The early morning gardener

Of course it is impolite to eavesdrop on others' conversations, and I'm far too well brought up in the old-fashioned way to do it intentionally, but boy do I love a good accidental eavesdrop when you have no option but to listen to two people talking, close-by. 

In situations such as when you are seated behind people chatting loudly on the bus, or when the people at the table next to you in the cafe are doing the same, you do run the risk of being bored to tears by their inane chatter if they're talking about last night's reality TV show eliminations, but every now and then you strike a little bit of overheard "gold". 

Now, it wasn't anything gossipy or earth-shattering that I listened to, but it was funny to hear two people discussing "routines" as if they were discussing a terrible disease. In fact the whole conversation was hilariously devoted to these two people trying to outdo each other in how committed they were to having no routines whatsoever ... apart from their regular get-togethers at the cafe, of course.

In my advanced years I have come to a somewhat different conclusion about routines. At their worst, yes, strict routines can be debilitating in the same manner as a terrible disease, but at their best enjoyable routines can be as pleasurable as a nice cup of tea when you're thirsty.

And so, after no less than four paragraphs by way of introduction, I am very happy to tell you that I love my little early morning gardening routines. They're nothing special, it's mostly just watering the garden, actually, but there's an enormous amount of "noticing things" that goes on in its own infinite variety that makes this routine so special. On with the slide show of the pleasures of early morning gardening, plus a few things I noticed this morning.

So many plants and fruits look nicer with water droplets on them, and our little crop of baby figs shows that off very nicely.  


  

As far as mint is concerned, there's no such thing as too much water, but this healthy crop is mostly a case of job satisfaction for the savage pruning it performed on its straggly former self about a month ago. To stay looking lush and healthy, mint needs to be cut back down to pot-rim level several times a year.

One of my favourite vegies, this is "perpetual spinach". Yesterday morning I knew I was going to need some baby spinach leaves for a salad, so I picked the leaves early in the day, while they were still full of moisture. If I picked the leaves in the hot afternoon, the leaves would have far less moisture. Unlike ordinary spinach, this variety lasts much longer in the ground. It's "cut-and-come-again" spinach, and the only mistake you can make with it is to not harvest it often. Fortunately we use spinach a lot in cooking and in salads. These bigger leaves will be very nice as a cooked accompaniment to some salmon on the weekend. 

All this photo is about is that it's nice to check on the progress of new plants early in the morning and see that they're happy. These are New Guinea impatiens.

The gentle morning glow shows some plants in their "best light". A classic example is our potted NSW Christmas Bush, whose delicate "flower" colour is at its loveliest in the softer morning light. In the harsh light of the afternoon, it's a far less appealing, drowned out by the glare.

Impatiently waiting for the first fragrant frangipani of the season is one of my current pleasures of the morning. I love how frangipanis send up flower stalks and fresh new leaves in November. There's something "alien" about them.

Serves me right! I'm always telling people here at this blog that coriander doesn't like the heat, and will go from leafy to seedy in no time, once the weather warms up. And so what did I do? I planted some coriander sprouts in September, then watched all my predictions come true after a bout of very warm October weather. Even though I've lost my leafy herb, I have now settled on harvesting all the seed in a few weeks' time and drying it, saving it to sow over autumn and winter next year.

The early morning is a great time for crime-fighting too. Here's a bronze orange bug mugging an innocent baby lemon. Not any more it isn't.

Finally, the early morning is also the time when I get most of my bigger gardening jobs done. Yesterday I trimmed a hedge before the heat grew too oppressive. Tomorrow I am pulling down all six hanging baskets and renovating them in the morning. Weeds have colonised a few baskets where geraniums are meant to be the only occupants, and so after renovations are complete I am hoping for a much better flower show from them.


And so, if you have somehow managed to make it all the way to the bottom of this blog posting, take it from me that I love some of life's routines, especially my morning expeditions out into the garden. It's practical, in that I can get some little jobs done while the temperatures are still cool. I do wilt in the heat, I'm afraid, and so my mornings are when I get most of my gardening jobs done these days. 

It's a happy routine I am willing to advocate — if your mornings aren't taken up with getting the kids off to school, or yourself off to work. However if you are in a position to be in the garden for at least half an hour most mornings, give it a try, even if it means getting up out of bed half an hour earlier than usual.

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.

Ripening, who… little old me?

One of the things I like about growing food plants in my backyard is watching "how" they grow and come to maturity. Our fig tree is a marvel in the way its fruits suddenly swell and ripen, and January is always our "fig glut" time of year here in Sydney, when our fig supply is a time of plenty.

