Looking good

While my enthusiasm for garden blogging might be on the wane, the opposite is true for gardening itself. I've never enjoyed it more. Perhaps the blogging has been getting in the way of my enjoyment of gardening? In recent years I suspect so, hence very little activity here on the Garden Amateur blog.

So here's a rare posting on how things are going here in spring. I may post  something during summer, but right now in spring there is almost too much to talk about.

The one thought that hit me the other day as I was admiring all the flowers and crops is how spring makes you feel like you're a better gardener than you probably really are. Everything grows so well, it all seems so easy. Plant something new and whoosh! It races away like happy children in the park.

Summer in Sydney, however, brings you back to earth with a thud. The humidity, the heat, the sheer difficulty of helping everything to merely survive is hardly a joyful pursuit — it's an important part of the gardening year of course — but gardening here in spring is a much more wonderful time to be out there among all the plants. 

Encouraging little garden sprites whisper in your ear "Hey, you can do this!" and "That worked well" as you tour the flower and vegie beds. It's good for your soul to be out there soaking up the success. 

So, here's my usual little 'photos with captions' essay on what's happening here now. It's very pretty, a lot of fun, and I sometimes wish spring would last forever. 

The amazing Geranium Rozanne is getting bigger and better all the time. It started flowering its head off in midwinter when we bought it and has never let up. It's now spreading about three feet wide and rising two feet tall and it's covered in the prettiest purple flowers.

This feels like cheating, but I love it. All you need to do is buy a La Sevillana rose in flower from your garden centre, bring it home, whack it in a bigger pot and let it flower on. This is one of "Pam's plants". She saw it at a friend's house, loved the clear red colour, issued orders on what we needed next and a week later it was brightening up our pergola area. It's so lightly scented that you barely notice it at first, but I have never seen anyone admire a rose without sticking their nose into the centre. However, Pam being an artist with an eye for colour, this is definitely the rose she wanted.

This is our society garlic, or Tulbaghia, in flower. Lots of variegated strappy leaves with these pink trumpet flower clusters on tall stems rising up. I admire its tenacity. All sorts of horrid weeds like to bully it but it never gives up and always shows up.

Our potted New South Wales Christmas Bush is getting better at timing its display of coloured bracts for the festive season

Boy, are we eating a lot of spinach and silver beet right now. Pam loves it Japanese style, chopped and steamed with a sesame dressing, and I love it Indian style, in dishes such as Palak Paneer and Chicken Palak. The golden rule with these prolific spring crops is that if you think you haven't planted enough, you've probably planted too much already.

Lettuce thrives in spring but soon gives up the will to live once summer comes around. Fortunately we're a little pair of salad munching bunnies, and Pammy also loves to make up egg and lettuce bread rolls for lunch.

I'm a sucker for multi-coloured bowls of salad greens, and so I find all seed packets of "mixed lettuce" to be irresistable. Here's another crop approaching harvest time.

My other must-have crop in our garden is shallots, or green onions, or scallions, or whatever you call them in your part of the world. I'm still perfecting my skills at sowing enough — and especially not too many — seeds to raise the next punnet of seedlings while the current crop matures, but this is much more satisfying than buying a punnet of far too many shallot seedlings at the garden centre and only planting half of them.

Who me? Impulse-buy a Grosse Lisse tomato plant at the local Woolies supermarket? Yes, of course. Total sucker for growing tomatoes, with a very ordinary success rate on the big tomatoes, and a perfectly acceptable success rate on the cherry tomato front. So of course I am attempting to keep a big climbing tomato happy in spring. Summer will be the seasoning of reckoning, but I am prepared to take on the challenge.

On the other hand, all the potted succulents are looking forward to summer's heat. Ever since I repotted them they are all loving the new potting mix. And though it's hard to see here, there's a very thick layer of pine bark mulch spread between the pots and all over the formerly weedy succulent patch, and for the meantime at least, the weeds are not enjoying life at all. They're probably biding their time, waiting for the mulch to break down, but right now the succulent patch is a peaceful village of potted contentment.

So there you have it loyal readers, all 10 of you. Pammy and I are both really enjoying this year's spring in our garden. 

Pam's art students love wandering around and finding something to draw or paint, and for me as a gardener that's plenty of job satisfaction right there.

Innocent bystander

"I wasn't doing nuthin' officer. I was just growing here, minding my own business, when these pelargoniums muscled their way in. If there's anyone trying to take over this garden it's them, not me."

Poor old society garlic, it's the innocent bystander in my garden. Other plants cause trouble, while it either becomes their victim at worst, or just ignores all the kerfuffle and keeps on growing, at best. Right now it's in bloom, so it's time for this shy little person to take centre-stage in Amateur Land for a moment.

Formally, it's known as Tulbaghia violacea, and the violacea part of its name refers to the violet-coloured flowers. It's a native of Southern Africa, and I've seen photos of mass plantings of it in bloom over there, and they do look spectacular. Here in my garden there are just a handful of plants and they hardly stand out, even when in bloom.

My plants must be at least 10 years old now. They've been dug up, divided and moved several times as planting plans change. They tend to come last in my plans. "Well, where will I put the society garlic now?" is one of the last decisions during a revamp. No matter where I put it, it grows.

I didn't buy the plant for its flowers. I knew nothing about it. I thought it was a foliage plant, and I just liked the variegated grassy foliage. When the first flowers appeared, I just considered them a very pleasant, unexpected bonus.

Very probably I am not growing them correctly. They're in a semi-shaded spot that gets direct overhead sun in the middle of the day, but is shaded both in the morning and afternoon. This probably explains why its flowering is fitful, just a couple of spikes per plant.

However, my abiding view of this plant is that it's always being beaten up by other plants. Weeds infest it easily. That lime-leafed pelargonium is always reaching over to cover it up. There always seems to be something muscling in on my society garlic's patch of ground. And yet it has been here 10 years at least, is never attacked by pests and survives almost exclusively on natural rainfall and the scant flow of nutrients that rolls downhill from nearby vegies in sunnier spots.

Last year I dug up the society garlic clump (it grows from small bulbs) and separated it into 10 smaller, distinct clumps of bulbs, which I have planted in a circle around my frangipani tree. Call me a slow learner, but I am starting to think I am onto a good thing with my tough little society garlic. (And no, it's not related to garlic. Its leaves and bulbs just pong in a garlic-like way, hence the common name).