It's citrus feeding time, folks!

Don't you just love it when a plan works? I do. Last week, looking at the weather forecast, I spotted the magic word "rain" predicted for Tuesday August 24. And Huey the Rain God didn't let us down. The rain started late yesterday and it's still raining. 

A creature of gardening habits, I knew that the weeks spanning the end of August and the beginning of September are the ideal time to fertilise my citrus trees, so it was always at the top of my "to-do" list. All I needed was to wait for a good day of rain to come along, because that way the rain will water in the many handfuls of fertiliser I scattered around my Eureka lemon, Tahitian lime and Thai Makrut lime trees.

While I was at it and had plenty of fertiliser to spare, I scattered it around all manner of other plants that could do with a boost in spring, but the main game was feeding citrus. If you have a lemon, lime or other citrus tree in your garden, try to get out there over the next few days (showers are forecast through to the weekend) and your citrus trees will reward you with bumper crops.

I love a shiny footpath and water dripping off foliage. It means I have a day off from watering the garden, and I can watch the rain do the last stage of fertilising for me.

Both the lemon tree (pictured) and the lime are covered in flower buds right now, so a big feed is all they need to turn flowers into fruit.

The Eureka lemon is the ideal variety for Sydney gardens. In cooler climates the Lisbon variety is preferred, while the Meyer lemon is great in pots in all climates.

As is the Tahitian lime the ideal one for Sydney.

And this wrinkled weirdo is the Thai Makrut lime (also called the Kaffir lime), whose culinary value lies in the grated rind of the fruit (it produces hardly any juice), and the wonderfully aromatic foliage, which I toss into all sorts of South-East Asian curries and stir fries. The Thai lime is a great choice for pots, too, because it's naturally quite small.

This is my preferred citrus food not only because it's organic-based and the smelly aromas don't last long. It just happened to be what I had in the shed. 

Right now it's hard for locked-down gardeners everywhere to visit one of those big Hardware superbarns such as Bunnings. I actually bought my Dynamic Lifter a while back at my local Woolworths Supermarket, so try there if you don't have any in your garden shed at the moment.

There's also a small but well run local garden centre which I support by paying a bit more for the mulch, fertiliser, plants and seeds they stock, and it's still open. So maybe there's a small garden centre near you that is still open, or at least open for a click-and-collect shopping expedition?

In these difficult times, it doesn't really matter what you feed you citrus trees with. Almost any fertiliser I can think of is better than no fertiliser at all. If it says something about "fruit and flowers" then this is the good stuff, but even if the fertiliser just says "general purpose" you are in the citrus-feeding business.

Try to read the instructions on the pack before you get started. If you do your fertilising now, while the ground is wet and more showers are forecast, all you need to do is wait for a break in the rain, get out there like a mad person, laugh at the sky if the neighbours are watching, and scatter the fertiliser around the base of the tree. 

Don't direct the fertiliser at the tree trunk itself — there's no roots there. Instead, spread it out under the whole canopy of the tree, and especially around the ground directly below the outer edge of the canopy (that's called the 'dripline', because that's where most of the rainwater drips onto the ground).

The dripline area is where a healthy tree has oodles of roots. Direct your fertiliser there and let Huey the Rain God do the rest.

And after you've done the job and the poor locked-down neighbours with nothing to do are still watching, permit yourself to send one last chuckle skywards. All your gardening mates will know exactly how you feel.

Four weeks in one day

We Sydneysiders can be quite oddly proud of our rain at times. We get quite a lot of rain, especially for such a sunny city, so how do you combine lots of sunshine with lots of rain? Easy ... just make sure the rain buckets down when it does so.

This morning is a classic example: a whole average month's worth of rain (83mm for November) in a couple of hours in several parts of Sydney. My how it rained (and still is)! As a rain radar fan, I just have to share this random shot of our fair town this morning.

The red and orange bits show the heaviest rain, and this morning they are doing their thing complete with thunder and lightning flashes; at its peak the grumbly bits seemed to be about 10 seconds apart. It was a good one, if you were safe inside your house that is.

All the truck and delivery drivers, commuters, public transport staff, homeless people and emergency services workers had a different, more scary experience, of course, so all I can do is hope they got through it OK.

