Africanaussie

I have never done a meme before, but maybe that will give me an excuse to post just a few more pigeon pea photos.  red and yellow - about as hot as one can get! Gosh I just love these pigeon pea flowers, maybe since I havnt been able to grow sweet peas here, just way too hot.  As  child I loved to pick bunches of bunches of sweet peas and arrange little vases throughout the house.  My mom didnt mind as she said the more you picked the more they produced!  I think I am going to start harvesting the dry peas, as some of them are getting eaten by bugs and I want them first! I hope you are not getting tired of them yet! For more hot loud and proud photos head off to see the cordelines on Noels blog!  http://aplantfanatic.blogspot.com/2010/08/hot-loud-and-proud-6.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+APlantFanaticInHawaii+%28A+Plant+Fanatic+In+Hawaii%29  From there you can see links to many more.

It seems as though red and yellow were the color theme of the day today.  I have some volunteer daisy bushes and moved them out to the swimming pool area alongside the cordelines - think they will look good.  there -  red and yellow. I was going to take a photo, but there was quite a lot of wind and they looked really sad out there, so I am not at all sure they will survive.  The weeping tea tea tree is in bloom and there are so many little insects buzzing around.  Some bigger insects too that buzz me anytime I forget and get too close!  I noticed a butterfly and ran to get my camera - what colour was it - red an yellow of course!  These are called union jack butterflies and are one of our more common butterflies. The vegetable garden got a good weeding, and the paths are now clean, I think I must really get some mulch soon.  In November the council has a weekend where taxpayers can get free mulch - cam I wait for then?  The price is right...

The red and yellow flowers on the pigeon peas are so pretty, but way up too high to get a good photograph. My experiment to use them as green manure and then as stakes has worked well.  They are bushing out right at the top as I have pruned away all the side branches, and woven odd bits of sticks and poles to bring them into a straight line down the middle of the vegetable garden.  This means that they really only shade the garden from the midday sun which is perfect.  I began to wonder if I was ever going to get a harvest from them as they have take a good eight months to flower.  Luckily a fellow gardener in Nicuaraga grew them last season so I knew to be patient.  You never grow in full sun here, as even in the winter the sun is quite intense, and I much prefer a living shade. The good news is that  it has not been raining so much this week - just a few little sprinkles, so a bit more sunshine to get those vggie seedlings off to a good start.

I had a four day weekend (I know, I love that fact that we have so many public holidays in Australia :)  I took my MIL to church at my favourite little church in Port Douglas for the Easter service,  You look out at the ocean through big glass windows behind the altar.  It sometimes can be hard to concentrate....  but we were drenched by the time we got home.  this is what happens when I walk outside.... some of the plants are very happy though- the anthirium just loves all the rain.. And so do the ground orchids... and even the pigeon pea are flowering, although they do seem to be dropping off a lot of their leaves which are turning yellow.  I dont know if they do that before the peas form, or if it just because of all the rain and no sunshine. They are such beautiful flowers right now we have had two hours without rain, I have put some washing on the line and hope that this really is the end of the wet season. 

I planted out some seeds this week in my little "nature made" greenhouse! The plan is that the overhanging branches will protect the little seedlings from heavy rains and bright sunshine as they emerge .  Yes, we are sitll getting some quite heavy rains.  I have noticed not quite a nip in the early mornings, but certainly not the heavy humidity that we get from October to February. As the seedlings grow, the plan is to cut back some of the branches, letting more light and sunshine in.  I still want to keep some branches on the pigeon peas - the theory is that every time you prune them,( since the seeds were innoculated), the roots will add nitrogen to the soil.  I originally planted these pigeon peas as a green manure crop to enrich the soil over the wet season.  I dont always have a concrete plan of where I am going in the garden, and often just work with it all as it evolves, and some plants do better than others. This is a great permaculture website wher...

One of the principles of permaculture is to grow plants up , instead of letting plants scramble around the ground taking up precious space.  Just looking around the garden, I have definitely taken that to heart!  In actual fact the plants have done that on their own without my help. Take for instance this passionfruit vine:  When I first planted the passionfruit vine next to my little arch and alongside the fence, I knew it would ramble, but gosh, once it started to climb this happy plant it just continued to reach for the sky.  It suits us very well as we have a rather ugly Telstra building behind there, and I would much rather look at a 30ft wall of green.  When the passionfruit ripen, they just fall to the ground and I can walk around and pick them up.  How convenient is that? I planted pigeon peas as a green manure crop this year, and sometimes I miss the fine print when choosing plants - like how tall they grow!  I rea...

My aim was to try and grow and eat as much as I could from my garden year round, not just the drier winter season which is our main growing season.  I have been harvesting pawpaw and passionfruit, and then asparagus for the beginning of the wet season, but leaving the shoots now to grow the crowns.  Herbs are all doing OK, but do struggle with the huge amount of rain and bugs.  I was wondering what I was doing wrong with my luffas - The veggie garden fence is a tangle of vines - the thick snake beans, with their beautiful shaped leaves and delicate flowers then the neighbours passionfruit vine that keeps coming over to my side, then the luffa, with huge green leaves and tons of yellow flowers.  Often I would see the beginnings of a luffa, but then it would shrivel up and die.  I wondered if they needed more light, so cut back some of the excess vines, and trimmed some piegon pea plants that were growing nearby.  I see tons of honeyeater birds, but...

I have been toying with the idea of planting a green manure crop during the wet season. In the end I ordered pigeon peas, recommended for the tropics. You get an inoculant with it that helps to fix nitrogen in the soil when you cut it back. This is also recommended for building up the soil to resist wilt diseases. I want to taste the actual peas though and might keep some growing to use as mulch. One site said that this is the pea most commonly used for making dahl , so maybe I wont have to buy lentils anymore and can just use what I grow in the garden :) It looks like quite a strong large plant and one blogger uses it to grow her tomatoes next to and then uses them to stake the tomatoes. Here is the bed cleared and ready to be planted. I have never done green manure before, so this is all a learning experience. Most sites say to cut down the plant and then it releases nitrogen into the soil, but on the tropical permaculture site I read that every time you prune back the plants the...