Growing vegetables urgently

As you know there has been flooding further south of us, and that seems to be where most of our vegetables come from.   The supermarket shelves are either bare or filled with very expensive vegetables, so it was with some urgency that I began planting out some seeds this weekend. .....
This was the jungle that I started with....

 During the wet season only certain plants will grow and so I had let them run rather wild.  The loofah had started heading over towards the fence.  Normally we don't started planting regular vegetables until about March, but with the prices in the store I want to get an early start. It does seem a little cooler lately - definitely less humid, which is a good sign.  I cut the loofah away from the fence and threw it up onto the shade cloth.  It can grow there and then back in a line on top of the pigeon peas towards the back fence. These vegetables are going to listen this time - lots of straight lines anticipated - haha. No mucking about creating too much shade - this is serious business!
 To the left of this path I planted a salad mix - heirloom seeds, so I will have to save some seeds if I have a good crop.  Supposed to be good for the tropics, then behind them I planted a few tomato seeds, called tropic red.  Right at the back on the right are sweet potatoes, I will harvest them in about a month and then plant butternut squash in the same place.  Along the fence I have some long Chinese snake beans and cucumbers with daikon radish in front.  Then the rest of the bed is taken up with my ginger which has done well this year.  I don't want to have to store it - does anyone else leave it in the ground year round and just harvest as needed?

 The pawpaw tree that I lopped the top off is growing quite  a few nice new branches well within reach and there is lots of fruit, but for now they are all green.  Cant wait to start eating pawpaws again, we get four or five passionfruit every day.    I put in some parsley seeds to the left of this path - I miss my parsley but it just doesn't grow in the heat of the summer.  In fact all the herbs in the herb spiral have expired, despite the shade of the vine protecting them from the heat.  The mint and tropical oregano are the only ones that survived.

 There is another pawpaw tree  next to the pigeon peas and I am anxious to see if it is a female - I have kept a bunch of little pawpaw trees at the back of this bed just in case.  To the left of this bed is my shallots which seem to be doing well - I am not really sure how or when to harvest them - I think I can just sub-divide them and keep them going year round which will be nice.  Further along I have an eggplant that I let go rotten and then just smooshed it into the ground - hope it grows :)   Behind the trimmed lemongrass I have the bed against the fence where I have planted lots of cherry tomatoes, which do well here....

 This is one of the many loofahs I have hanging around in my food forest!  Oh and I also harvested lots of chili peppers so will have another go at making some chili sauce.

So let those prices go up all they want - we should be self sufficient soon! 

Trimmed back and tidied up

This is the first time I have spent some time out in the garden since my holiday and I really did a lot of cutting back and weeding. It shows :)

I hope you enjoyed a wander through the garden..... word seem superflous.

Seed exchange - loofas

How exciting! Malay- Kadazan girl has invited me to partake in the seed exchange she runs on her blog.  this is her blog   sunflower seed exchange  and she has the most beautiful bronze and different coloured sunflowers.  I have not had much success with sunflowers in the past, so hope I win some of her seeds to give them a try in my garden. 
The plant I have had success with is loofahs!  I was most excited to hear that they would grow in this area and last year I grew the angled loofah.  This year I planted them to grow up the pigeon peas and they have now entangled themselves into the shade cloth and grown off toward the fence - taking over the whole area.  They have  a pretty yellow flower.

Last year I grew them along the fence and they took off high up into the tree in the neighbouring telstra yard, and I harvested quite a few dried loofahs.  I did have trouble peeling them, but have since discovered that the trick is to soak them and then the peel just flakes off.  I sent a few to  aromabeauty soaps and she kindly sent me a bar which I gave to my mom and we shared it over Christmas.  It was called Christmas traditions - quite an appropriate name!  One of these days I want to try to make my own soap with my own loofahs embedded into them.

 I also enjoyed eating them when small (don't worry they haven't developed the fibres yet!).  This year I got the smooth skinned version and picked a small one just the other day.  You can see the skin is quite smooth.  This is what the angled loofah looked like at the same stage. small angled loofah

 I sliced it and then quickly sauteed it but think the angled loofah is actually much tastier, and the skin is tender enough to eat.   I do have some angled loofah seeds to give away, let me know in the comments if you would like them.  As far as I know it has to be within Australia.
I am also posting this on the how to find great plants carnival see here for other submissions appalachianfeet hosts this monthly

Hot and spicy

The weather is hot and spicy and so hot and spicy  is what is growing at this time of year. The birds eye chili are prolific - very hot - they say the smaller the chili the hotter it is and these are tiny.  These bushes pop up all over the place - one has climbed tree next to my office at work - it is about 20ft high!   The birds love them - they must not have taste buds like we do!

 This is a close up of fresh juicy ginger bursting through the wet soil.  You might remember when I was getting this ready to plant.... planting ginger   

 Now I have a huge bed of it - gone are the days of buying ginger from the supermarket.  I do like growing things that are difficult or very expensive to buy from the store.  They say that eating spicy foods cools you down, and right now I can make nice spicy laksa with all the ingredients (except for the prawns) straight out of my garden. 

