Hooray, wet day!

Rain on the tin roof, a beautiful sound. We're almost getting average amounts of rainfall this year, but such has been the effect of the drought that the sound of rain still sends a thrill through me every time I hear it, as if the drought is breaking anew each time. So this amateur photographer and gardener heads outside as soon as the rain eases off...

Canna lilies after a dip in the above-ground ocean.


Pig Pen, otherwise known as Gardenia radicans, on its one day of good clean fun...

But in no time the crispy white gardenia blooms turn to sludge. I like the blending here of the shining pure optimism of youth, and the seedy decay of partied-out old age.

Here's the finishing touch we've been waiting for with our successful two-year program of striking a frangipani from a large cutting and transplanting it this spring. The first flush of sweetly fragrant white blooms with the lemony centre is a happy occasion.

The sole survivor of last year's successful Coleus Corner operation has really got going in the last couple of weeks, piling on a lot of growth and an almost impossibly complex leaf pattern. Quiet achiever, this one.

And the last couple of days of rain has prompted a pot full of chervil seeds to do their thing.

The climbing 'Blue Lake' beans have begun to flower, and the first beanette has made an appearance. Vegies have such lovely, complex flowers, I'm very fond of them all.

Silver beet looks handsome at all times, and after a shower of rain I just feel like peeling off a leaf and munching on it there and then.

The Eureka lemon is flowering away now, setting fruit too. But I think I'll remove most of the fruit so it can get on with the business of growing a bit more as a tree.

I could swear this ladybird was going from one little patch of powdery mildew to another on this zucchini leaf. I watched it for a minute or two and it went from one whitish spot to the next. Either there's an extremely tiny bug in the fungus that I cannot see, or the fungus itself is delicious. After all, we eat mushrooms and truffles! My organic milk spray is preventing the powdery mildew taking over the other zucchini plants (and the rest of this plant, too) but it works mostly as an effective suppressor of mildew's spread, rather than eliminating it altogether when it occurs.

Already the sunshine has returned, but it was lovely watching the rain fall down, the sky crackle with lightning and low clouds boiling with their dark grey, ferocious energy. It's hard to begrudge the sun and the clear blue sky the next couple of days to themselves, either, as everything grows with such verve right now. But it will be a thrill once more to hear the hiss of rain on the old tin roof.

Stinky and his pals

The things that pop up in your garden sometimes! Out of the sugar cane mulch this afternoon arose this little temporary red tower, a stinkhorn fungus. As far as the flies are concerned, Stinky the Stinkhorn is Mr (or Ms) Irresistible. That alluring stench of rotting flesh does it for them every time.

When you look at them close up, flies do have the most remarkable colourings. Sure, if you've really got that inbuilt biological hatred for flies and refuse to see any good in them, you could say the colours look like an oil slick in the sunshine, but if you just see them as an indispensible part of the ecology of managing waste in the environment, flies do look quite pretty.


So too does Stinky. Has a slight pagoda/temple look to its little turret of temptations, and the two-tones of pink are very newborn-fresh, perfectly suited to its short but colourful stay here on Earth.

Whole crowds of flies can't believe their luck. A big dead pink thing – wow! Little do they realise they're helping the fungus to reproduce, carrying its spores to new sites after they've climbed all over it. Try as I might I couldn't actually smell anything that resembled rotting flesh, but the experts assure me that's what a stinkhorn does, so I'll just have to take their word for it.

Happy accidents at the potato patch

I can't take any credit for the excellent confusion I have caused in my potato patch, but I am delighted at the prospect of how the next month or two of spud harvesting might pan out. It all began the other day with the sudden decline of just one plant in the potato patch. It had been obviously damaged by something, as it had almost snapped off where it poked out of 'The Hill' and was rapidly going yellow and shrivelling up. A recent windy day is the likely culprit, but the constant backyard midnight cat fights cannot be entirely ruled out. There was no alternative – an early one-plant harvest was called for.

And this is some of what came out of the hill. King Edward potatoes, now washed and in the pink of good health, even if a few of them are still just babies. Total weight of the premature harvest was about 900g, not too bad for a lot of tiddlers plus a few teens and not many adults.

I love that pink skin of the King Edwards. Soon after pulling them out of the hill I washed a couple, boiled one and par-boiled the other then pan-fried it. Yummy all round, both ways!

Here's The Hill where the King Edward clan lived. It's roughly a 50:50 blend of home-made compost and sugar cane mulch, and as I bandicooted around inside the hill looking for Kings in Hiding the soil felt cool, soft and just lightly moist. Lovely earth.