But here in selfish little gardener-who-works-from-home land, it was mostly perverse fun.

(I should at this stage put in a special mention for art teachers, too, such as Pammy. She is conducting a watercolour workshop this morning on, ironically enough ... skies and clouds, and so her mobile phone has been running hot with text messages from students asking whether the workshop is still on. It is, and god bless their cotton socks, all of them are still attending, and with help from her loyal driver and husband, Pammy will have to make the dash to the studio a couple of streets away where she conducts her classes.)

Click on this photo and should come up as a big, wide, soggy panorama. No need to water the garden this morning!

This downpour is perfect timing for our garden. I spent all of Sunday pulling out weeds, spreading mulch, and adding some fragrant Dynamic Lifter (chicken poo) organic pellets here and there. Thanks Huey for the perfect timing. Garden health is rated good right now.

This soggy sight is the other side of the garden, and in the middle foreground, that little bare patch of ground with green seedlings coming up is an experiment with seeds. Last year I grew little Zinnia linearis there, and they flowered all summer long. At the end of summer I harvested the seed heads, popped them into paper bags to dry off in the shed over winter, and so a month or so ago I scattered the seedy contents of the paper bags over the bare ground, watered it well that day and every day for the next two weeks, and lo and behold I have stacks of zinnia babies coming up.

The other great thing about very rainy days is the opportunities it provides to amateur photographers like me. Leaves and water are a magical combo, such as this mini lake perched precariously on the tough, strong leaf of our potted fig tree.

The other photogenic thing about rain is the sight of usually glamorous garden beauties drooping and drenched with rain. This NSW Christmas Bush, also in a pot, is looking truly gorgeous in the late November sunshine, but even in the aftermath of today's storm it's still lovely to behold.

So don't just stand there at your window looking out at your soggy mess. Get out there in amongst it; you'll get some great photos and see a side of your garden that only happens now.

If that sounds weird, don't worry. I'm from Sydney, we like our rain. We're strange that way.

If raindrops were diamonds ...

If raindrops were diamonds ... I'd be a millionaire. Well, until the sun gets higher in the sky, that is, and then my diamonds would disappear.

One of the most wonderful of gardening's simple pleasures is enjoying the sight of raindrops adding their rounded, watery bling to everything on a damp morning. And the foliage of broccoli and its brassica cousins brussels sprouts and cauliflowers is especially good at holding raindrops in suspended animation. Just sitting there like jewels.

I am sure our own homegrown broccoli is going to taste superb when we enjoy it later this week. It'll almost feel like a shame to cut it down in its prime, but it's not good for your wellbeing to get sentimental about vegetables. Just harvest, cook, eat and enjoy. Keep it simple.

And speaking of simple things, I just have to make one last visit to the jewellery store to admire the shiny object before it's gone.

The 10-Year Rewind – Part 8 – Stormy Intervals

Every day this month I am looking back on the 10 years since I started this blog in June, 2008. Part 8 is this one — Stormy Intervals — from March 2009. I just had to include at least one posting about rain in Sydney ... where would our garden be without the regular (if sometimes temperamental) assistance of Huey the Rain God?

I love a good storm, but then again that's because I don't live in Tornado Alley in America's midwest, or in the Caribbean, or in tropical Australia, where hurricanes put another factor of 10 on top of what I consider to be a good storm. I guess people in those parts of the world could do without pop-gun storm-lovers like me. But that doesn't stop me liking a good, quick little Sydney storm. We had one pass through late yesterday, and it gave the garden a lovely, deep drink without doing a lot of damage.

While we can cop storms here from all sorts of directions, the south-west is the most reliable point of entry, and here's our little storm approaching late in the afternoon.

I'm a weather radar addict when storms approach. My part of the world is closest to the area marked Sydney Ap (airport) on the mid-section of coast. The yellow bit in the radar image contains the heaviest rain – and all the lightning – and it passed straight overhead.

Only minutes away now and the dark cloudy bits look perfectly primed for a large, judgmental hand to reach down and smite someone. Alas, nothing of the sort happened and instead large blobs of water splattered down slowly, the advanced guard of the assault suggesting that it'd be a great idea for all boys with cameras to go inside now.

