Summer harvests

Following the relative success of the vegetables in the first year, we were really keen to try some more. BAAG was the place for some good veggie saplings.

Asparagus had recently become part of our diet and is easy to grow if you have patience. It takes two years to give a worthy harvest!

The other new addition to the garden was strawberries. The plant struck quite quickly and even gave out runners in a couple of months!

Strawberries

The other vegetables were a repeat of last year but started off earlier in the season. We got fresh plants of lettuce, chilli, spinach, capsicum and tomato.

Lettuce

Capsicum

 Meanwhile, the orange tree had some flowers which would soon turn into fruits.

Flowers in bloom on the Orange tree

Garden retreat

The disadvantage of our plot location is that we are lower than our neighbours, which makes our garden very visible. There are naturally several trees that grow fast enough to be used for screening, but they are very common. We wanted to have variety as well as functionality. At the start of the new season, we had grand plans for spending more time outdoors in our garden.

By now Morrison nursery and BAAG had become our favorite haunts for uncommon plants. An episode of Better Homes and Gardens introduced us to a plant called Tibouchina, which is an evergreen shrub with beautiful flowers all year round. We got two of those to brighten up our garden.

Tibouchina

Our next purchase was a more functional one. We wanted a fast growing tree to block out the view from our neighbour's newly built deck! The best option was an Australian native called Hakea Salicifolia. It is an evergreen tree and really bushy.

Hakea Salicifolia

And finally, Anshuman wanted a maple because of it's beautiful leaves and bark. Maples are deciduous, so we had to pick a location where the view to our garden was not so direct. But the tree was just beautiful and worth it!

Maple

I did say finally, but on the way to the cashier our eye was caught by another tree called Crepe Myrtle. These are also deciduous but have beautiful paper-y flowers for a short time in spring. We picked up one from the Indian summer collection.

Crepe Myrtle

Season 1 finale

By this time, we had quite a few vegetables that were ready for picking! Mint grows really vigorously and I had to start drying the leaves out for later use. The same can be said about Basil. It grew at a furious pace over the hot days, too fast for consumption. Hence, the Basil leaves were also put out in the sun for drying.

Mint

Basil for drying

Amongst the other vegetables that we had planted, the potato harvest was the most substantial. We did have isolated harvests of tomato, chilli, spinach and (a) capsicum.

Potato

A few tomatoes

Tomato harvest

Some chillies

Lone capsicum

Spinach harvest

But winter was approaching and Season 1 of Anshu-Pallo's garden show was over.