The other potato plants are either still flowering, or have just finished flowering, so from everything I've read they're still a long way from being ready to harvest. I had read that you can start bandicooting around for baby spuds after the plants stop flowering, but if you want a maximum-size, full-flavoured crop, wait until the plants start to fade away. So my premature crop of King Edwards confirms all that, as most of them were still babies. Here's one of the other plants, and it's still green and lovely and lush.

On the other side of the patch some potato plants are still flowering, so they won't be feeding me for a couple of months, I expect. The fact that some are flowering and some finished a week or three back makes me suspect that they are different varieties. At the end of the blog I'll explain how I managed to not have a clue what variety is growing where...

While I was taking a snap this afternoon of the flowers and the hill, a ladybird wandered into the frame.

And while it's not the clearest action shot you'll ever see, the ladybird then decided I was mere garden paparazzi and didn't want to be on the cover of Ladybirds 4 Lads.

The wonderful stuff-up of this potato patch is all a result of my impatience and impetuosity. Simply, I'm not sure what potatoes I'll get until I pull them out of the hill. I was expecting a Kennebec today, and I got a King Edward!

Let me explain. I wanted to grow Kennebec potatoes, because I have very fond memories (from living in Tassie in the late 1970s) of Kennebecs baked in their jackets at a Steakhouse in Ulverstone, run by a mate of mine. When I ordered my spuds earlier this year I ordered far too many, going for Kennebecs, King Edwards and Dutch Creams. Just one bag of seed potatoes would have been enough. I ended up with three bags and realised my mistake when I read up on potato growing after ordering the spuds. Oh dear!

Then the Kennebecs wouldn't sprout for me in my little 'chitting' spot. The King Edwards and Dutch Creams did sprout fairly readily, so I planted them. Very, very belatedly, the Kennebecs did sprout a few weeks later, and as none of the other spuds already planted had yet appeared above soil level, I thought "what the hell, Kennebecs in too". So I dug around a bit, yanked out a couple of the others to make way for some Kennebecs, and planted some of the sprouted Kennebecs.

What I've ended up with is a mixture of all three types in a tiny little potato patch that's just 1.5m x 1.5m. I'm not sure which plant is which. I've downloaded some excellent potato mug shots from my supplier, Tasmanian Gourmet Potatoes – http://taspotatoes.com.au – so I'll find out what I'm having for dinner that night when they finally come out of the Hill, and no earlier. Kind of makes it more fun, actually, but that doesn't make hopeless confusion a great plan or anything...

Succulent city - part 2

To start part two of my little succulent stocktake, I think a photo of the haphazard jumble of pots that is Succulent City is in order. Like any self-respecting city, it has grown like topsy without much town planning. It has suffered storms, has had whole streets knocked down by developers (ie, me) to make way for grander structures, but it still survives and thrives. Here it is, this afternoon...

Most of the pots here are not sitting on the ground. They're about three inches off the ground, sitting on a crude but effective little platform built from timber and wire mesh, to improve soil drainage all-round. With the improved drainage, most of the plants have thrived (makes me feel like I've been a responsible mayor by sewering Succulent City!) This is about the sunniest spot in my garden, all-year-round.

The photo of Crassula 'Campfire' which I showed in the previous succulent post was of that plant in midwinter, when it was at its reddest. This is how it looks this afternoon. Mostly green, but growing quite well. Maybe I was a bit harsh in my judgement about it. It has grown a fair bit since then.

I think this is Gasteria bicolor, but I could be wrong. It's definitely a Gasteria, and it is bicoloured, too, but that doesn't mean anything in the long run. For me, the most important thing is that it's happily growing and multiplying in its wide, shallow former bonsai pot.

The best I can do in naming this sunny personality is to call it Faucaria. Still working on the species name. I like the way it looks like a Venus fly trap, with its little rows of teeth.

These succulents have me completely bamboozled as to their correct name. I think it's an Echeveria, but it could be a hybrid with a graptopetalum – ie, a Graptoveria. Or it could just be a graptopetalum.

Ditto this one. Echeveria, Graptopetalum or Graptoveria hybrid? Nice colour, though. The rear pot is a bunch of cuttings getting up a head of steam.

Haworthia attenuata, a plant which has probably thrived the most since I created my elevated plinth of timber and wire. Really loves/needs good soil drainage.

