Summer holiday

Time does bounce along, doesn't it? It's been more than two months since I last posted anything here, and that's because I've been on a summer holiday of sorts.

No, we haven't been travelling much, apart from a short holiday break down on the NSW far South Coast. Instead, I just haven't felt like adding anything to my little gardening blog for these last 10 weeks. The garden is in summer mode, that is to say it's as thirsty as can be, every known pest and bug is doing its best work right now, and this little gardener is merely helping where he can, watching it all unfold.

So here's a little update on just a few things happening here, more for the record that any earth-shattering insights.

In its first full summer here, the baby frangipani which I've dubbed 'Serendipity' isn't breaking any records for speed of growth, but as you can see, it's a beautiful bambino.

Sometimes you have to measure success in terms of sheer survival, and this Pieris japonica is looking remarkably chipper despite having to spend summer in hot and humid Sydney. There's new growth everywhere, and last spring's dead bits, which I simply cut off, are well hidden by greenery. One secret to keeping this alive on scorching hot days when the temperatures reach into the high 30s and beyond, is that I have made a little shade cloth cover for it and pop it on whenever the weather forecast is unfriendly to delicate petals which would rather be under a cool forest canopy, if given the choice.

I'm not sure what the minimum allowable size is for a meadow, but I am hoping that four feet by four feet makes the cut. Even if not, I am also considering this a minor success, at least as a lesson in persistence, which I do believe is a close cousin of pig-headedness.
These simple little daisies are Zinnia linearis, grown from seed. I couldn't find the seed I wanted from any seed growers online, or in garden centres, so I bought a packet on eBay and they were complete duds. Hopeless. Nothing came up. So I tried online again, and second time round a grower in California came to the rescue, and her/his seeds sprouted well. I was hoping for yellow flowers as well, but I am OK with white and orange only.

I do love the way bromeliads quietly go about their business of producing outrageous flowers. This one is tucked behind the Thai lime tree and I like the way that it's in a "backstage" position in the garden and so very amazing when you finally discover it.


Meanwhile, in the vegie patch, all is quietly ticking over, and my only problem is the usual one of the backyard vegie gardener: Gluts.

This is far too much silver beet for two little people to eat. We've been harvesting lots, but that only makes it grow more, and quite frankly we're a bit silver beeted out. 

We also do not suffer from any shortages of purple/white striped/speckled eggplants.

I am currently fooling myself into believing that I've finally got on top of radish production, sowing just half a dozen seeds at a time, at spaced intervals of time.


However, I have saved the best for last. Well, it's not the "best" for everyone, but it is the one summertime gardening project which I've been most interested in. It's the little fern garden out in front of the house, sheltering under the dappled light of our wide-spreading Cootamundra wattle "ground cover" tree.

Last time I posted about this the begonia cuttings were just bare stalks stuck in the ground. Now they've sprouted their spotty leaves (which are a lovely deep red on the underside). The native violets are winding their flowery way here and there. All the ferns are well and truly alive and growing, and so too are the spidery trails of Spanish moss.

It's still quite hot and humid here in Sydney. In fact February is generally a rotten month to be a gardener here, so I don't expect to be very busy.

However, I was getting a minor sense of guilt over my slothful ways, and so by posting at least something, anything, I hereby announce that the 2018 garden blogging year has started, and all is well.

Crop dusting

Anyone who grows their own vegetables soon learns that you can get a "glut" of produce from just one or two plants. In our case, that's especially true, as there are only two of us to feed and the plants are happy and well-fed. Like most vegie gardeners with a glut of goodies, we do the usual thing and give away our excess produce to family and friends.

Now, all that makes sense, so what I am doing trying to produce even bigger gluts by hand-pollinating the flowers on my eggplant and cucumber plants? Madness is the simple explanation, although gluttony might be more fitting — however "glutton for punishment" is bang on the mark.

We only have one eggplant plant and one cucumber plant here, and so I want each to be productive. But as far as the many bees in my garden are concerned, I am a deeply annoying, interfering busybody. My organic-gardening, bee-friendly heart might be in the right place, but my presence is simply not needed. My plants probably do not need to be hand-pollinated, the bees are doing that job well, and yet still I can't help myself.

This photo is a slight fudge, in that it was taken last year, but it shows what is happening right now in our garden. This native blue-banded bee is about one second away from landing on one of last year's eggplant flowers. I tried to get a shot of him in action this morning, but he moved too fast. As well as the native bees, we also have quite a few ordinary honeybees buzzing about.

So, why am I hand-pollinating my eggplant flowers? Well, last year I didn't think the conversion rate from flowers to fruit was all that crash hot. I know our garden has lots of other bee-attracting flowers, and maybe the short-lived eggplant blooms are low on the list of highly bee-attracting flowers? The bees just adore the salvias and frangipanis, and citrus and grevillea flowers always pull a crowd too ... but my totally unscientific observation is that our humble purple eggplant flowers don't seem so alluring. Last year's crop was not a glut!

And so I wandered into my garden shed, found a small hobby paintbrush, and wiggled it into each and every eggplant flower, hoping to pollinate every single one of them by transferring pollen from one flower to another. Time will tell if my gratuitous interference produces a better crop.

Of course the stupid thing is how can I tell if any eggplant baby is my handiwork or due to natural forces, such as the blue-banded bee? I can't!

The eggplant plant itself is happy and healthy, and so I just hope it has a good life here.

