Waking up in winter

Yawn ... stretch ... no Garden Amateur posts since June 18? Yes, we've been taking a little midwinter break, but this morning, August 1, is such a mild, sweet morning that all Sydney gardeners know spring is not far away. So it's a good time to wake up the sleeping blogger.

Out on our streets the magnolias are bursting out in pinky purples, the wattles are dripping with golden bling, and here in our little backyard there's colour everywhere you look. On with the show ...

Several of our succulents are colouring up, and this
Kalanchoe 'Copper Spoons' is flushed all over with coppery
new growth on a shrub about 70cm tall. So classy.

Bromeliads such as this Vriesia are the ideal plants for non
gardeners to grow in Sydney. Just shove them in semi shade,
pretty well ignore them, and they will then do this in winter.

Our "groundcover" Cootamundra wattle in our
front garden is at its colourful fuzziest right now.

Growing poppies for Pammy in winter has become a tradition
that I hope will last forever.

Our pot of Aeonioum 'Schwartzkopf' offcuts
that we are striking seem to have taken.

Crassula 'Campfire' is a succulent which
really colours up in winter. It's green when
the weather is warmer, but red for just a
month or two in midwinter.

Same deal with the trailing hanging basket
succulent, Senecio jacobensii. It's green in
summer but wears purple robes to ward off
the winter chills.

Finally, even our silvers are shining right now. The Spanish
moss which Pammy looks after, draped from the bare and
otherwise scrappy looking branches of our Grevillea 'Peaches
and Cream', always look superb in the early morning sun.

All the cliches of the seasons, of winter's bareness especially, just don't apply here in Sydney. And that's how I love it.

Wandering star

As the autumn finally delivers its first wintry chills, the succulents start to colour up. One of my favourites, which I've mentioned before, is this person, Senecio jacobensii. Normally yet another blog posting extolling the beauties of its pinky-purple-tipped foliage would be par for the course at this stage, but this year I have news to report. 

My senecio is starting to wander. All over the place. Into the shadier regions, and out into the sunshine. It's a rapidly spreading star in our garden and 2014 is the year it has come out in all its glory.

I'll always think of, and thank, gardening writer
Cheryl Maddocks for giving me this plant, a
little guy in a pot. Thank you Cheryl.

This is what I mean by the 'wandering' bit.
In our succulent patch it has sent out arms
onto the pathway, where it's hotter and sunnier,
and back past the lavenders and pots of herbs,
which is a bit shadier. It's out to conquer the
whole garden, I think, but as a slowish-grower
 it's unlikely to be a threat to its neighbours.

The way it branches off looks a bit like a suburban railway map.

Measured from one end to the other it's more
than six feet long, and counting.

For its first few years here, that spreading
quality was put to good use in hanging
baskets, where it drapes itself languidly over
the edges.

Its one drawback as a hanging basket plant
is that is does get knocked around a bit by
heavy winds. Every now and then whole
branchlets break off in howling winds, but
when that happens I always remember what
a country-resident friend said about wind
doing all the pruning on his property. And
so after the storm damage, new arms of
senecio appear a few months later.
Its great advantage as a hanging basket
plant, though is that it lives on rainfall alone.

The cool season colour is just starting to blush
now on the groundcover plant (the hanging
basket is the one with the stronger hues, shown
in the opening photo on this posting).

Have you ever heard of the term 'ear worm'? It's one of those songs which you can't get out of your head. So, ever since I thought of doing this blog posting, calling it 'Wandering Star', I have been tunelessly mumbling/humming that old Lee Marvin hit song, his gravel-voiced version of 'Wandering Star', from 'Paint Your Wagon'. It might have nothing whatsoever to do with a pretty pink-blushed groundcover succulent, but it has been the soundtrack to my gardening weekend, and having said that, I now hope it will go away!

Cool colour

One of the things I love about so many plants is the way they change colours throughout the seasons. Many succulents throw on their glad rags during winter, colouring up in all sorts of ways you'd never expect while they're surviving another long summer in their basic green outfits. Right now, one of my favourite succulents is giving just a flush of winter colour, and that's because we've had a very warm, dry winter here this year, and the chills have been few and barely caused a shiver.