I'm pretty sure this is a Graptoveria (the hybrid of Graptopetalum and Echeveria), but I just had to include this rainy morning shot again, as the gathered raindrops look more like some kind of clear jelly.

The same plant viewed from a more respectable distance.

I'm sure this is a Gasteria, and it's probably G. bicolor.

This is the attractive late winter/early spring flower spike of Gasteria bicolor.

Lurking in a less than ideal spot towards the back of Succulent City is this Kalanchoe 'Flapjacks', a plant which seems to suffer a lot from mildews, yet refuses to die. I just don't have a good spot left for it, yet it soldiers on.

Within the gaggle of plants here, I do have some favourites, and this Kalanchoe tomentosa is definitely one of them. A willing grower that's easy to strike from cuttings, it has wonderful, furry leaves.

The K. tomentosa's furry leaves are soft to touch and so animal-like. The original plant, which we bought on some long-ago driving holiday, has spawned a few dozen offspring which have gone to homes all around the country, as visiting friends took pieces home.

I've no idea what this purple spreader is called, but it's not doing as well as it should, and so it will soon get the universal cure-all for underperforming succulents: repotting. That does the trick more often than it should, too. Each of these little rosettes is no more 2cm across.

Pictured above and below is the same flower of a Pachyphytum, with different backgrounds courtesy of two larger pots in the background, sitting side by side. First up: luminescent blues!

With the background of the dusky pinky-brown pot next to it, the mood changes.

And here's the proud parent of the flower pictured above, this Pachyphytum is growing very rapidly indeed since this photo was taken about three months ago.

Another "I'm not sure" plant of the "could be Echeveria or some Echeveria hybrid" type.

Lurking in the background, in the ground, not a pot, is this Sansevieria, or mother-in-law's tongue. It gets no encouragement or help from me, and slowly gets bigger. Got to admire that. It seems to like the dappled shade where it lives.

Pictured above, the two different forms of Sedum spectabile 'Autumn Joy' growing here today - the green-leafed form and the purple.

This is how it looked in its first autumn here, earlier this year. I think this plant does a lot better in cooler climates than here. I brought it back from a friend, Amanda's, garden in Kyneton, Victoria, where it thrives. It did pretty well here in its first year, died back in winter, and is now bouncing back well in its second spring. Cool climate gardeners often rave about its performance, so I'm keen to see it do well here.

Cheery little Sedum 'Jelly Beans' occupies the lower apartments in the Crassula 'Coral' hi-rise block. They're very fragile and drop little beans if bumped in the slightest way, and these then sprout to form new plants very readily, just where they fall to the ground.

Sempervivums are another of my favourites. They grow well, don't complain, look great, multiply readily and have an interesting history as 'houseleeks', planted onto roofs of European houses in earlier times. I think this is Sempervivum tectorum.

Coming back well in rehab, this is Senecio jacobensii, a trailing succulent that belongs in hanging baskets or tumbling over walls and banks. A fierce autumn storm knocked this delicate plant into tatters, and I'm starting again from the scraps which I picked up off the ground. In the middle of winter, it produces superb purple foliage.

Finally, here's Stinky the Stapelia, a new addition to Succulent City, given to me as a cutting by Pam's good friend Audrey, who lives in Yass, a country town near Canberra, our national capital. Audrey's Stapelia is a big, healthy clump of stems, so they must like the extremely chilly winters that Yass gets, and the hot, dry summers there too. Why Stinky? Well, Stapelias are a carrion-flowered succulent, sending out star-shaped flowers which smell of dead flesh. The crook smell attracts flies which then help in the pollination process (instead of bees).

Before I sign off on all this succulent mania, I should give a plug for the great blog called "A Succulent Obsession" by a Canberra resident. He has some wonderful succulent photos and his blog is well worth visiting. There's a link to his website on the right here in my blog links.

As for my succulent growing tips, there are a couple. Sunshine and good potting mix drainage are super important. 

However, equally important is watering them. In their native habitats, many succulents experience wet, cool winters and hot, dry summers, so I simply never water them in summer here in Sydney (as Sydney really is too wet for them already) but I do water them a bit in winter if things have been dry. I tend to also replace the potting mix fairly regularly, as it tends to become over-dry and water-repellent by the end of summer, and when you start watering the plants in winter the potting mix won't absorb any moisture and the plants don't get any benefit from the water. I don't find that wetting agents are all that helpful for rewetting dry potting mixes, and I prefer to replace the mix if the plant is struggling in any way. The discarded potting mix goes into the compost heap, so it isn't wasted.

