The changeover season

Every move you make here in Sydney at the moment, you sweat. It's sticky. On these uncomfortably humid, end-of-summer days, the weather forecasters endlessly repeat their "chance of a shower" chant each morning, and that means it's very warm and humid, mostly sunny all day, then in the late afternoon there's rain or, if we're lucky, a storm as well.

While it's not my favourite time I year (the humidity knocks me around more and more as I get older), I do enjoy this season because it's time for the changeover from the spring/summer crops, to the autumn/winter plantings in the vegie patch. Rip out the old crops, plant new ones. That's what I call fun.

So the garden looks like a mulch farm at the moment, with not much to show for all the effort, but I do like digging soil. That's one of the best bits about gardening. Digging over soil. I also enjoy adding a bit of dolomite lime to sweeten the soil's pH, then working in some cow manure and compost to give the worms and all the other soil-borne critters a treat. At the end of it all, smooth over and level the rich dark soil, stand back and admire your work... 

The digging takes some time, the planting seems to be over in minutes. I've been a bit lazy this time round. Instead of conscientiously raising everything from seed I went down to the garden centre and bought some punnets of seedlings. I've sown seeds, too, but only here and there. Here's how things are going, in the Changeover Season of autumn 2014.

Wild rocket in front, lettuce (raised from seed)
behind. The wild rocket is the serrated-leaf kind
seen most commonly in shops. It's a perennial
plant that should last some time here. It's a much
better bet as a garden plant than the ultra-fast
growing annual type of rocket. Mind you, baby
annual rocket (with the rounded leaves) is still
my favourite rocket to eat, but it's so much work
to sow, re-sow, re-sow, re-sow. Eventually I
tire of the effort, and give it a rest. At least
with this wild rocket you get an easier supply.

Here's the mulch farm. There are spinach seedlings in the
centre, spring onions as well, perpetual spinach on the left.
The perpetual spinach will crop well until spring and is one
of my favourite leafy greens. The English spinach is much
shorter-lived, but it is so nice in Japanese cuisine. The big
leafy greens on the left are more chicory plants, and they are
another excellent leafy green that we turn into Greek-style
horta, boiled greens dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

There is such a thing as too many Thai limes. They're falling
off the tree now. It's a wonderful choice if you're wondering
which citrus to grow in a pot. It reaches a bit over 1m tall
and wide and seems quite hardy, too. Just brushing past the
leaves or the fruit is such a fragrant thing to do.

Huge, green and unproductive. I've tried watering in some
sulphate of potash to stimulate flower production on our
18-month-old passionfruit vine. No luck. Plan B is do nothing
at all. Pretend it's not there. It's a bit hard to do when it
is so huge, so it's now my 'elephant in the room' plant.  

At least the lemon tree is flowering its head
off. It smells lovely in the still morning air,
and hopefully the recent rains and the big
dose of chicken poo I gave it will restore it to
health and happiness.

Have you ever anxiously watched a plant, hoping
it would flower in time for the big Sunday lunch
that you've invited some friends to? Well, our
Tibouchina 'Jules' is letting us down. It has
18 hours left to burst into purple glory by midday
tomorrow. Otherwise it's just another green blob
in our very green blob of a garden. Healthy, yes.
In flower, not yet. 

As for the things I can't show you, I have sown more seeds of collard greens, as these big cabbage-family leafy greens were such a success over spring and early summer. They're meant to be even better in the cooler months, so here's hoping that's true. And I have also sown a few rows of seeds of the love-in-a-mist (Nigella) seeds I collected in midsummer, following the end of its spring flowering. 

The first of the collard green seeds are already up, after only five days in the soil. The Nigella seeds are on a more leisurely schedule. They'll appear in a couple of weeks, and the flowers won't do their thing for at least another six or seven months. I can wait. It's one of the very nice things about growing plants from seed. They offer the chance to share in a full life-cycle, especially if you harvest the seeds at the end of it all. I like that idea.

  

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.

Hello, what's this I see?

Pottering around the garden this morning ticking off a list of 'feed this', 'repot that' type jobs, I came across this interesting person in my lime tree. Somewhere between 5cm-7.5cm long (two to three inches) he/she was doing the 'master of disguise' thing and not moving a bit. The perfect subject for a photo!

Handsome devil (click on the photo to make it bigger, if you like). With those spines on its back, I am sure all sorts of creatures, including me, would think "leave this person alone". Which is what I did, of course. Live and let live as much as you possibly can, then a bit more, I say. There is a very pretty, big black, white and orange butterfly known as a citrus or orchard butterfly which is quite common around here (seen here every day in fact). Perhaps this is Junior?

Update! Yes, this is a citrus butterfly caterpillar. Always welcome in my backyard!

Another pleasant "hello, what's this I see" moment this morning was the first tinge of yellow on my Eureka lemons. "About time, too", says the Impatient Gardener (me)! Isn't it nice when a crop shows signs of ripening?

Finally, a very pleasant discovery not in my backyard, but down at my local fruit shop, Banana Joe's in Illawarra Road, Marrickville. Quinces are back in season – hooray! I love quinces, and if you want to see what I do with them in the kitchen, I rattled on about them at length here, last year. Yummy as part of breakfast, stewed quinces, but quince jelly is also lovely, too.

Quinces have an old-fashioned charm (which is why I popped them into one of my Grandma's old bowls for this photo). Unlike so many fruits which seem to be available year-round to consumers, quinces (and figs, for that matter) still have their seasons, then their absences from the shops. I like that about them.

The other thing I like about quinces (apart from the eating) is that they're the stuff that dreams are made of. If in the extremely unlikely event that I manage to win Lotto or some similar lottery, I am immediately retiring from work and heading for the country, to do some serious gardening on a decent patch of ground, not just this little green handkerchief of earth I have here in the inner-city.