Most mornings we harvest a little bit of this and that. Here's our morning bowl-full of cucumber (1) Lebanese zucchini (4) and eggplant (1). Not exactly a glut, but you can't eat zucchini and eggplant every meal, and so they do build up, you eat out once or twice instead of cooking at home ... and before you know it you have three cucumbers, three eggplants, and a dozen or more zucchinis ...

Filled with enthusiasm, I got out another hobby brush and went all over our little cucumber plant. I am sure the ladybird cleaning up a spot of powdery mildew was wondering what I was up to. Interfering humans! Now, our cucumber bush is more than productive at the moment, so this "help" from me is utterly unnecessary. But did that stop me? Sadly, no. Just can't help interfering, especially when there is only one plant here.

Same deal here. Which of these baby cucumbers is my handiwork? I'll never know, and it doesn't matter, of course, as long as we get a good steady glut of too much produce!

Crop Watching

Gardeners often talk about how they notice climate change's subtle effects on plants in the patch under their care. I do, or at least sometimes I do. When flowers appear at weird times of year, crops appear much earlier or later than usual, you can't help but wonder if a change in the Earth's climate might have something to do with it ...

.... And then my whole theory is ruined by other plants operating like clockwork. This morning, the figs are ripening, bang on schedule. Last year I posted about them ripening on January 11, and this morning, January 11, there's several of them ripening up nicely, swelling to double normal size almost overnight, then turning reddy brown once fully ripe. That's almost far too clockworky for me — I think I might be growing climate denialist figs!

My figs, apparently, don't read the papers or listen to the evening news. As far as they are concerned, it's business as usual here in their latest Sydney summer. I love the way they tend to ripen one at a time from each branch cluster. Once we pick this one, another of those other little green ones on each brand will take its turn to ripen. Very orderly.

Pam is the fig aficionado around here, and it's her job to harvest them when she thinks they're at their peak. Of course she might bring the harvest ahead a day or two if our local birds start to show a perfectly healthy interest in a bit of beaky crop-theft.

Elsewhere, our crop watching is in full swing. This lumpy looking cucumber is a bit like a fig in that it suddenly swells up in size in just a few days. Two days ago it was a scrawny little spiky green, unpleasant looking thing half the size of this whopper. I suspect that by tomorrow morning it will be even larger and on our kitchen benchtop, ready to eat. All those yellow flowers around it are cucumber flowers, so I think we're going to have a cucumber glut on our hands by the end of the month.

Progress is more mauve coloured and genteel on the eggplant bush. It's sent out a dozen or so of its simple potato/tomato/eggplant family flowers, and hopefully our local busy bees will pay them a visit. (This is where the "no pesticides" part of organic gardening reaps its rewards — good numbers of bees, who pay their way in the scheme of things by providing a stack of crop-pollinating services.)

Here's a baby eggplant in its creche, starting to grow. These are the common variety 'Bonica', the familiar largish eggplants you see most commonly in the shops around here. 

I've got a whole posting to come about making ratatouille, but I'll save that up for a few weeks from now, when we harvest a few eggplants.

Last day of summer? Not here it isn't!

February 28 is, for people who put their faith in calendars, the last day of summer here in Sydney. Tomorrow, March 1, is when autumn begins. Well, I don't subscribe to that faith at all.

I prefer the way that summers end at different times each year, the way the season flickers out like a candle with a few late, warm days popping up to surprise you. And then one day you feel that special chill that says "it's autumn now and winter's not far away" and you realise summer ended a while ago, on no particular day.

So, at this stage of the year our garden is of the opinion that summer has several weeks to go before the party's over. It's a time when herbs like to flower, crops turn to gluts and there's plenty of colour wherever you look. I always like the simple little herb flowers in particular.  

Wild rocket flowers at the tips of its thin, gangly stems.

Broccolini is meant to be harvested before it flowers, but this
one beat me to it. I only planted the seedlings three weeks ago!

Basil mint is a tussie mussie of tiny blooms.

Eggplants show off their potato family heritage in a pretty hue.

And they're cropping now in purpley-white abundance.

Every day I pick a handful of red Serrano chillies that I swear
were deep green only the day before.

As well as all the edibles producing their little spots of colour, many ornamentals are a pleasure to be around at the moment.

New Guinea impatiens, which we've mass-planted under the
grevillea in the hope they suppress weeds better than the thick
mulch has abysmally failed to do. So far so good ....

Frangipani

Grevillea 'Peaches & Cream'

Ivy geranium

More ivy geraniums!

Blue salvia

Bouncing back

Thankfully, summer temperatures here in Sydney have returned to something approaching the norm following the record-setting 45°C scorcher a few weeks earlier. A few plants carked it in the days after the super-hot day, notably the cherry tomatoes, but some other plants have put on the most incredible burst of growth since then, powered by a good dose of several days of summer-style showers-and-sunshine combos. My eggplants in particular seem to have taken that heatwave day as the signal to get growing.

Here's the happy little person this morning,
one of three I have growing here, and all of
them are putting out lots of lush new foliage.

This is how the foliage looked on the day after the
45° scorcher. All of the leaves which curled
and burnt after the super-hot day have fallen from
the plant, provoking the new growth spurt.

Flowers are popping out everywhere. Aren't
family resemblances one of Nature's delights?
Just one glance at this flower says eggplants
and potatoes are Solanum clan cousins.

Baby fruits are everywhere too. This purple
and white-striped variety is 'Listada di Granada'
grown from seeds bought from Digger's.

I've often read that eggplants like the summer heat but I had only understood this as meaning "grow them in summer". However, having now seen how they have responded to that outrageous heatwave, I now know that eggplants don't just like summer heat, they thrive in it.