This is Senecio jacobensii, a trailing succulent
that puts on a pinky-purple glow in winter. This
plant was given to me by a good friend, the Herald's
gardening writer, Cheryl Maddocks, who worked
with me at Burke's Backyard for a number of years.
Cheryl is an absolute whizz with succulents. It's so nice
to have plants which remind you of friends, and the
little cutting Cheryl gave me about six years ago has
turned into a pair of very healthy plants.

A hanging basket is the ideal spot for this trailing
plant, but it will also sprawl over a low mound
(and that's what Plant Number Two is doing over
in my succulent patch right now).

If I lived up in the Blue Mountains, or in Tassie perhaps, where frosts are common in winter, the colouring of the leaves would be much more pronounced. As our winter has been mild the colouring is only mild this year, but it's still a really lovely looking thing, one of the easiest-care hanging basket plants I have grown.

Saturday rounds

I love a good Saturday, and today has scrubbed up pretty well for fun. In fact, if I was allowed to choose a favourite day of the week, Saturdays would just sneak it in over Sundays, because for me I always seem to make my new discoveries when the weekends are young. On Sundays my brain switches off somewhat. Cooking eggs on Sunday mornings is all I'm good for...

Take this morning as an example. I was out there doing my 'Saturday rounds' of the garden, saying hello to all the inmates, including the ones I tend to neglect, or just presume are doing fine without me, for the other six days of the week. One classic case of such a neglected inmate is the ancient looking hanging basket down one end of the pergola, where a succulent planted there last spring is simply belting along now. But what's this I see on the side of the basket? From a distance it looked like lichen, so I just had to investigate...

Just a patch of green, still looked like lichen from a few feet
away, and then when I got up nice and close...

It's a moth, disguised as lichen. Haven't got a clue what kind of
moth it is (can anyone help out here with an ID?) but it looked
serenely asleep, and so that's how I left it.

There have been a variety of residents in this old twiggy basket
and the latest is this succulent, Senecio jacobensii. It has grown
like mad over spring and summer, as it started out in the basket
from a bit which broke off the parent plant which is in the ground
(broke off when I trod on it, that is). It was just a little piece that
went into the basket, but it has gone forth and multiplied very nicely.

This is the in-ground parent plant, which is also enjoying life
in the new succulent patch. These senecios should start to change
colour in winter, showing red blushes when the chills arrive.

Speaking of changing colours, this Crassula
'Campfire' which puts on an astonishingly
vivid show of pinks and reds in the cooler
months, is starting to turn already. 

We're also entering a purple phase here now
that autumn has arrived. This potted little
Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby' is a sickly little plant
which need constant attention, but then it
flowers its head off in spring and autumn.
Its bigger brother, Tibouchina 'Jules' is close by
and covered in flower buds, but it'll be another
week yet before it become delirious with colour.

When I say we're entering a purple patch I really do mean it.
Next door to the Tibouchinas, the Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender'
is in its pomp right now. It had always been hard to keep plants
under the canopy of our olive tree happy, due to the semi-shade
and the olive's big root system, but this Plectranthus just settled in
 from the start; a great plant for semi-shaded spots. It'll be
getting a major trim back in a couple of months from now
once the flower show has finally subsided.

Well, that's it for my lovely Saturday morning in the garden. I pulled out all the chilli bushes and eggplant plants, clearing the decks for planting some winter crops, but photographically that's all pretty dull stuff. 

Instead, to finish, what I would like to show you is my latest discovery in the kitchen. Now, I am sure most of you have heard of that South American grain called quinoa, which is very trendy right now. Well, there's a new 'next' trendy grain that's similar but different, called 'Freekeh'. Quinoa is an ancient South American grain, and Freekeh is an ancient Middle-Eastern grain. It's actually a type of wheat – young green wheat which has been roasted. Here's a link to the website of an Australian freekeh grower which includes info, recipes etc. The woman doing the video is a worry, announcing that's she's "your personal trainer in healthy eating", but if you're prepared to forgive her for that, it's a fairly handy website.

Our excellent local Middle-Eastern food
specialist shop, with the demure title of
Crazy Coffee and Nuts, stocks this Jordanian
brand of Freekeh, and I'm trying it out
tonight. Love the packaging!

