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.

Tibouchina madness

I have a crazy plan, and please don't tell me not to do it because I've already gone ahead and done it. Caution and craziness are total strangers around here. The craziness is my plan to save my little, struggling Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby', which I originally blogged about here, in April last year.

Poor thing, it's battling to survive, and as far as I have heard from others growing it, it's not just me who is having trouble. Let me explain, and I'll start with a nice photo of it back in happier days.

Not long after planting it in April, it began to flower, and it kept on flowering all the way through to September. I now suspect this was mistake number one. Instead of settling into its new home, all it did was produce flowers, and not new roots.

After the briefest of breathers it began to flower again in early summer, and at first I thought "what a marvel". And then the foliage started to yellow (as you can see in the photo above, taken in midsummer). Some light fertilising with an organic food, combined with a seaweed emulsion, didn't have much effect. By autumn all the flowers were gone, lots of leaves had dropped or turned yellow, whole branchlets (well, it is a tiny thing, only about 30cm tall) had died off. I cut off all the dead bits and kept up with the applications of seaweed emulsion (Seasol, which isn't a fertiliser but is a tonic for stressed plants that helps root growth).

And now for the crazy plan, which I implemented about a month ago. I pulled off all the flower buds. And I'm keeping at it, too. After I took this photo I spotted a few more flower buds, and off they came.

I see this poor little plant as being like a precocious child stage star, forced to perform for the public at far too tender an age. In the non-plant world the human child stage star becomes a burnt-out drug-addicted has-been by the time they reach 18, if they're still alive. In the plant world the plant just dies young.

And so, my crazy theory is that my little Groovy Baby needs to have a happy childhood doing nothing but growing its little leaves and roots and settling in until it gets to its full size, which is a very modest 60cm (two feet) tall and 80cm (two and a half feet) wide. Only then will this recently-reformed strict parent allow it to flower. Well, that's the theory!

So far, I am sure that it's looking healthier already (parents are so optimistic about their youngsters). It's putting on new growth, and so I am very lightly feeding it once a month with half-strength organic liquid food, plus a half-dose of seaweed tossed in for good measure.

Only time will tell, so this time next year I am hoping to be able to announce an exciting new teenage flowering sensation, 'Groovy Baby', is ready to dazzle the world with its purple-powered show. Wish us luck!

Morning bloomshine

I wandered outside this morning, camera in hand, planning to get some more photos of the flowers on my succulents for an upcoming post on them. But I was so distracted, captivated is more like it, by some of the other flowers in bloom now that here I am blogging about them instead.

The star turn right now is Pam's dark-leafed pelargonium. You can barely see the leaves not only because they're so dark but also because of the covering of dazzling pinky-salmon blooms. "It needs repotting" says she who owns the plant, to he who has to keep it happy. Not until if finishes flowering, Pammy, and that won't be for a while.

I blog on so often about the poppy patch that I feel like I must be boring everyone silly, but it's such a source of pleasure here. They've been blooming for months now, and they won't stop for at least another month at least. Here's one that's only minutes from popping, next to a self-sown 'wild' one (these always show up during the last month or so of each poppy season).

Deep inside each poppy bloom is a lolly shop for bees. While bees usually just dab their paws to get some pollen from other blooms, I often see bees actually rolling around in the wide dishes of poppy pollen and covering their whole bodies in fluffy yellow dust. They look like they're in a delirium of pleasure.

Looking into the wild poppy reveals complexity and mystery aplenty.

If it's possible for the sage flowers to look better than they did two days ago, when I last blogged about them, then they do.

Twin throats of sage are ready for insecty visits.

While I'm admiring purpley-blue blooms, I might as well toss in yet another flower of our newish Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby', which started blooming in late autumn and is still at it in early spring. This is a new dwarf tibouchina which grows only 60cm tall, and so far it has been utterly prolific with the flowers, and it has also managed to grow a bit too.

Well, sometime soon I'll finish the photos I need for that succulent flower posting, but as for what to blog about next, I voted with my camera lens. I blame Pam's pelargonium for starting it. It really is dazzling right now. It's a plant she brought back from the Florafest Festival in 2009, and while it looked quite nice back then it has really come into its own this year. That happens with some plants. They take a year or two in their new home before they announce to the world "hey, I like it here."

Looking on the bright side

As a gardener, I don't think I could make it through one of your North American or European winters. Too long, too cold and too quiet for me. I like action! Even these last few weeks of chilly weather (by Sydney standards that is – we almost had a frost last week – unheard-of cold!) had got me wishing the lull would all be over soon. What nonsense, Jamie! So I thought it was time I slapped myself in the face and said "snap out of it, kiddo, there's plenty happening out there, and there's lots to look forward to as well." I needed that good talking to! Really did, and so here's what's happening out there in Amateur Land this morning.