 Then of course I also do like growing plants that looking at them make me think of coolness.  This white caladium is the closest to snow I am going to get .

I hope you have the correct balance of hot and spicy and coolness in your life right now.

Geisha girl is great for attracting butterflies

Everytime it stops raining and the sun comes out, so do the butterflies!  The bright sunlight is a bit rare these days so the colour is a bit off, but I wanted you to see the little dangly bits hanging from the lower wings.  arent they cute?

 Butterflies love the geisha girl flowers, and this time there was a ulysses butterfly that I thought I might be able to capture on film.

 It is very hard to get them to sit still long enough to catch them, and maybe the essence is the flitting bits of irridescent blue that you catch darting from flower to flower.  I think you have to be there to see it, but I will continue to dash out with a camera everytime there are butterflies in the garden.....


 Here I caught one just closing the top section of his wings.

I also got lots of shots of flowers - where the butterfly had just been :)

yellow butterfly

There was this little yellow butterfly flitting around - too fast to get great photos, but I did like the way it looks next to the purple geisha girls flowers...

Not a very inspiring post, but with this constant heat and humidity it is all I can manage for now.....

Overgrown garden

I have already done lots of weeding, but there is still more to do. at this time of year everything grows so fast.  Its a jungle out there....

Lots of variety at the base of the tree now that the bromeliads have been moved.  I like it.

Just a few little lipstick flowers, but it is growing like mad - I will have to lift the pot up soon.

The crotons are hidden behind the coleus.  the coleus seems to need cutting back at least once a week.

The path to the beehive gingers is staying nice clear though
easy to go through and harvest passionfruit by the bucketful.   Passionfruit nectar and iced water is my drink of choice at the moment - very refreshing in this hot weather.

I like how this leaf is red on the underside - and they are all curling together for some reason.

After the cyclone there were lots of fallen leaves and I have heard that they can pull nitrogen from the soil, but I have a nice thick layer of mulch under them so think we will be fine just leaving them be....

My thoughts and prayers go out to all my fellow Queenslanders affected by the floods. 

Vegetable garden update

One of the first things I did on returning home was clear some of the weeds in the vegetable garden.  The lemongrass had become monstrous, and so I chopped enough leaves away to clear the path.  Some went into the compost where  they are a great compost activator.  The others were just laid on the bare earth (now that the weeds are gone).  They are a sort of mulch, which I also hope act as a bit of an insect repellant, being lemony and all. 

I had put up a small shadecloth before I left, and in my absence a pawpaw tree had grown right up under it and was beginning to bend sideways.  I couldnt remove it as the loofah has got all entwined with it, so just changed it to a different angle to allow the pawapaw tree grow up alongside it.  I do hope it is a female pawpaw.  I have quite a few new papwpaw trees shooting up at the back of this bed, and those should be the red pawpaw, so am holding thumbs. 

Hubby didnt pick any asparagus so we have lots of thick ferns, but I will start harvesting them again now.  Not a bad thing as that will build up the crown.  I was amazed when weeding to see just how far reaching those asparagus roots actually are. I  also found lots of lovely thick wriggling earthworms, so have a feeling this is going to be a good productive year for veggies.

The comfrey in the ground rotted away so just as well I still have one in the pot.  I will propogate some more plants just as soon as this wet season looks as though it might be drawing to a  close.  I do like the comfrey for making comfrey juice and heating up the compost, but clearly it is not a wet season plant. 

I am glad that we just seem to be having short thunderstoms every day with a bit of clear weather to go out and garden.  Whew, it is hot and humid though!

sunbird nest

Joy of joys! When I left a sunbird had been building a nest from the hanging pot outside our bedroom window.  I wasnt too excited as I had heard they often build decoy nests. as they had last year see sunbird nest.
Upon returning from my holiday though I discovered we have little babies:  (I think 3, but one seems more adventuresome)

 Look how it is just hanging by a thread!  Isnt nature awesome?

Guest - my brothers food forest

One thing that I am always trying to grow is gemsquash, and here they are, but in my brothers garden - not mine (yet). They are just as delicious as I remembered.

we enjoyed the elephant garlic that is planted amongst the strawberries.  The strawberries are not quite ready yet.

the butternut is almost ready

these almonds are so easy to eat - they pop open when ready

I can see some apple crumble in their future

Even pommegranates! 

Great job you are doing in your garden dear brother and I really enjoyed all the yummy food you cooked for me!

Guest - my moms garden

I am home again at last, but while I was away there was a cyclone just south of us and it dumped a  lot of rain and wind.  My garden is going to have to have some work done on it before it can face the camera again. 
So in the meantime enjoy some photos of my moms garden.....

I will have to research to see if I could grow some of these alstromeria.....I love how they look combined with the pink splash.

Unfortunately my suitcase was not big enough to bring back some of these iron birds.

every day there are breadcrumbs for the birds

this one seems to be saying - "hello there Mr Dove".