How gorgeous are these 'Japanese Anemones' flowers that caught my eye when out walking today.
Looking splendid in the sunshine, the flowers are a stunning blend of pastel pink leaves with soft white edges that surround a bright lime green centre with a ring of short, bright yellow stamen.
After several days of gardening in 2 gardens during Easter, I am taking it easy in the garden this weekend.
I took a stroll with my mother in her garden, thinking of what further work needs to be done next weekend when I spied an upturned pot in a garden bed. I bent down to fix it and saw another upturned pot behind it. I wondered what caused this when behind a camellia I saw that the bird bath had toppled over from a higher garden bed knocking over the pots.
I pulled the bird bath out of the garden bed. My brother was going to take it to his place, but now that the bird bath is so broken we will take it to the tip.
This morning I did my final bit of gardening before some predicted heavy rain comes later today (Let's hope the forecast is correct).
I have now planted out all my purchases from the garden show a couple of weeks ago. The big task this morning was repotting this gardenia which was quite root-bound. My husband helped and gave the roots a spray from the hose to loosen them. Silly me was dressed in clean clothes I use for work (we can wear jeans at work) and got mud sprayed on them.
I used a mix of two types of potting soils but we didn't mix them very well. I am hoping the promised down pour of rain will do some more mixing for us.
The pot we have planted it in is ugly. When we have finally decided how we want our backyard I will repot it into something nicer. #Melbourne#GardeningAU#OfficeKitty
This morning we went by tram to Port Melbourne. The grass along the foreshore has browned off as a result of Melbourne's dry and hot couple of months.
If you look closer you will see green patches around poles and trees. I saw a chihuahua relieving itself against one of the trees and realised why the grass was green there. The many dogs who are walked along here are acting as mobile watering cans for the trees.
We also saw succulents that were drooping and agapanthus that have seen better days. However in 24 hours they will be revived by a big downpour of rain. We are expecting 10-40mm tomorrow and about the same the next day. #Melbourne#GardeningAU
More gardening today, but this time in Mum's garden. I planted out 5 plants in a garden bed that had been reshaped by my brother while building a new path recently. The soil was hydrophobic due to the very poor rainfall in #Melbourne over the last couple of months.
I did my usual trick of digging a hole for the plant and first putting a lot of water in it. It is a similar technique to cooking where you make a well in the flour for the wet ingredients and gradually mix it into the dry ingredients. The roots of the new plant will feel the wet soil beneath it and so be encouraged to grow down further
Hopefully we will get a good dump of rain on Monday and Tuesday! #GardeningAU
Big day in the garden today - taking advantage of the glorious autumn day in #Melbourne.
We cut off a big non-fruit producing branch growing straight up on the left of the lime tree and then cut a big branch on the right to give the tree better balance.
I also upended 2 bags of heavy, wet soil on the bed to top it up and provide more substance to the very light sandy soil in this garden bed.
I planted an impatiens plant I had purchased at last week's garden show on the right of the lime tree. I then topped off this part of the garden bed with bamboo leaves from last Spring's prunings. I had laid the bamboo prunings on concrete so the leaves could dry off over summer and to stop the concrete from absorbing so much heat.
To the right of the lime tree is our lemon tree that we had pruned hard last Spring. By cutting the large lime branch growing on the right side of the tree we are now giving the lemon tree light and space to grow new branches on its left.
When we moved in over 2 years ago there was an enormous bougainvillea that was encroaching on the lime tree so it grew to the right. The lemon tree had been only pruned on the fence side making it lop-sided and it was in danger of toppling over.
We are going to have a few years of pruning these trees to make them the shape we want and is healthy for them.
Before doing the big pruning of the lime tree my husband tied back the bamboo that was leaning low over the pot plants. Then he removed some bamboo and pruned some back.
It was a good growing season for bamboo because we had a lot of rain in the first 6 weeks of summer. #Melbourne#GardeningAU
Here are the prunings from today. I will leave the bamboo prunings here over autumn and winter. Hopefully by next Spring the leaves will be ready to use as mulch and I might be able to get some garden stakes out of the prunings.
I didn't do anything with these gazanias today but don't they look good!
Tomorrow I will reposition my pots to ensure that the plants get adequate sunlight. Our backyard is small with tall fences all around. It is east facing so in winter it does not get a lot of sun.