I do also use a specialised Cactus and Succulent liquid fertiliser in early spring, then again in late spring. Not too much, but just a little booster in the growing season. They don't seem to grow much in summer, so I don't fertilise them then, but I do give them another light liquid feed in early autumn, when they tend to do a bit more growing once the summer is over. I'm not sure whether that's the right thing to do or not. In fact I've never read much about fertilising succulents anywhere. It's just what I've noticed and have decided to do. The fertiliser pack encourages you to feed them all through spring and summer, but somehow I suspect they just want you to use lots of their product, then buy some more. Succulents live in poor soils in the wild so they don't get much fertiliser apart from a trickle down from rain falling on animal poo and decayed plants and leaves. But potting mixes really are barren places after several waterings have washed any nutrients away, so I think the occasional feed is a good idea during the plants' growing periods.

Succulent city – part 1

Plant labels are hardly the most informative of documents at the best of times, but when it comes to succulents, all you usually get is the very unhelpful word 'succulent' and that's it. Thank goodness vegie seedlings don't just come labelled as 'vegie'! Anyway, here's my little stocktake of what I think I have, courtesy of the few succulent books I have and good old Google. I've divided the blog into two parts, just to handle the workload.

This general shot is what I love about succulents. Lots of foliage colour, a great array of forms, and plenty of personality. In the foreground, the green plants are young Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and in the background, a gaggle of Aeonium cuttings that are doing just fine.

Aeoniums all seem to have the rosette shape, but colours range from green through to reds, maroons, purples and blacks.

Had to add in this photo, as lots of succulents look lovely in the rain.

This is an Agave attenuata with offspring. These dramatic plants can get enormous in the right conditions (I've seed some growing on the NSW South Coast that were each over a metre in diameter). Mine are kept in pots and will never roam free...

A while back I detached the Agave attenuata kids and potted them up. They're doing OK.

And I also took the opportunity to repot mum into fresh mix. Here she is recovering in the maternity ward after a successful delivery.

The sheer variety of crassulas is amazing. This one is Crassula 'Babies Necklace'. It should have been named something to do with pagodas, I say. I think its correct name is Crassula perforata, with an alternative common name of skewer plant.

Crassula 'Campfire' won my heart at a garden show about a year ago, and ever since then has disappointed. It was this wonderful, rich red colour when I bought it, but it needs a really cold winter to make it this stunning colour, and so most of the time is a fairly plain green. This plant died back rapidly at the end of last autumn, and this is all that I was left with in winter. Since then some cuttings rescued from the autumn decline have bounced back in spring, so I'll see how I go this season. I'm probably doing something wrong...

Crassula argenta 'Coral' is happily increasing in size in its pot, underplanted with colourful little Sedum 'Jelly Beans'. 'Coral' has fat, stout branches and interesting, seemingly hollow leaves.

This is what I mean by those interesting hollow leaves on 'Coral'.

Crassula argentea 'Variegata' shows another leaf shape again, as well as an interesting colour. 

Pam bought this at a plant stall in the Blue Mountains last summer. The seller had planted the poor thing into heavy clay garden soil in a plastic pot (which we didn't realise at the time). It rapidly took a turn for the worse about a week after getting home. With sick succulents I often find that repotting cures a variety of mystery ailments, and it did the trick here, too. Belting along now. At first my Googling told me this plant was Dyckia, but my new book on succulents says it's Kalanchoe daigremontiana.

This Kalanchoe daigremontiana is a wonderful weirdo. Here's a close up of the bract thingies on its leaves. They are in fact plantlets, says my new succulents book, and later on it should produce nodding grey-violet flowers. Can't wait. 

Viewed overhead as if I am some kind of gardening space module entering docking procedures with the mother ship, this Kalanchoe looks like it's ready to gobble up anything that strays into its path.

A far more benign look, the common echeveria is an especially lovely blue-grey colour.

The alternative name for this Echeveria secunda is hen and chickens, and here's mother hen with her little brood of chickens. I'm planning on letting this gaggle of echeverias to spread out and fill this pot over the next year or two.

Echeverias are a bit like Crassulas in the variety of leaf forms they show. This one is called Echeveria 'Topsy Turvey'.

That's it for part one of the tour of Succulent City. Some time in the next few days I'll do the rest of the alphabet, plus a couple of stragglers which I've just realised I should have included here. Quite a few of my plant I.D.s here are just my best guesses from Google, so if anyone reading this spots a blunder, let me know.