The front path becomes shiny, the thirsty hedges say 'thanks' for the drink and the wash-down, and moments later the real fun begins.

Within 30 seconds the rain changes from blobs to streams to grey torrents; gutters become rivers and strong trees sag under the weight of water.

Out the back of the house the pergola springs a leak where it attaches to the house and water starts streaming down the glass blocks that form part of our back wall. "Will you please stop taking photos and help mop up the water?" says someone far more sensible than me, as she lays towels against the back door, to stop the seepage getting in. You always know when it's really raining hard here, our leaky pergola lets us know.

Two really close lightning strikes this time round, one just across the road. What a terrifying, loud, violent sound close lightning is. Yet, 20 minutes later and it's all over. The street tree glistens after its wash and picks it head up, shaking its leaves free of water in the breezes, just like a wet dog.

The only 'damage' to speak of is pair of the potted, scented-leaf pelargoniums, which were due for a trim tomorrow anyway, as they've grown too lush and a bit too big for their pots. The intensity of the rain and the weight of the wet foliage has bent them over. A bit of remedial trimming, and maybe a bit of tying a staking behind the scenes, should attend to their immediate needs. 

Just a bit under one inch (25mm) of rain in 20 minutes is the harvest, a wonderful gift for the garden. March is meant to be our wettest month, with 131mm of rain on average, and so far we've had just 30mm of rain by the 14th.( A second storm later last night added another 15mm of rain, so the soil is much happier now.)

That was just a playful, helpful little 20-minute storm. I can't imagine what a hurricane would be like. I hope I never experience one, quite frankly. Nor a tornado. But as for our late-summer/early autumn temperate storms, they're common enough, and occasionally quite deadly if you're in the path of a falling tree, or taking shelter under one when lightning strikes (and these things do happen) but most of the time they're just a bath for the garden and a reminder that nature, in its fury, is the most powerful thing on Earth. 

Good old Rain Gods!

Thank you Huey! It is so nice to wake up this morning to hear the gentle hiss of rain on the tin roof that covers the back part of our house. And to look out upon the garden and see the pathway covered in a shiny film, I know that finally the plants are getting a proper watering, a soaking of their souls that a mere gardener with a hose and a watering can cannot hope to provide. 

Pictured below is soggy land this morning, bathed in the dull light of low grey clouds.

I am sure I must have mentioned it a few times before on this blog, but I love watering the garden. Even though we didn't have much of a garden in the home where I grew up, as a little boy I still loved watering the garden. All we had then was two hydrangeas, a lawn and a row of unruly oleanders that didn't need any help whatsoever from wistful little boys. But for me even then, watering the garden was a lovely time of quiet contemplation and daydreaming.

Despite my lifelong love of watering our garden, some mornings I do get a bit sick of it. As the weather cools down (finally!) this autumn, the garden's established plants don't need extra water, but we always have some new crops that need a regular drink. And so yes, some days even one of my favourite things can become a chore. Sigh. Being a grown-up can be so boring sometimes ...

And so here's truly heartfelt thanks to our Rain Gods, for doing a wonderful job and also letting me have the morning off.

(Not) doing the rounds

Well, I was going to write this blog posting two days ago, while the rain was still falling. And I was going to start it with something like "it's been 900 days since the rain began falling, or at least it feels that long ..." but things got away from me. 

And now today the sun is out, the sky is blue and Huey the Rain God is having a good old chuckle at my expense. Very funny Huey. Love your work.

But truly rooly, the non-stop month of rain that was March 2017 was getting to me, as a gardener. There wasn't much to do, I found that I was getting out of the habit of doing my normal "morning rounds". It was so wet outside that I stayed inside and just looked out, most mornings.

All that is over now. It seems to be turning into a more normal April. Our local newspaper informed me that Sydney has already had half its 12-month average of rainfall in the first three months of the year. So a not-so-wet April and May would be a welcome gift to autumn.

As you can see from the panorama shot above, it's not as if the garden is suffering from all the rain. If you look closely it's not thriving especially well, either. That only happens when there is plenty of sunshine, as well as lots of rain.