The baby figs appear back in spring, then slowly grow as green little blobs all through spring and the first month of summer. And then just one or two of them decide it's time to ripen. The others stay smallish and green while the ripening ones swell up like a balloon and change colour in just a matter of days. These smaller, green fig-ettes are a bit like people queuing, waiting their turn to have a go.

This is what I mean. The ripening one is on the left, while the
others pretend it's none of their business.

And seen from another angle, the size difference occurs almost
overnight. This one will be picked soon, before the birds get
at it, and once brought inside, our resident fig aficionado,
Pammy, knows what to do next. Over coming days and weeks
they will all ripen, picking up the pace so a small bowl full
will be harvested each time, but the fascinating thing is how
they ripen in turns, rather than all at the same time.

Our fig tree is still only small, as it's in a pot.
It's about three years old and it hasn't been a
stellar performer, but this year it has grown
a bit more and has its best crop so far. It
probably will be put into a bigger pot next winter.

The variety of fig we have here is called 'Turkish Brown' and as the fruits ripen they change from green to a rich brown tinged with some burgundy-red. They might not be the world's favourite fruit but if you develop a taste for them, like we have, summer here in Sydney is a deliciously foggy time of year.

Spring started weeks ago!

One of the fortunate things about my new life as an erratically employed freelancer is that I get more time off to do gardening, whether I want the time off or not! The pay is lousy but the lifestyle is terrific. As a result, my garden looks rather tidy at the moment. As the heading for this post says, spring started weeks ago, so this posting is nothing more than a wander around my happy and unusually tidy spring garden. 

For me, this light, fresh green is the true colour
of spring. In this case it's the top leaves of my
potted Turkish Brown fig.

Flowers do announce the new season nicely, and our potted native
orchids are producing sprays of these tiny, fragrant little blooms.

Small but perfectly formed orchids less than an inch across
from side to side, the other nice thing about them, speaking
as a gardener, is that they are very easy to grow.

Our two lavender bushes have been blooming
their heads off for a month, the bees love them
and they aren't looking like slowing down any
time soon. I've added its fellow Mediterranean
classic, the rosemary, to keep them company.

Wet weather can truncate the show of the superb
scadoxus, but with hardly a drop for the last few
weeks they're putting on their best show ever.

Our self-sown strawberry patch (which came
up out of some compost spread in this spot) is
still rudely healthy. Its spot is a bit too shady
in winter so it's content to snooze then, but now
the amount of sunshine it's getting is growing
daily it is flowering (with liquid feeds from me
to help the cause) and the first fruits are forming.

The end of winter is one of the two times of the
year when my in-ground citrus are fed, and a
week ago our garden was resplendent with the
heady aroma of chicken poo. Now the Eureka
lemon is flowering its head off quite fragrantly. 

Our potted Thai lime is clapping on a lot of
deep maroon new growth, but as it's in a pot I
feed it lightly once a month, unlike the other
citrus trees growing here.

I sometimes channel a bit of Basil Fawlty when
I am yet again caring for my potted mint, as
what mint needs "is a damned good thrashing".
What I mean by that is mint needs constant
taming and cutting back, sometimes all the way
down to pot-rim level. I did that for the
umpteenth time about three weeks ago, and
since then with regular watering and liquid
feeds, it has bounced back nicely yet again.
It's a high-maintenance herb, mint, but it
does look and smell lovely in these peak times.

I'm not going to say too much about the passionfruit vine
trained on my neighbour's garage wall, other than to report
that it's ludicrously lush and green, and has no flowers and
is doing sod-all in the way of producing fruit yet.

The small gaggle of garlic plants raised from
sprouted supermarket cloves is growing on well.

I told you the garden looks neat and well mulched at the moment.
I pulled out the winter crop, dug it all over as usual, then planted
seedlings of lettuce, basil and chillies, along with pretty little French
 marigolds for some colour. The round bare patch on the right
rear is where I am raising Collard greens direct-sown from seeds.
The Collard greens came with the Soulicious eBook cookbook 
Pam and I bought from our friend Awia Markey.

New plants have been added recently, too.
This row of four Gardenia magnifica should
grow to about 2m tall and cover up that
white Colorbond fence. I am hoping for dense
glossy green growth, white fragrant flowers
in summer and no problems, please!

And finally, if it all grows too big and everything
gets out of hand – start again! That's what we
are doing with a potted bay tree. Our last one
was here for ages but grew too big, then became
pot-bound then got sick and ugly. All my fault.
So here is "Son of Bay", my attempt to make
amends for all my bay-tree growing mistakes
perpetrated over the last 20 years. Whether I find
redemption or not remains to be seen, but I do
like adding just a touch of epic theme to
gardening here. It puts things in perspective.