Sydney's first pops of spring

One of the great things about gardening in Sydney is that winter is still a time for growing things, planting and enjoying a few pretty blooms that like to flower in the cooler months. None of that cliched bleak snowy winter malarky down here!

Then again, we still do get the best of both worlds, in that there's a genuine burst of energy that accompanies the longer sunshine hours and warming temperatures of spring. So here's just a small selection of what's blooming here right now.

I can't show you all of them because I have postings lined up for later in the week about Pammy's plants, some of which are flowering now. And there's also a posting on the plants belonging to Pam's lovely old mum, and they're flowering too. 

Our Australian native Dendrobium orchids are flowering their heads off this spring, and it's with a real sense of relief that I say that — because they didn't flower at all last year, and that was because an awful orchid beetle was chomping everything it could find. Such rotten timing, too, you rotten little orchid chomper!

The rotten part about the orchid beetles is that when I looked up in my garden pest reference book, it seemed there was little I could do, especially if I'm dedicated to organic methods. Bugger! So this year as the flower buds swelled I was out there, not sure what I was looking for, but I was out there anyway! Maybe I scared them off? One of the side effects of this lockdown season is a lack of haircuts and beard trims from my barber, so maybe I was just so scary looking that the beetles snuck away?

There was no need to worry about chomping beetles tucking into our Pieris japonica blooms.

This little potted plant is a fighter. It does best in cooler zones (my friends Eric and Jane up in the cool Blue Mountains west of Sydney have glorious big Pieris hedges.) But down here on the humid coast the Pieris struggles through our summers. I have it growing in a pot so I can move it from here to there as the seasons change. Right now it's getting all the morning sun it wants. Later on, I'll give it more shade as summer's intensity ramps up. 

Look carefully at this photo of one of our hellebores. Yes, it's a bit blurry, so I was about to go outside and take a better one, but then I noticed sitting on top of the big green leaf was the hellebore plant's resident spider, the concierge, wanting to know what the hell I was doing. I'd been there for more than an hour weeding and mulching, and he had just about had enough of me. So, I decided that he was perfectly entitled to photo-bomb me!

Here's the fruits of a rare venture in online plant shopping: baby hellebores looking quite healthy and happy but no flowers yet. Maybe next year, but nice to know the kids are all right.

Finally, two plants which have admittedly been flowering all through winter and are still looking fabulous in spring. Now I am not certain exactly what type of bromeliad it is. Its botanical name is Aechmea fasciata, and it came to me via a lovely neighbour who was moving house. He came across to my place several years ago, told me he and his husband were downsizing and so they couldn't take all their plants with them. Would I like this one? I've never repotted it, fed it, cared for it or anything. As it's next door to my potted lime tree which I water often, the bromeliad does get watered often, and it loves life. I think it actually started flowering last autumn ... but time is getting very blurry around here. It just goes on and on and on ...

What a modest claim to fame: "Plant of the Century". That's what the label says (see below). It's a real geranium (ie not a pelargonium) and its name is 'Rozanne', voted Plant of the Century by some mob called the Royal Horticultural Society. It certainly loves to flower, and it's been flowering ever since I bought it at our local garden centre at the beginning of winter. And it doesn't look like stopping any time soon. 

There you go, a plant label that catches the eye with sheer modesty

And if you can read the back of the label it says the plant should grow to 50cm high (20 inches) and 60cm wide (two feet). Pam asked me this morning "Is it a groundcover?" because it's still hugging the ground while slowly spreading out in all directions. I await its decision to suddenly shoot up to that lofty 50cm size, but this certainly is the most delightful flowering plant I have met in ages. The deliciously pretty flowers just keep on coming, and coming and coming. If you see one in a garden store, buy it! I should have bought two ...

 

So there you go, folks, our springtime show and tell. It's all happening here right now, beautiful weather this Sunday to be out there in the garden, even if all you're doing is reading a book, snoozing or maybe just thinking "I guess I could do a bit of gardening sometime soon."

Position, position, position

If there's one thing I have learned in a few decades of gardening, it's this: put a plant in a spot that it prefers and half your worries are over. 

Now, some plants are so versatile and tough that they make a mockery of this rule and proceed to grow beautifully in a dozen different spots.