Today is the "pull up the tomato plants" day. There are still tomatoes on the bushes, but the plants and the fruits have had their best days. To be honest, the freezer is choka-block full of them and I am just a little over tomato salads. I haven't made any tomato purees, passata, etc this year, as I find it just as good to just chunk the tomatoes and freeze - I can add any of the other flavourings into what I am cooking with the chunks.
Also, I must get some more seasonal planting done.
🧅 I am saving seeds from the flat-leaf chives to give to some friends
🌻 ditto for seeds from the hollyhock flower heads.
🎃 Pumpkins and cucumbers are still forming, so they are safe for a while. I have let the vines run wild amongst the fruit trees and they have taken full advantage of it.
Today we installed our new hose. It is 20m long and comes in a portable unit that weighs less than 5kg. The hose is soft and rolls back into the unit very easily by winding a handle. It gives a lovely spray of water that can be changed to half-flow easily by a slider on the handle. The handle has a continual rotator to change the water flow from a jet of water to a wide spray.
It doesn't leak at the tap connection.
I am no longer battling a garden hose!!! What a relief! And we can easily transport this to our front tap if we can get that tap working :-)
Here is the label in case you want to get one too. The wholesaler is disappointed with the sales in Australia so they are running their stocks down. Sadly, if it is not sold at Bunnings, it is hard to sell good garden products.
The hose comes in 10m, 15m, 20m and 30m from memory. #GardeningAU
Today I took the day off work and went with my mother to the Melbourne Flower and Garden Show. It was a beautiful sunny day and a perfect temperature for a stroll in the Carlton Gardens to see the exhibits.
There were also plants for sale including the Wollemi Pine (photographed here). It was exciting seeing so many of them and feeling their leaves. I wish our time backyard was big enough to grow one. #MFGS#GardeningAU#WollemiPine
This is part of my mother's garden. We are expecting three days in a row of 39 degrees maximum and minimum overnight temperatures of 25 degrees. The maple tree in the corner is starting to look stressed after weeks of no rain. This morning I put the hose under it for some time to give it a good, long soak.
In front is a path that my brother spent all week making for our mother using Dromana sands and coreten steel for edging. We are delighted with the job he has done. #gardeningAU#Melbourne#GardeningAustralia
This morning I was up early and watered our gardens, then went to Mum's place to check up on her, do some cleaning and water some plants that did not get enough when we watered yesterday.
There are so many things that self-seed in the garden. Flat leaved chives, for example. They are in flower now, and looking absolutely gorgeous. Bees love them.
In another bed, the flowers on the flat leaved chives are more advanced and setting seed. I'll cut these off in the next couple of weeks, and lay them on another bed over winter. Come spring, there will be more chives. The flowers are spectacular and attract the bees, so it is good to spread them around.
I have not been sharing many garden updates because a more typical #Melbourne summer has arrived and we are battling weeks of no rain and some days over 35 degrees (nowhere near as bad as #Perth though).
I have been very busy with family and community projects but fortunately my husband has stepped in to water plants. Even so, as you can see in this photo of our #StreetGarden, the plants have shrunk and are really holding on quite grimly.
This is a photo of the other half of our #StreetGarden - again with shrunken plants battling to stay alive through the dry weather #Melbourne has been having and a number of 35+ degree days.
During our mild and wet December and January I was starting to think I had been ridiculous with my rule of no planting during summer until the equinox arrives 20th March. But now we have had weeks with barely any rain and so my rule still holds. I am thinking that it is easier to garden through winter than summer here.
Plant-choice is crucial for street gardens where you cannot guarantee ongoing care. The council's choice of the drought-tolerant gray-leaf gazania is wise. Our group chose succulents and the hardy 'Big red' (sorry I don't know the proper name) geranium plus some salvias. The nasturtiums we planted have died down but there are lots of seeds in the garden ready to germinate when the time is right.
But the garden is still working beautifully to deter people dumping big pieces of rubbish there like before. I can cope with dealing with the little bit of rubbish that has floated on the wind (pictured).
This is a photo of the same #StreetGarden last Spring. Compare that to the previous photo and you can see how even the drought-tolerant gazanias have shrunk.
We have another week coming with no rain and a variety of temperatures from quite cool today (expecting 21 degrees) to 37 degrees predicted next Saturday.