know when the wet season is going to end, but most people rely on April being the time when one can plant out seedlings.   I might be a little early, but want to stagger my plantings, so will only start off a few each weekend. I did go a little crazy with seeds, but will share around some of the seedlings with friends and family.  I am starting out marketmore cucumber, San Marzano and Tommy toe tomato, Tsakoni eggplant, and rainbow chard.  The greenhouse where I start the seeds is semi shaded, and I am making sure to water every day.  This is an old greenhouse, and the zipper no longer works, but I dont think I want it zipped up tight anyway because I want the fresh air inside. It was a great buy, and I have had it now for about three years.  Even though I ...

Living on the edge of the Daintree forest I can see firsthand how forests are such an awesome self-sustaining culture.  The leaves and fruit drop on the ground and breakdown to form a wonderful thick rich humus. It makes sense to try to replicate that system in the area of our gardens where we grow food.  That is where the idea of food forests in permaculture was born. I like trees that just give a little filtered light because the fact is that sometimes I still do need to have some sunshine. Living in the tropics, full sun is just too much for most plants.  I find that I am continually cutting branches back to let light in or planting new shoots to create more shade in another area.  Those branches that I cut back are returned to the floor of the food forest, either as green mulch or into the compost and added later.  I am going to focus in the next few posts on each of the main trees I have as the upper layer in my food forest. A while back I planted a mori...

Some things I just keeping trying even though they have never worked in the past.  Are you like that? One thing is grafting -  I tried both a lime and a lemon tree grafted onto a citrus that grew up from the rootstock of a lime mandarin.  I cut a pointed edge on the scion and then inserted it into a slit.   I rested a moist bit of coconut husk into the branch above the graft to allow some moisture and then placed a plastic bag over the entire thing.   Tied up nice and tight with grafting tape. The other thing I have not always had success with is pollinating pumpkins.  I see lots of bees and flying insects, but supposedly pumpkins have to be hand pollinated.  I have let a volunteer pumpkin have its way in the back veggie patch because at least it shades the ground.  I have heard young pumpkin leaves are very tasty, but I have never tried them.  This little thing was right beside the path so I got a female flower and broke away t...

I arrived back after more than four weeks overseas to discover that my garden had done just fine without me, thank you very much!  The peppercorn vine is full of little bunches of peppercorns.  Last year I pickled some, but might do some research on drying them instead.  I made a lovely pepper sauce to go with our pork chops last night.  The lady slipper orchid has made its way into the veggie patch, so I now have flowers and fruit intermingling. This bed required lots of weeding, and then I quickly planted some seeds to make the most of whatever growing season we still have.  Tatsoi, rocket and whatever else was left in the packets. The asian greens in the one box were pulled out to make way for bok choy.  Mizuna was my clear favourite, so I will plant that again.  For the first time ever I have been able to grow rainbow chard - isnt it pretty?  I never grow huge leaves of kale - think it is still too hot here, even in our winter. ...

Happy Easter to all - a little late, but I was out in the garden!  Four whole days doing gardening related activities.  Can life get any better? On Saturday we went shopping and I spent my birthday coupons - what fun!  I decided to incorporate a couple of plants inside and have a row of terracotta planters with aloe vera on on the kitchen counter. Then I also found an amazing stand and pot that now has a spathiphyllum in it.  Bringing the outdoors inside a little bit! A lot of work was done in the veggie patch.  I laid out another soaker hose as my old ones perished.  Chook poo (chicken manure) was spread out over the main bed where I added lime a couple of weeks ago.  This was then covered over with a few layers of wet newspaper and some sugar cane mulch.  Some things have done well in the greenhouse - my tomato seedlings have done well - I planted a few out into the garden.  Red cherry and yellow pear, the rest of the tomato pl...

I have spent time out in the garden the last two weekends, and everything is looking much tidier now. .  The asian greens I planted in the boxes seem to be doing ok and in fact are just loving all the rain.  The taller box is waiting to have tomatoes planted in there.  Since I have bacterial wilt in the soil regular tomatoes have to be planted in potting mix. The coffee tree came out a couple of weeks ago since it was getting diseases  and generally taking up too much room.  The green peppercorn vine has been happily taking over the whole area during the wet season while nobody was watching, so that got a very severe cutting back.  It supposedly only fruits on new growth and I see a few peppercorns, so once those are harvested it will get even more of a prune. That opened up this area quite a bit and I have planted corn behind the compost bin (the soil is lovely there!) and trombocino squash against the fence.  Cucumbers against the tre...

I have my little sheet all printed out with the plants I am going to plant this year. I sway back and forth about moon planting, but generally try to plant by the moon.  It does make sense to use the gravitational force of the moon if you can.  One thing that has never been made clear to me is - does it work the same for seeds and for seedlings?  I have lots of compost brewing, as well as three buckets of worm castings.   Exciting times.  I have seeds, and have purchased a little greenhouse.  It might seem an odd thing to do in my hot, wet climate, but in actual fact, I am hoping this will at least control the amount of water my little seedlings get.  If it gets too hot in there, I will add a shadecloth over the top.  I also plan to grow the microgreens in there as they get so many bugs out in the garden.  There has been an ever so slight decrease in temperature, Remember my gorgeous dragon fruit flowers?  Well, they matured into...

Well, as you know I have been trying to fit my new compost tumbler into my composting schedule.  You are supposed to stop topping it up at some stage and then let it finish off before transferring to the stand alone compost bin.   The thing is that I am not sure what to do with the kitchen waste that accumulates while the tumbler batch is processing (about 4- 6 weeks.)   I have lots of leaves, and they seem to take forever to break down too!  The kitchen scraps compost down quickly but the leaves take ages....So I keep adding to the tumbler, and it is in fact now getting rather full and a bit heavy, so something had to be done. This is what it looks like.  and inside: A worm farm, everyone suggested....    I have only ever heard of one person with a worm farm in this climate.  Recently though, I saw an honesty stall with bottles of worm wee.  Hubby looked the other way when I went to put my coins in the jar and pick up a bottle....