But there are many other plants for which the real estate agents' mantra of "position, position, position" remains the golden rule to gardening happiness, and pictured below is one such happy camper: Pieris japonica.

Our Pieris started flowering last week and is still building to its late winter crescendo, but already it is showing off sprays of its delightfully dainty bell-shaped blooms. It looks like this will be its best year, but that isn't saying much, because the plant is about four years old and this is the first time it has appeared to be truly happy.

In the three previous years, I had the pot in other spots in the garden, and none of them truly suited the Pieris. This year's spot is now its official happy home, and here it will remain for as long as it lives. 

Here is the pot in its current, preferred spot. In the first year I had it in too much shade, and it produced very few flowers. In the second year I let it get scorched by the sun, parts of the plant actually died and it looked awful after I pruned off the dead bits. In the third year it went back to shade but didn't get quite enough morning sun, and didn't put on much of a show, but it did seem happier. This fourth spot, however, seems to have everything it needs. 

First of all, there's lots of gentle morning sunshine. Second, it gets midday filtered light (from the canopy of the lime tree overhead) and third, there's no afternoon sun at all (blocked by the western fence, and the big bird's nest ferns nearby).

The rest is up to me, and it isn't much work. Watering is the main job, but adding some slow-release fertiliser is essential, but I also find that if I am watering nearby vegies and I have some leftover liquid food in the bottom of the watering can, the Pieris gets a little extra feed occasionally.

Is that all? No, actually. The other special trick is that I bought a huge amount of 50% strength shade cloth, and during summer, when a nasty Sydney scorcher is forecast, I cover the whole pot with shade cloth until the hot, dry weather ends. 

In previous years I didn't use the shade cloth and the plant suffered on hot days. As mentioned earlier, whole branches have carked it in summer, so the poor plant has had a bumpy ride!

It has been worth it, not just because these flowers are such lovely little baubles, but also because this is one of "Pammy's plants". She bought it as a baby at a local florist's shop and brought it home, handed it over to me, fixed me with an "it's your responsibility" gaze, and ever since then I have been trying my best to look after her beautiful little Pieris japonica.

This has mostly been a story about finding the best position for a tender, slightly fussy plant by trial and error. But you can't blame the poor Pieris for that. It's not an Australian native, and Sydney isn't really its ideal climate, either. 

It's native to eastern China, Taiwan and Japan, and is found there in cool climate forests, where it gets the filtered light and moisture that it loves. My north-east facing Sydney garden is too hot and open for it, but we've found a way to keep it alive and a spot that it seems to like.

If you have a more shaded garden, and especially if you are also in a cooler climate zone, this is a lovely plant to grow. There are lots of named cultivars with flowers in other colours, too. And out of a pot and planted in the ground, it can grow 1-2 metres. I prefer to keep it in a pot, simply because a pot allows me to move the plant around the garden until I find a spot it likes.

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.

Signs of recovery

"It's not a garden, it's a hospital ward." That's how one friend described her garden full of sick plants, and I have thought of her during the last few months while I have been nursing our sick Pieris japonica back to health. Beneath my veneer of seeming to be an organic goody two-shoes, I tend to be quite a ruthless gardener. Sure, I'll tend to unwell plants for a while, but if they seem like a hopeless case, then out they go.

But not the Pieris. It's one of "Pammy's plants" and so I am duty-bound to do my best with it. She brought it home one day, from a local florist's shop, and handed it to me to add to our garden. Nice plant, but deep down I suspected it'd be trouble ... 

Here's the patient in full bloom this morning. The glossy green leaves look pretty healthy, too, so what's the problem?

The other half of the plant is dead. In fact a few months ago I cut off the whole back half of the plant as it was dying rapidly. This left us with an ugly, lop-sided patient to care for, but the good news is that there are signs of hope!

Here's the lush bronze hope-inspiring foliage sprouting all over the back half of our Pieris.

The great thing is that there's not just one or two new sprouts — the whole plant is covered in new baby growth. The acid test will be how the plant goes through the next Sydney summer, which I suspect will be a hot and dry one.