Here's what it looks like uncooked. Just like wheat. It takes a bit
more time to cook than rice, is loaded with protein and other
stuff that's good for you (forget what exactly!), and I am planning
on making a salad as a side dish to accompany barbecued lamb
shoulder, combining cooked Freekeh, Puy lentils, currants, pine nuts,
coriander, parsley, chopped eschalots, olive oil and lemon juice.
Hope it all works, but I just love experimenting with new flavours! 

That's the other thing I love about Saturdays. It always seems to be the day that I end up having lots of fun in the kitchen in the afternoon. The quinces are almost ready (they've been slow-baking for five hours now – here's how I did them last year) and if all goes well with the Freekeh salad I'll update you on that little bit of Saturday living later on.

Succulent offerings

Rainy day at last in parched old Sydney, and so there's not a lot more for gardeners to do other than watch the gentle rain fall and greedily wish for a bit more rain (please, pretty please, Huey, open up those heavens). Even my succulents are enjoying the rain, and so I thought a quick (for me) five-photo lap of my succulent patch is a nice way to end this quiet afternoon, much of which has been spent in the kitchen, my favourite place of refuge on rainy days.

Without a doubt the star of the potted succulent collection is this person, Crassula 'Campfire'. Yes, I've featured it recently on my blog, and that's because every time I go out into my garden I can't help but popping over to visit it and say hello. And as I often have my camera with me, it's like a much photographed favourite child. Can't take too many snaps! The red tips are the seasonal colour. By mid summer it's just a pleasant lime green.

This is the new kid on the block. I suspect it's also a Crassula but I'm still trying to find out what it is. I bought it at our local Marrickville Street Fair recently, for $3, and it's still in its boring little black plastic pot, but I'll repot it in the next day or so. I prefer terracotta pots for succulents. As terracotta is a natural substance it 'breathes', just like a cotton shirt does, and so it's less sweaty inside than plastic pots, which are just like icky sticky nylon shirts. And I don't think succulents want their roots drenched in humidity. Well, that's my theory at least! I'm a terracotta pot boy at all times, even if the pots do dry out more rapidly.

This chap is thriving at the moment. It's a Faucaria, and I suspect its species name is tuberculosum, but I can't quite find any photos that are exactly like mine. However, the pix I've Googled of tuberculosum come closest, so I'm sticking with that for the meantime. Interestingly, I long ago christened this plant Jaws, and it turns out that the name Faucaria is a latinised version of the word for jaws, and the common name for this plant is Tiger Jaws. So Jaws it is. At first glance it looks like a carnivorous plant, but it's not. It's as ferocious as a kitten.

Finally, here's a little story of different foliage colours in the same plant. Both the plant pictured above and the one below are Senecio jacobensii. In fact one plant has been grown from cuttings taken from the other. But that was a few years ago and now I'm not sure which is the parent and which is the child. The one above has pale pinky-purple tips and light green leaves...

And the other one has much darker pinky-purple tips and seems a bit healthier all-round. The one I'll call 'pale guy' gets more sun, while 'darker guy' gets a bit less sun. Both are in same pots, same potting mix. Maybe the difference in the sunshine explains it all, but I have a sneaking suspicion pale guy isn't well. I'm keeping an eye on this pair...

Once the rain lifts enough for me to get outside I'll repot the new guy and maybe treat all of Succulent City to a light feed. Spring is a time when they put on a bit of growth and store up energy for surviving the summer. Their other growth spurt seems to be autumn, after summer is over. And that's one thing I think I've learned about succulents.

While they're famous for their hardiness in hot, dry weather, they don't seem to do their growing then. They're just in survival mode in summer, living off their stored-up reserves of moisture and energy. Many of them come from climate zones with dry summers and wet winters, and so they use winter and spring to get back in shape, then they survive summer's heat without trying anything fancy, then bounce back with a bit of growth in autumn, once the rains arrive. Or at least that's how I understand it.

So, if I feed them lightly now, with a specialised succulent liquid food which is low in nitrogen, that's about all the care and attention they'll need from me until next autumn, when I'll feed them again. Our fairly plentiful natural summer rainfall here is more than enough for their needs, and in fact sometimes it's too much and a few don't make it through the humidity of our summers. But right now they're enjoying themselves, and I'm enjoying watching them do so.