New blooms in the jungle garden.

This year we grew corn for the first time in our garden, it was the honey and pearl variety and though I only grow my veges in raised beds I still found room to grow the corn in one of the beds, the seeds all germinated, and we enjoyed having fresh home grown corn for tea. I will definitely be making room for more corn in the garden next year, and may even grow a larger crop in one of the bigger beds.

What other veges are growing at the moment? Leeks are almost ready and I planted out another lot of leek seedlings for late winter /spring harvest, Rhubarb is starting to die back now as we have had a couple of quite hard frosts over the last week or two so I will be harvesting some of that later today. The Kale and Silver beet plants are making very slow growth will try giving them some compost tea to boost there growth a bit.

 Amazingly some of the roses are still flowering this Burgundy rose is one of my favourites.

This beautiful yellow rose is I think a David Austin rose, still flowering....

 Recently we removed a large native tree/shrub from our front garden which had grown so large it was shading over a few of the roses out the front, when we took it out we noticed two roses that had not flowered in the time we have lived here. (three years) Over the last few weeks they have produced these lovely blooms.

 Unfortunately like many of the roses here I have no idea of the names, and I think the yellow one below maybe a climber.

The front yard is now mostly all in roses and most of the overgrown trees and shrubs are gone, I have planted some Hebe's out in this area they should provide some contrast with the roses as they will be purple and most of the roses out the front are yellows.

Cool Autumn days.

This week I have started to pull out the summer plants that have died back, our weather here is becoming cooler in the mornings and evenings, we will be putting our clocks back an hour this weekend when daylight savings ends, so I will try to tidy up the garden while we are still having some warmer temperatures during the day, as I know in a month or two I probably won't feel like doing much.

There are still some lettuces coming on in the vege garden they have been enjoying the cooler temperatures and I have planted rainbow silver beet which I intend to give a boost with compost tea to get them growing a bit bigger before the winter.

I have been working at clearing some of the apple tree garden so it can be used more as a berry bed, it has two black currant bushes in it at the moment and I picked up a couple of gooseberry plants to put in here as well, so have been cutting back the shrub in here and I may dig it right out yet.
This is the pumpkin harvest not bad I suppose as there is not really a lot of room to grow too many sprawling plants. We are still eating our own potatoes but they will probably be finished by the end of the weekend, and the runner beans have grown so big they have turned into a leaning tower of beans, I will let some dry on the vine so there is seed for next year.

Autumn ramblings

For weeks I have been meaning to put out another post but it just never seemed to happen, the camera batteries were flat and then one of the kids had borrowed the charger to charge batteries for toys, but no one was prepared to say who was using it, however it re appeared in its usual spot over the weekend. So instead I have been reading lots of other interesting blogs.

So what has been happening on the vege front?

We are still eating our own spuds from the garden though there is only about one row left now, we are harvesting the painted lady runner beans which are very tasty you can't beat fresh from the garden. Pumpkins are fattening up though they don't look like what I was expecting perhaps they have been cross pollinated with the squash?

This weekend I planted some more leeks and rainbow lights silver beet seedlings, and a couple of weeks ago I planted out Tuscan kale and broccoflower seedlings this should keep things going over the winter months. What sort of plants do you grow over the winter ?

I will endeavour to write a short post later in the week about the apple tree garden which is currently in the process of being overhauled.

Happy gardening.

Who is Mary Washington? and the naked lady?

Who is Mary Washington ? She is the name of the new Asparagus corms I bought and planted out last week.

Four years till we can harvest Asparagus from these corms I hope it is worth the wait.

When out in the garden last week I noticed this strange stem appeared from the depths of the flower garden, I had no idea what it would turn out to be, this is the first time I have noticed it before.

And here it is flowering, some type of pink lily, it looks as though it is going to get some more flowers as there are more buds coming from the back of the stem.

After searching the internet it turns out it is a Belladonna lily also known as the naked lady because it has no leaves on the stems.

In the vege garden:

What have we been harvesting from the vege garden this week lots of tomatoes, spuds and more rhubarb our pear tree is laden with fruit that is not quite ready, and I will be keeping an eye on it over the next couple of weeks.

The big wait

For a few weeks now the tomatoes have been a good size, but because our weather has not been very hot this summer the tomatoes have been slow to ripen, so when the first tomatoes started to show a bit of colour it was time to get the camera out. These tomatoes are Brown cherry.

Over the weekend I picked and ate some of these yellow tomatoes they are a heritage variety not too acidic and lovely and sweet. I have noticed they are the first to ripen and don't seem to get diseased as quickly as many of the other more modern variety's.

What have we been eating from the garden lately? Rhubarb, dwarf beans yellow and purple varietys, courgettes which have been growing a bit weird this year looks like two stuck together, and now finally tomatoes.

Here are the pots of salad and carrot seed sown a few weeks ago, the lettuce will be ready to start cutting in a few more days. Next month I am looking forward to some new spuds, and we have a tree covered in pears which didn't have any fruit on it last year hopefully might be able to get some out of the high branches to see what they are like.

Going Potty... growing food in pots.

Much of the garden down the back is in flower at the moment, it is looking very pretty indeed and it changes so often each week there is something new to see.

The vege garden is doing well we have had some rain over the last couple of weeks which has given the garden a good deep soak, we are harvesting dwarf beans and courgettes most days.

The tomatoes are a good size but have not coloured at all I think it just is not hot enough for their liking, bring on the sun shine.

Last week I went a bit potty and planted several pots with seed that I have often had trouble growing in the raised beds, so carrots the small round baby variety have been sown into some pots, along with radish and lettuce. Often when I plant them direct into the soil the birds seem to dig up many of the seeds. They tend to leave the pots alone.
Below is a bowl with frilly lettuce on the right, they have germinated already thanks to a few warm rainy days . Reiley is still waiting for the carrot seed to germinate in the other bowl.

Tomorrow is Reiley's birthday she will be turning the ripe old age of four, where has four years gone?

Will post some more pot photos so you can see the progress.

The January Jungle

Purple Hydrangeas and the rustic little bird house.

A new vista in the jungle garden, gone are the overgrown shrub and rose by the path now you can see right into the back.

Blackcurrant cuttings taken from my mums in November they have lots of new growth already.

Painted lady runner beans and honey and pearl corn are enjoying warmer days.

One giant sunflower, planted by one of the small gardeners that like to help out when the mood takes, often resulting in some higledy pigledy planting schemes :)