When Pammy brought the Pieris home last year I knew I was in for a challenge to keep this plant happy. You will occasionally see healthy Pieris growing in Sydney gardens, so it's not impossible, but my starting point was knowing that this plant prefers cooler climates than Sydney's. Pieris does better further south and up in the mountains.

So I decided to keep it in a biggish pot, and place the pot in a warmer spot in winter, but a cooler spot in summer. Whatever I did was wrong, as half the plant died off over the summer. I cut out all the dead bits, then moved the pot to a sunnier spot for the winter, and plied the plant with seaweed solution every four weeks. The seaweed (eco-seaweed) is not a fertiliser. It's a plant tonic that encourages roots to grow, and generally lowers stress in sick plants. 

I also kept up the water to the pot, without water logging it, and finally it started to show some growth as the spring warmth arrived.

One tip with sick plants is NOT to feed them if they are not showing any signs of growth. Just keep adding seaweed solution. Once you see some positive signs, like new foliage, then start a gentle feeding program, and only then.

So I've given the pot a single dose of liquid organic-based feed (Powerfeed, mixed up and watered in via a watering can), and have followed that up with some slow-release fertiliser pellets that will trickle down food over the next three months. Once the summer comes on, I'm looking for a spot that gets morning sun but shade for the rest of the day.

Wish me luck. As it's Pammy's plant I am trying extra-hard to keep it happy. I feel like I'm a doctor with a tricky patient. This is not a good space for a gardener to occupy but sometimes you have to nurse plants back to health. 

I'm trying everything. Pam's mum, Val, says she talks to her plants and she's a green-thumb with two verandahs full of happy plants. So I'm going to start talking to the Pieris, just in case Val is right.

Springing open

It is nice having a full set of senses – you know, smell, sight, touch, taste and hearing – but when it's spring if you were a poor unfortunate down to just one sense or two, you'd definitely know that spring has arrived.

Take smell, for example. It's the worst one to start with because your sense of smell would tell you that this keen gardener has sprinkled far too much chicken poo under his citrus trees, and it is taking days for the farmyard stench to die down. I know this might seem a tad unsympathetic, but bad luck! The limes and lemons need a feed ...

So let's move on that far more delightful sense of sight, and I'll show you some nice photos of spring flowers doing their thing in our garden at the moment.

Now, this one is an official "Pammy plant". It's her potted Pieris japonica, and it seems like the position we have for it in morning sun, with afternoon shade, is just what the Zen master ordered. Though it's Pam's plant it is of course my sacred duty to keep it happy, and so far it hasn't been too onerous a task, even if it remains a heavy responsibility.

A much lighter and cheerier story is the rebirth of our potted New Zealand Christmas bush (Metrosideros), which always flowers months ahead of the baby Jesus' birthday. A year ago this pot plant looked like it was gone for all money, so I cut off the top three-quarters of it, repotted the stump into fresh mix, plied it with Seasol and soothing vibes, and like Lazarus, it's back!

And it's not just a couple of flowers, either. The whole thing is covered in buds, and we're back in the Kiwi flower business.

And yes, my favourite flowering plant in the whole garden is doing its thing again. Last time I did a blog, which was a month ago, it was about this Scadoxus and its little clump of babies, so I thought I'd slip it down here to Page Five of this blog, just so I don't seem too obsessive about them. But the flowers are all about 90% open right now, and the show is on again.

You can always rely on our succulent patch to have something interesting or weird (or both) happening, and right now the yellow blooms of our Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons' are the star attraction. 

Finally, good old Geranium 'Big Red' is in bloom not quite "again" ... it's more like Big Red never stops blooming, and so it's "still" in bloom. Every now and then it has a pause-ette for a breather but then it's back in action pumping out the red highlights in no time. What a wonderfully healthy, fuss-free, colourful and happy thing it is. 


And so that's an update on the beginning of spring here. I know that I won't be able to resist showing you more of the Scadoxus once the whole tribe has opened up, and the Pieris japonica deserves a posting, too. I'm hoping to lift my current sluggish rate of one post per month back up to a more respectable one per week, but no promises, mind you. I kind of like this "monthly" pace, it suits my semi-retired lifestyle.