For starters, there are things in flower, if I had only bothered to look. My snazzy new 'Groovy Baby' tibouchina is loving its new home, and this morning it gave me another cheery purple smack on the cheek. Thanks, Groovy Baby, I needed that, too!

And the plant the Chinese people call the money tree (a succulent Crassula) is in bloom. It's said that the Chinese plant these to bring prosperity to their homes, and I guess Pam and I are prosperous after all.

Mrs Lithops' countless fans will be pleased to know that she is back where she belongs, at the head of Succulent City, where her recent fame has elevated her to election as Mayoress of that small, quirky metropolis.

On the other side of the pathway, and elsewhere, crops are cropping. This is my patch of coriander, sown from seeds saved last spring. To keep the plants bushy, snip off as many leaves as you need that night in the kitchen, and feed every few weeks with an organic liquid plant food. That's the trick with herbs – use 'em or lose 'em.

The lemons are wonderfully juicy, if not plentiful. I severely reduced the number of lemons on the tree, so it could put most of its energy into just becoming a tree, but the few fruit which have been allowed to mature are very fine specimens of the humble lemon, if I say so myself. These very squeezable, juicy lemons provide the perfect excuse for everything from buying another dozen oysters through to crumbing and frying another chicken schnitzel.

Elsewhere, there's the promise of things to come, and pleasure of seeing familiar friends returning. Pictured above, a small, delicate and seemingly indestructible cyclamen is poking through the mulch once more.

Close to the lemon tree, the hellebores are growing new leaves, and around the end of winter and the start of spring, they'll start flowering. It was back in May that I cut off all the daggy old-season leaves, to make room for the next season's foliage, which was starting to poke through the centre of the clump. A good feed with chicken poo back then, some winter rain and now they're back in business.

In various other parts of the garden, bulbs are living out their life-cycles in different ways, but the nice thing about bulb stories is the very great likelihood of a happy ending. These are the brodiaeas, blue-flowered things busily growing their foliage prior to the appearance of the blooms in mid spring, October I suspect.

And these are the scadoxus bulbs showing all the signs of being willing to do it all again.

This is a photo from last spring, of what the scadoxus do best. So that's something to look forward to as well. I think I've got over those midwinter blues now. There's plenty to look forward to, and in a sense it's already happening, only slowly.

Even this seemingly sad sight of yellowing leaves cheers me up. Well, it cheered me up when I found out that this is exactly what this Louisiana iris should be doing right now. Like any self-respecting bulb it needs to die back, build up its stores of energy, then burst into blue-flowered bloom later on in the year. I'm glad I cleared that one up. It had me worried for a while.

And finally, those who regularly read my blog might recall that Pammy recently gave me a microscope as a wedding anniversary present. Well, I took about 20 completely crappy, blurry, useless photos of things as viewed through my microscope, but this one, the 21st photo, came out OK. Unfortunately, I am not sure what I did right, so I am not really any closer to nailing microscope photography, but this photo should be entitled 'Hope' because that's what it gave me. Its more prosaic name would be 'Mouth Smear', which just doesn't some up its significance very well at all, does it?

So, there you go. Midwinter chills, I thumb my nose at you! I can hear the chatter and activity of Spring calling me already. Won't be long now before the party starts again.

Purplish patches

We're not exactly swamped with flowers at the moment, but that relative scarcity of blooms allows the few performers to have the stage all to themselves. And right now there's a pretty little bluey-purple show going on.

All Sydney readers will know this photo wasn't taken today, as it's pouring with rain at the moment, and all of us Sydney gardeners are going 'Yippee, rain at last!'. No, this is a sunny Sunday morning shot, with the early morning sun lighting up my little village of succulents (on the right) and its protective pathside forest of purple-flowered alyssum. The alyssum in the pot comes from seed I sowed there a bit over two months ago. The alyssum outside the pot is self-sown – such a pretty little paving weed, isn't it?

Not far from the alyssum the newly planted Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby' is having a wonderful time settling into its new home, even sending out an outrageous bloom every now and then. If it could talk I'm sure it'd just giggle.

New growth everywhere, flowers, flower buds and hopefully more flowers, so far so good.

Such a powerful colour, purple. To my mind, when at it's best, it evokes a sense of celebration, maybe even extravagance. But at it's worst, it can be trashy and gaudy. I guess it's just how you use it in the end that matters. Just a couple of little purple patches now, when nothing much else is in bloom, seems about right. They have the whole garden to themselves and they certainly are lighting up the joint right now.

Purple monsters

You can imagine our excitement when our newly planted baby shrub popped out its first flower. In this case it's one of Pammy's shrubs, her Tibouchina 'Groovy Baby' which we planted only a few weeks ago. But wait on, what are those holes in the flower? And who's that wriggling around on the anthers?