Our newest jewel, the baby frangipani, is doing what all good Sydney frangipanis do: it's coping well with whatever Sydney's weather gods dish out.

Various flowers have taken a beating in the constant rain, but all foliage is thriving. A long time ago in this blog I spent about 20 photos and even more words documenting the various different shades of green and greeny-blue/bluey-green we have growing here, and this one photo is a summary of that notion. A beautiful colour, green.

The lemon grass loved the rain, but it would rather be somewhere warmer, like South-East Asia. This lovely plant has become on of my favourites in the garden, once it has grown its summer crown of fragrant, willowy straps.

Every year in autumn the grapevine growing on top of the pergola belonging to our neighbours, Michael and Soula, finally scrambles its way onto our olive and murraya trees, but this year is its best effort ever. The vines have made it over the top of the olive tree and are now cascading down the other side. In late autumn Michael always cuts the vines back, and I get out my extension loppers and trim off the remnants dangling over my side, so order will be restored in winter.

And so the seasons roll on, but I would like it known that the first month of autumn 2017 has been a soggy one. I'm looking forward to getting back into the routine of doing the morning rounds. First item on the agenda is pulling weeds. Lots of weeds.

Rain, the sound of plants growing

Gentle rain, the kindest rain of all. Soaking into the soil without damaging the tender seedlings, or even making the flowers sad. (Edit: well, that was how it was until last night's downpour!) We're into our second day of gentle rain now, after a record midwinter dry spell, and the garden definitely needs every drop it can get.

More usually, after a long dry spell we get pounding rain that brings damage and much needed relief in equal doses. (Edit: talk about speaking too soon ... the more usual pounding, damaging rain arrived last night.) I originally wished a special thankyou to Huey for this lovely, gentle, nurturing rain, but in this re-edited posting, it's "thanks Huey for the rain, but you can back off now".  

Anyway, it's good to have the rains arrive, so here's a quick lap of our garden, camera in hand.

Still bare, our frangipani is wearing strings of these watery jewels now.

Poppies never cope well with rain, but today they're just
drooping their heads a little. They'll look up when the sun
breaks out.

Rosemary in bloom with vivid green new growth, too.

A week away from full flowering, the scadoxus are already
glowing like beacons, and opening rapidly now there's rain.

Aeonium 'Schwartzkopf' looks like it's trying to resist getting wet. 

While in a dark, shady corner this Vriesia
bromeliad is putting on a colour party.

The foodies are loving it. Lettuce planted less than a week ago.

Potato babies growing noticeably every day.

Thai limes were fertilised on the weekend, and with this steady
watering they'll be flowering and fruiting through summer.

As I've mentioned before, I am so glad the roof over the rear part of our house is galvanised iron. There's nothing more pleasing to this gardener than enjoying breakfast, fresh mug of coffee to start the day, listening to the sound of rain on a tin roof.

Woo hoo, rain coming, action stations!

We gardeners are right up there in the top echelon of people who get a real kick out of enjoying life's simple pleasures. This morning, I'm a kid again, excited by the forecast of showers maybe coming this afternoon, then a definite promise of rain tomorrow. Woo hoo, the first rain in ages! Lots of little jobs to do ...

But wait, there's more. My bag of potatoes is sprouting up a forest of little green men. It's about time, too. It's been three weeks since I bagged them up (you can read all about that little excercise here). 

Traaa daaa, Mr Potato Head makes his debut. I've planted
four seed potatoes in the bad and there are four sets of
buds coming up, so they're all performing nicely.

Now that the potato shoots are up, the other job to do is to
gently fold down the sides of the bag, so the little shoots can
get some more sunlight. They don't need any fertiliser. They
are surrounded by it all already, courtesy of the compost. 

With this rain coming, it's the perfect time to get the job of
feeding the citrus trees done. Our lemon tree is covered in
new shoots, flowers and flower buds, so it's busting for a
decent feed. The same applies to our lime tree and our potted
Thai (kaffir) lime. 

Here in Australia it's best to feed citrus twice
a year, at the end of summer (in late February)
and now, the end of winter or start of spring
(late August). So if you have citrus trees, do
it now. Here's my posting on how I do it from
last February, 'Flingin' in the rain'. Today
I am again using my old standby, Dynamic Lifter.