So much happening

I am in awe of those garden bloggers who keep on slogging away, doing a posting every day. Me, I'm down to one posting a week at best, but at least I never seem to run out of things to write about and photograph. (I'd quickly run out of things to post about if I had to do one a day!)

However, right now, I could do a blog posting every hour, because there is simply so much happening in the garden right now. And don't be surprised if, over the next few weeks, I do individual blog postings on each of the plants I'm about to show you.

Just to make things easier for me to wrap my little head around the topic, I've divided this "so much happening" post into little categories.

First up, the NEW ARRIVALS

Not one but two new curry trees. I bought one
pot and realised it had two plants in it.
Fortunately their roots weren't entangled so
potting them up was easy. Expect a curry
tree blog posting soon, folks.

Our good friend Jolanda has a superb little
patch of mint bush by her front steps, and we
loved its purple spring flower show, so we have
planted three of these behind our geraniums. 

Pammy brought home a Pieris japonica in
flower a few weeks ago. We left it in its pot while
it was bloom, and now it's in a bigger pot and,
judging by the new growth, is happy enough.

Hardly the most exciting purchase, two punnets of blue flowered
salvias, but about two months from now they will start to flower
and they won't stop till autumn is almost over.

next, the FOOD GARDEN GETS GROWING

Lebanese zucchini, the light green, chubby smaller ones. So far
so good, with the first flower buds (boys only) showing.

A miracle! Our unproductive passionfruit vine, now into
its third summer, has for some reason decided to produce
quite a few flowers lately. Could this be our first decent crop?

Here's last season's crop in action. Yes, folks,
one flower and one - just one - fruit. This has
been my biggest dud of a food growing story
in 25 years, but I am determined to see this
thing finally produce a decent crop.

Just had to include this fragrant, lovely thing.
The more I water my potted rosemary bush,
the happier it seems to be. While in the ground
it's a classic "waterwise" plant that can survive
on rainfall alone, in a pot it's a thirsty sook.

Another miracle! Our Serrano chilli bush has
somehow survived winter. I gave it the mother
of all cutbacks five weeks ago and for a while
it didn't look like it was going to bounce back,
but now it's producing foliage and flowers,
and so I think it's a red hot goer for this summer.

And the first strawberries of the season are starting to appear
and colour up. As is a tradition in our garden, our strawberry
plants come up as "volunteers" out of our homemade compost.

Finally, FOLIAGE AND FLOWERS

The Louisiana iris is slowing down, but there
are still new blooms to enjoy every morning.

One of the greatest concentrations of onion weed and oxalis
in the Southern Hemisphere – our succulent patch – has been
cleared (temporarily I am sure) of the weeds and a new (and
prettily ineffectual) layer of pebble mulch has been spread.
At least it will look very nice for at least the next month!

Just like our sooky, thirsty, rosemary plants, our supposedly
waterwise trailing pelargoniums absolutely love a drink.
It's an Australian thing, I guess, once someone arrives in
Australia they just seem to start drinking more ...

Be careful if you are buying pots of Lamb's Ears (Stachys).
This is what one 3-inch pot planted in Spring 2014 has
turned into, without any encouragement from me. This lovely
grey beauty looks like it's about to flower, and from previous
experience seeing it in flower in other gardens, bees love this
plant's flowers in a big way, so I am hoping it will attract a
zillion bees that will then fertilise all my passionfruit flowers.

And last but definitely not least, what I like to
think of as "Pammy's office garden" has survived
the winter and is now ready to enjoy the summer.
Why "Pammy's office garden"? Well, all the
plants here have done too well inside the house in
Pammy's studio/office, getting too big for their
pots, and so when that happens they are retired
out here, where they are then cared for by me.

As I mentioned long, long ago at the beginning of this posting, don't be surprised if you find yourself reading another posting on these individual plants over the coming weeks.

I never go out into the garden thinking "gee, what am I going to blog about next?". I never know in advance. Something just catches my eye, or happens, or doesn't happen and most of my blog postings just write themselves, and are mostly already written in my head before I ever head back inside. But this morning it was a simple case of "so much is happening" that I realised I had a good dozen or more blog posting ideas all at the same time.

Spring is like that ... so much happening in the garden. It's wonderful.