Of course, it's the purple flower munching monster, disguised as a caterpillar. He/she probably is also responsible for the nifty holes in the petals. These are caused by the purple flower monster drilling down into the flower bud for a feed, before the whole thing unfurls.

Tatty swiss-cheese flowers and purple monsters couldn't put a dampener on our excitement. The little tibouchina is roaring along, sending out new leaves. The weather right now is as autumnally perfect as you could possibly wish for here in Sydney, and as the plant obviously wants to do some growing, I treated it to a gourmet feed. As for any other purple monsters wanting to attack our baby, be warned, we're on the lookout for you guys!

That's groovy, baby

Sydney's summers are very prettily bookended with purple showers. In spring (November usually) backyards throughout the city shimmer with the pale-purple blooms of magnificent, spreading jacaranda trees. And now, in autumn, it's the turn of the tibouchinas to provide a similar carnival of colour to farewell the summer. You can find tibouchinas in bloom in virtually every street here right now, and their version of purple is a stronger, bolder, more tropical hue, and the plants themselves are a fair bit smaller than the stately jacarandas.

The problem for me is that until now, I have run out of space in my garden and don't have anywhere to plant a tibouchina, but now all that has changed. A very small dwarf form has just been launched on the market, and I just planted one this morning. And my darling wife Pammy is so very pleased about all this, as it's another one of 'her' plants in our garden.

If some of you are saying to yourself "Tibouchina, never heard of them" perhaps their former name of Lasiandra might ring a bell? Like the jacarandas, tibouchinas are also originally from South America, but they are very much at home here in Sydney's warm climate, and they love things to get even warmer, thriving all along the subtropical coastline up to Brisbane and beyond. When in bloom, the trees are virtually covered in these simple, open blooms which are about two to three inches across.

This one belongs to my neighbour across the road and it's the typical size you see here, about 3-5 metres tall on average, but some species can grow a fair bit bigger, say 8-10 metres, in an ideal spot.

While jacarandas are a popular street tree in many cities and towns here in Australia and also overseas (eg, Pretoria in South Africa), tibouchinas are not used so often in this way, but about two suburbs away from me there is one street lined with tibouchinas, and this is how it looked this morning. It's no wonder Pammy likes these plants, but we just don't have space for even one extra 4 metre tall tree. And then I worked on an article in our magazine about the new dwarf tibouchinas, and when Pam saw little 'Groovy Baby', that was it. We were getting one.

This is such a new release that it's only coming out in limited numbers this autumn, and more are scheduled to be produced in time for next spring. In fact, none of our local nurseries had even heard of it, but I tracked down the supplier, spoke to the sales guy, gave his details to our local nursery, waited two weeks, paid $10.95 for it on Thursday, and I planted it today.

'Groovy Baby' promises to grow just 60cm (two feet) tall and 80cm wide, but I don't trust or believe plant labels, and so I am hoping it might even stretch to 80cm tall and 1m wide if I look after it very well. There are other dwarf tibouchinas around here in Australia, such as 'Jules' which reaches about 1 metre tall (but often exceeds that) and the new Jazzie and Carol Lyn, both of which are a bit larger than Jules (about 1.5 to 2m). All of them would be too big for the spot I have available.

Planting was easy, but I do have one or two little planting tips for shrubs which might be useful to someone about to plant a shrub or tree.

1. Don't add anything to the planting hole: no fertiliser, no compost, nothing. Sometimes too much fertiliser can burn tender young plant roots, but at other times an over-fertilised planting hole simply stops the roots from growing down and out in search of food. If roots are already surrounded by food, why go elsewhere?

2. The ideal size for a planting hole is the same depth of the pot's root ball (in this case about 6-8 inches) but at least twice as wide as the pot's root ball. So, don't dig too deep but by all means loosen all the soil around the plant, get rid of rocks, weeds etc.

3. Don't cover over the existing root-ball's soil surface with any more soil. Try to get the plant into the ground so its soil surface is the same as the surrounding soil.

Having managed all that, I watered the plant in well with a watering can mixture of a seaweed solution (in this case, Seasol), then I mulched the whole area. I won't be feeding the plant at all until it shows some signs of growth. At that point I'll give it some slow-release fertiliser. It has a few flower buds on it, so we're hoping for a early splotch or two of purple from our little 'Groovy Baby'.

And right now, when I say 'little' I mean teeny weeny. When it grows up it's going to fill that space, and so my job will be to regularly trim back the ever-encroaching grevillea on the left, and the thyme motherlode that's just barely visible on the right, to give Groovy Baby the space to get going.

Autumn is probably the very best time to plant things here in Sydney. It's a mild season and the soil is warm, so plants settle in well. Later on, our winters are mercifully mild and so by the time spring comes around I am hoping Groovy Baby will really get growing, and by this time next year Pammy will finally have that dazzling purple patch she has waited for so long.