I'd like to grow things I can't grow in Sydney. I'd need a country property in our coolest zones, up in the mountains somewhere, so I could grow quinces, pears, apples, raspberries and all sorts of cool climate things that don't really work that well in Sydney. That's what I mean about quinces being what dreams are made of. The 10-minute walk home from Banana Joe's was consumed with planning out that orchard!

Citrus feeding time again, folks

Here's a reminder for all the Aussie gardeners with citrus plants of any sort, especially those growing in the ground: it's feeding time again, folks. These greedy plants need feeding at the end of February each year, then again at the end of August. You don't have to slavishly follow that timetable, but late winter and late summer are the ideal feeding times, and a good feed every six months is what they need. So here's what I did about an hour ago.

First, I watered the ground under the whole canopy of each tree (pictured here is my Eureka lemon tree, laden with developing fruit – yippee!). The reason for the 'water first' rule is to make sure the plants slake their thirst just on pure water, and not on fertiliser-laden water, which isn't such a good thing for them.

Second, spread the plant food all around the area under the tree's canopy, and especially around the outer edge of the tree's 'dripline' (just imagine the rough circle on the ground where water rolls off the foliage on the tree's perimeter, that's the dripline). Here, I'm using Dynamic Lifter, which is pelletised chicken poo. Being organic, it stinks to high heaven for a day (and Pam says "That's it, I'm going shopping in town for the day".) The packet says to apply three scoops-full per square metre of area. So my lemon tree got six scoops, scattered evenly, as did my lime tree. There are stacks of different citrus foods around, but I like the organic chicken poo, and I am sure the worms in the soil like it too. Pam's not so keen on it, but as she likes shopping she has discovered that citrus feeding day has its attractions.

Third and final step is to water in well afterwards, to get some plant food down into the soil, and to help all the rest of the pellets to start breaking down. That's it.

There are only three citrus trees in my small backyard. The other one planted in the ground is my espaliered 'Tahiti' lime, which is covered in limes ready to use now. This regular feeding keeps the leaves green and glossy and seems to fortify the tree so it looks after itself quite well. It still gets attacked by small numbers of pests, but largely it's pretty trouble-free, and I'm sure that's because it's well fed.

My other citrus tree is a potted cumquat. These need a different feeding regime altogether. I feed this one lightly every month in spring and summer. Today, I watered it first, then slipped one scoop of Dynamic Lifter pellets under the straw, then watered it again. Other times, when I'm feeling lazy, I give it a liquid feed. And in the cooler months I drop back to feeds every six weeks.

The cumquat is cropping better and better as it grows (it's about three years old now), and this crop should ripen in midwinter. Next spring I plan to transfer it to a slightly larger pot, and to replace the potting mix at the same time.

Listen to a gardening talkback radio show and about a third of the callers are having problems with their citrus trees. It's true that citrus can get all sorts of pests, diseases and nutrient deficiencies, mystery ailments and crop failures. But I'm slowly discovering that if you feed and water them very regularly, grow them in well-drained soil in a sunny spot, and they're much easier to live with than you might imagine.

Lemons & limes

Greed is not good. Well, that's what some people say, but if you're a lemon, a lime or some other citrus tree you know that's bunkum. Greed is good as far as they are concerned. Well, if it's greed for fertiliser, sunshine and water you're talking about, then greed is good. August is citrus-feeding time here in Oz, and I fed mine early in the month, and aren't they happy little gluttons now!

The pinky hue says this is a lemon flower, so too does the light scent if you get up close (although a bee might have an opinion on whether your head is welcome or not in that particular branch). Baby lemons forming everywhere, too.

Clusters of blooms are covering my baby two-year old 'Eureka' lemon at the moment. Far too many in fact, but I'll let them go for another week or two – the flowering is such a delightful sight.

At the edges of every branch, new shoots are reaching out for the sun, and these guys are my priority at the moment. The plan is not to let fruits form, to encourage more plant growth. That's easier said than done, though. It's a fruit tree, for goodness sake, and it just doesn't seem right or look right to be bereft of fruit. And so I'll compromise and cut off most of the fruits, but I'll leave a token half dozen or so to grow on just to cheer myself up. Last year, in its first year, I let two lemon fruits develop, and they were superb, their juice squeezed over some Sydney rock oysters.

The all-white, almost scentless blooms of my lime tree are pretty things, too, and there are plenty of them on my happy and healthy, eight-year-old, well-established espaliered lime tree.

Just managed to spot this lime flower bud bursting open this morning. Looks like a dessert already!

All my lime tree requires from me is feeding in August and February each year, plus a constant supply of water. Given plenty of sunshine and clear blue skies, plus our merciful lack of frosts to bother it in winter, it supplies the best little green limes for making everything from margaritas to guacamoles and an assortment of tangy tarts and puddings.

All the Aussies reading this blog probably are all keen gardeners and already know that it's citrus feeding time, but just in case a stranger wanders past and puts his or her nose up against the window of my blog, here's your reminder. Go feed your lemons, limes or whatever citrus you have growing this weekend. August is citrus feeding time, so is February.

I mostly use chicken manure pellets to feed my citrus trees but any of the commercially available citrus foods are fine, and apparently rose food is almost identical to citrus food, and so if you have some of that lying around, give some to your greedy citrus trees this weekend. And don't forget to water the tree well before fertilising, then water well again after fertilising as well. Do this feeding routine again in February and many of the problems experienced by notoriously temperamental citrus trees will hopefully be a thing of the past, or at the very least not as bad as they once were.