Garden Snippets II

Hello everyone.

Sorry for going all incommunicado, but I've been struggling with a sinus infection all week. Today I am totally shattered after three nights effectively sans sleep, not helped last night by our neighbours & their visitors sitting outside our bedroom window, chatting away until 4.30am. I give them credit for trying to be quiet but at night everything is amplified, and their outdoor entertaining area is literally three metres from our bedroom windows. You've no idea how much I want to move to an acreage right now!

Anyway, I can't think coherantly enough to do any useful work and I'm not game to use a sharp knife in the kitchen, so here I am at the computer sorting my photos and generally fluffing about. That makes you all the lucky recipients of a photo-heavy post after a wander around the garden early this morning :-)

Firstly, hooray! We're in business with the garlic again! I picked the giant Russian garlic and these Melbourne Market bulbs yesterday, and I still have the Australian White to come out of the ground. Yum!

The Pink Iona grapes are forming into some lovely-looking bunches. They should be ready for picking in January.

The Gardenias are flowering and their delicious scent is heavy in the air.

The last remaining Butternut pumpkin seedling has survived snail-ravaging and is coming away nicely.



And the Golden Midget watermelon seeds are up and away.

I am once again without parsley, as it has all bolted in the heat. A little Spring weather this year would have been nice.

The Carambola (Starfruit) is flowering already as a precursor to the main crop which is harvested in May/June.

Heat stress caused half of the dozen peaches I had to drop off my dwarf peach trees :-(
If I hadn't recently transplanted them (and therefore wasn't expecting any fruit this year) I would be even more sad - I love peaches.

The Passionfruit is still producing lots of flowers but no fruit set yet. It's filling out the trellis nicely and I'm hoping for a little summer shade over the top this year.

The second generation of self-seeded White Icicle radishes are flowering and going to seed.

Apparently all six Rainbow Chard seedlings I germinated & planted out are ruby coloured. I was hoping for some yellow as well, but no matter, it all tastes good.

The first of the female flowers have appeared on the Lebanese cucumbers.

The recent hot weather has stopped the strawberries flowering so this will be the end of them for the season I suspect.

Self-seeded Amaranth is coming up everywhere.

Having stripped the mulberry tree, the birds are moving onto the unripe apples, pecking holes in them. This is not helped by the discovery that one of our dogs is also helping himself to low-lying fruit! Bad dog!

The beans are bursting forth out of the ground and winding their way up all available supports.

The Heritage raspberry bushes are flowering and setting fruit. The main crop is in Autumn, but we get a few in Spring as well.

Almost all my leafy greens have bolted to seed, including the curly endive with it's pretty mauve flowers.

The dwarf Catui coffee bushes are about to flower.

My new black pepper vine (Piper nigrum) has berries. In defence - just as I was about the throw in the compost bin - my old, defoliated vine has thrown out two tiny shoots.

My very first Youngberries - dang, they are good! Sorta like a blackberry & raspberry mixed together. And look how huge they are!

Happy gardening,