Lots of Sydney gardeners will tell you that we don't really have four distinct seasons here. We kind of spend most of the year in a lovely, mild warm season, then it gets cold for half a dozen weeks in the middle of the year, and horribly hot and humid for another half-dozen weeks around this New Year time of year.
In the same sense, we also don't really have one particular "peak" season, as cool climate gardeners tend to enjoy each spring. We enjoy several little peaks every year, and right now, in the middle of the horribly humid and hot time, when we're almost tropical in every way, well-watered Sydney gardens go berserk. Which is what our garden is doing now.
So here's three "panorama" style wider-angled photos of midsummer madness in Sydney. Hopefully if you click on each photo, it will come up a lot lot bigger.
Using my iPhone's nifty "Panorama" function, this photo starts on the left with the rather ghostly looking sight of Spanish moss covering the bare branches of our recently carked-it ex-grevillea. On the left is a patch of cucumbers, chillies and assorted flowers. Big frangipani rear left, and on the right is a lemon tree, succulent patch, basil, Thai chilli, lots of geraniums and assorted others.
Taken from the other end of the path, this is the succulent patch, and beyond that are basil, shallots, geraniums behind, and mint bushes behind the geraniums.
The dominating, broad-leafed thing in the left foreground is the "Cute Cucumber" which has spread far and wide, and produces about four or five new cucumbers to harvest every day. The yellow flowers are hardy marigolds, the white and reds and New Guinea impatiens, and the blue is salvia. Herbs include chives, garlic chives, thyme and the lovely big lemon grass in the background.
And so there you have it. A well-watered Sydney garden loving the heat.
One handy tip right now for Aussie gardeners is to keep on watering pots well, especially on days when "a few showers" are forecast. Usually the showers do manage water the soil a bit, so you might not have to use the hose, but these light showers hardly do anything for potted plants, which can dry out amazingly fast in the summer heat. So I water my pots every day, unless it is truly pouring rain.
4 comments:
Hi Jamie! are the cucumbers you are growing designed to be "Ground dwellers"? I have mine on a trellis and they seem ti like it there. Have you ever grown Zucchini? If yes, what is your experience?
Hi Therese
No, the cucumbers are meant to grow on a trellis, but mine was too small and so the plants are spreading everywhere, climbing up over other plants. All the ground underneath is well mulched, so the cucumbers we harvest from the ground are clean and nice. We have so many cucumbers right now! We're harvesting a few every day, sometimes four or five.
As for zucchini, yes we're grown them here several times. We plant just a couple of seedlings in spring and they really thrive in November, December and January, producing too many fruit for the two of us. Then in February, when it gets really humid, all the leaves are attacked by powdery mildew, which doesn't affect the crops but it does make the plants look bad. Zucchini also spread a lot, so I give them lots of space.
What a beautiful garden you have.
Thank you BeaJay!
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