Back from a break

Every year, I take a break from gardening during the winter months. The shorter days mean that I leave for work in darkness and come back by darkness. The only time I get to see the garden is from the window on the weekends. I am glad now that our garden is mature and is geeen all year round.

Come August and the plants start to get restless. The oranges are already starting to change to the right colour and the Daphne is flowering.

Daphne

Orange

The Jonquils are the first of the bulbs to flower. I can see them from the kitchen window, it's such a lovely sight.

Jonquil

Last September, I planted Carnations. They are pretty slow to grow, but finally a  bud appeared in July, followed by another soon after. They are such delicate flowers!

Carnation

Carnation

The vegetables I planted in March are doing ok without any love from me! The kale and spinach have been giving enough leaves every week for me to use them in our salad.

Kale

Spinach

The garlic is also growing well but still a long way away from harvest. There are a couple of flowers on the pea plant but the plant is starting to dry out from the base up. Unfortunately my veggie patch was infested with aphids while I was on holiday. I came back too late to save most of the peas.

Garlic

Pea flowers

And finally, nothing cheers me up more than the promise of new flowers and leaves! The pomegranate is my favorite in this respect. As the tree has matured, the leaves have started to arrive earlier in the month. The jasmine is also showing new buds.

Pomegranate

Jasmine

The surprising new entry is this cutting from Tibouchina. I pruned the plants in autumn as they were getting too leggy and used the cuttings to provide support to the peas. Now it looks like one of them has set root! This will be fun to watch.

Tibouchina stakes

Preparing for winter

Winding down summer is always a sad feeling, especially for us when we have grown up with sunshine all year round in India. The plants make up for it by giving us vegetables that last us for a while.

The newest addition to the veggie patch was the Brinjal (Eggplant/Aubergine). We harvested two really nice ones, though I had to watch out for the hidden thorns on the green part of the vegetable! There are a couple more that are developing, but not sure whether they will make it before the cold arrives.

Brinjal

The potatoes are still faithfully providing us some every year. They tend to start sprouting from a new spot in the vegetable bed every year, so I really have to watch out for them through the mulch!

Potatoes

Next up are the various chillies. I had planted three varieties last summer and had over-wintered all of them. They did well, though not as much as last year. This season will be their last in my garden.

Chillies

I also harvested the various herbs and a single bhindi (okra). Obviously the bhindi needed more heat than our so-called summer gave it.  In the picture below, clockwise from top, are mint, cinnamon basil, capsicum, chilli, jalapeno, large chilli and bhindi in the middle. The final harvests were done, summer was over.

Last summer harvest

To cheer us up, we thought of trying out our hand at some easy to grow winter veggies. Winter is a cold, damp and windy time in Melbourne, so we were not looking for something that needs a lot of care. We settled on Kale, Spinach, Garlic and Peas.

Winter veggies

While we were there, we also picked up a vertical herb planter. Our wall gets the sun in winters, so I thought this might work. We got Coriander, Parsley, Rosemary and Chives. We filled in the other spaces with Basil, Mint and Strawberry cuttings from our existing plants.

Vertical planter