This is outrageous. I only planted this strawberry seedling
on Wednesday, and it's already flowering. So, as well as
making sure it is well mulched, I have sprinkled around some
Dynamic Lifter and watered it in (but not too much, the
coming deluge will water in all my fertiliser for me).

Another big job to squeeze in before the rains
come is to yank out all the weeds. I'm down to
my last two square metres of weeding to do, so
it won't take long to pull these invaders out.
While weeding is a dull task, I find that if I
do it in small sections over a week or two, covering
the weeded ground with mulch as soon as I
finish, it's not such an onerous task.

One little trick with pulling weeds is to learn
what "wanted" self-seeding plants look like as
babies. These are two self-seeded Love-in-a-Mist
plants coming up, and there's about a dozen
of them showing up now near the lime tree.
I love the ethereal beauty of Love-in-a-Mist
(Nigella) flowers, and I am hoping that they
will become a permanent part of our garden
without me ever having to plant them again.

Finally, I'm planting out some more of my
supermarket sprouts. This time I am giving some
parsley sprouts a go as a border around a bed. 

I'm not sure how the parsley sprouts will take, but if they work out OK then most of the "micro sprouts" (eg, coriander, chervil, radish, sorrel, parsley) sold in punnets at my local Woolies supermarket can be treated as cheap seedlings to grow in the garden. You can read all about the original experiment here. 

Parsley has always been a plant which is very fussy about being transplanted as seedlings. The old wisdom is that it's best to grow parsley from seed, so I won't be surprised if my parsley seedlings don't survive. But if they do survive, I guess that will be because I planted clumps of several baby seedlings together, and all I really need from each clump is for one seedling to survive and grow to maturity.

Time will tell, but the first stage of caring for my parsley seedlings is to water them well, and I believe that Huey the rain god has that job covered for the next seven days. Over to you Huey!

Flinging in the Rain

I'll never match Gene Kelly and his 'Singing in the Rain' routine, but I've just been dancing around our garden, flinging in the rain, and I feel just as good as Gene ever did.

You see, it's citrus fertilising time, and in recent years I've decided to abandon any pretence to sanity for this special occasion, and as soon as I hear the rain falling, I'm out in the garden with my bag of perfumed chicken poo, flinging it under our fruit trees, while the rain does the other important job – watering in the fertiliser while it gently soaks the skin of one slightly crazy old gardener.

As well as this 'Eureka' lemon tree we have
a 'Tahiti' lime and a Thai lime in a pot. They
all get a good feed now. For this lemon tree,
I give it about a dozen generous handfuls.
The potted citrus gets just one handful, but
I feed it several times a year, unlike its big
siblings planted in the ground.

For Australian (and I guess all other Southern Hemisphere gardeners) you should feed your citrus trees twice a year: at the end of summer (late February) and the end of winter (late August).

Now, as for what to use, your choices are many, but I go for chicken poo every time. Here in Australia it's sold under several brand names, but the biggest seller is Dynamic Lifter. Not all Dynamic Lifters are equal, though, so you should check out the labelling before you buy anything, as some products are "organic" and others are "organic-based".

Here's the "organic based" version, which I
spread around the garden this morning. As well
as the chicken poo, it contains non-organic
additives to boost its performance as a fruit
food. So, if you are ideologically pure when it
comes to organic gardening, it's a sin.
But if you are like me, and you practise all the
other organic gardening basics, such as using
compost and mulch to feed the soil and refraining
from the use of any nasty chemical sprays, then
a bit of organic-based rocket fuel to keep fussy
citrus happy isn't such a big sin. So there. 

However, if you are pure of heart and
purpose, an organic saint, there are forms
of manures sold which contain no additives,
and they're all great plant foods. Look for
the organic certification seals on the packet.
If it's the real thing, it should have them.

My excuse is that every second time round, I choose rocket fuel over standard fuel, and I think our citrus like that little boost to their diet.

The moral of the story, though, is that whatever you choose, use it now. You can do it in the sunshine and water the fertiliser in with a hose (the boring but sensible option), or you can do it in the rain, dancing around your garden like a slightly deranged, green-thumbed Gene Kelly.