Frost attack!

Melbourne is susceptible to frost during the winters. In the last 7 years, our garden has survived it well. Perhaps we did not have enough frost to cause much damage. This year, however, quite a few plants suffered damage.

Princess Lily bitten by the frost

The most disappointing one was guava. We had more fruits this year compared to last. Sadly, many of them were, literally, frozen in their tracks towards development! It’s not a pretty sight, but they deserve a mention on the blog. Other guavas will be ready in a month’s time for plucking.

Poor Guava

Blackened

Another victim of the frost is Tibouchina. The original Tibouchina is located under trees, so is not affected. The new ones are out in the open and quite tall. The frost took out most of the branches and the leaves started dropping at an alarming rate. I read on forums that the plant is not dead, but may need pruning of the dead branches once the risk of frost has passed.

Dead arm of Tibouchina

I am looking forward to spring soon and putting this winter behind us!

Winter notes

Things are slow in winter. It's cold and wet and gets dark early. If we are lucky, the weekends are dry. This is when I step out with my camera to capture the growth!

Let us start with the Guava. We saw fruits in February this year. They stayed small and green and rock solid until last week. Out of the eight, 2 started to turn yellow, though the size remained the same. I plucked one when it started to smell a little ripe. As it turned out, I plucked it too soon.

First Guava

 Anyway, the others were starting to turn yellow too. But, to my surprise, they were also getting bigger! In one week, they showed considerable growth.

Other Guavas

Next up are the Peas. I had sown a few peas in the middle of May. These were picked from the dry ones we normally use for cooking and got no special treatment before sowing. I simply popped them in under the now well-grown Tibouchina stakes. Two weeks later, the small saplings started to appear! Yet I waited till two more weeks to get a good picture.

Growing Peas

Over the weeks they have grown taller and bushier. As of today, there are close to 10-15 white flowers. The first flower is now becoming a tiny pod. I look forward to harvesting them!

A small Pea pod

Now, I love Jonquils! Every year they cheer me up in the dead of the winter. They can be seen from the kitchen window and I am able to see them in the morning while eating breakfast. This year, when I got home one evening, I saw the first flower of the season. So excited was I, that I took a picture in the darkness.

First Jonquil of the season

A few weeks later, all the Jonquil bulbs are flowering, smelling heavenly.

Jonquils in bloom

The other two bulbs that we have are not doing too well. I did not expect much from the Tulip as they do not last long, but I think the Hyacinth is suffering because of it's location. It still flowers every year, but much smaller than the first year. And it is really difficult to access now with the growing Orange and Myoporum around it. This year I will move it to under the Maple once the foliage dies down.

Hyacinth

Speaking of Orange, they are almost ready! Normally we start picking them in end of August.

Oranges turning orange

Then only vegetables that we have been picking regularly are the leaves of Spinach and Kale. They do very well in winter and I have been careful to keep Aphids and leaf eating insects off them. Every week we get a good dose of salad leaves!

Kale

Spinach

Coming up next month are Asparagus and Daphne!

Asparagus

Daphne

Summer round up - 1

Not much is happening this season as we did not plant any new vegetables. Vegetable grow quickly, so there is something new every week. Fruits take so much longer!

Guava – I saw 8 flower buds in December. These have now become fruit. The fruit are still in the growing phase, so they are only as big as a strawberry, but still, getting there!

Fruit in February'16

Strawberry – Speaking of strawberry, we discovered a hidden stash of strawberries growing deep within the plant. I had given up hope as for the last two years we had lost our crop to a pest. But my aunt and uncle, who came to stay for a day, found them. They were really healthy and much bigger than we have had before. More are expected, equally big in size I hope!

Strawberries

Promise of more Strawberries!

Melon – I planted three melon seeds from a fruit that was store bought. One of them germinated and is now trailing along the width of the vegetable patch. The yellow flowers are quite striking, but were slow to attract pollinators. Now, I can see a couple of fruits forming. I am not sure whether they have enough time to grow and ripen before the winter comes. As I understand it, they need a lot of heat to ripen. But, look like the fruit is doing just fine! The photo on the left is from 22nd February, the right photo is from 26th February. Look at how much it has grown in  4 days!

Melon - photos are 4 day apart

Pomegranate – As usual, the tree had a zillion flowers during spring. Many looked like they would become fruit, but fell off. I read somewhere that pomegranate should be planted in a sheltered position, with less wind. Unfortunately, ours is not and Melbourne can get quite windy. That is why most fell off…save one. This flower was right at the bottom of the tree and we almost missed it. Now it’s quite well grown. The tree we bought does claim to give a large fruit, bigger than one’s palm. Let’s see whether that happens.

Lone pomegranate

Lime – We are plagued by the Citrus gall wasp, which is common in Australia. It burrows a hole in the stem to lay its eggs. These are characterised by bumps and lumps in the stem. I tried to snip off those branches last year after the eggs had been laid, but I think I succeeded partially only. Hence, this year too we got lots of leaves, but no flowers. A month ago, we saw a bunch of them in the stems at the back (which incidentally did not have any visible citrus gall wasp infestation). These now look like potential lime. It is ironic that this was the first plant we bought (2011) because we genuinely eat lots of lime and it is quite expensive here.

Lime

Potato – Potato still surprises me by growing from a different spot every year! I have no idea how it travels from one end to the other of the 7 ft vegetable patch, but I swear it does! This year we got three plants, which I harvested a couple of weeks ago. The potato were quite tiny, but so delicious.

The other potential vegetable harvests like Broccoli, Asparagus and Herbs did not do well. I was only able to harvest a few Chives and Basil. Everything else was too minimal to harvest, so I let them take a break and go to seed :D

Just yesterday, I cleaned out the vegetable bed of the dead Virginian Stock and unearthed what looks to be a chilli plant. I had small chillies growing in that spot in 2015 summer and the plant looks like that. I am now debating whether to bring it indoors for winter. It will certainly not have enough time to grow, flower AND provide chillies before the winter comes.

Chilli

Summer progress

We are well and truly into summer now. All the plants suddenly start growing at a ferocious pace!

The vegetable patch is not much to talk about. The Lettuce saplings have started to give us leaves. I hope to harvest many before it becomes too hot.

Lettuce

I mentioned in a previous post about using Tibouchina pruning as stakes for Peas. The Peas did not survive, but just look at how well the Tibouchina has settled in! Their flowers will look lovely in the vegetable patch.

Tibouchina

I caught a glimpse of a Broccoli on one day. The next morning the plant was destroyed.

Broccoli

The Virginian stock are looking lovely! I now know what a field of flowers looks like. I see lots of bees hovering, so hopefully that is great news for the fruit flowers.

Virginian Stock

Speaking of which, the Pomegranate had a million flowers this spring. Some even dropped their petals and went on to pretend that they would become fruits. But, day by day, I see them falling. We will be lucky to get even one this season.

Pomegranate

However, the Guava is showing potential with eight buds. The tree is still quite short, only 4 feet tall. Fingers crossed!

Guava

Last year, the Kalanchoe flowered quite beautifully. This year too, the flame red flowers look so fantastic!

Kalanchoe

A few plants to look forward to are the herbs in the vertical planter. The Basil is well settled now and the leaves should be ready to be plucked soon. We have already started to harvest the Chives, Rosemary and Mint.

Basil

Chives

Lastly, I am so excited with the flower developing on the Cactus!

Cactus

Fruition of our ideas

Gardening is almost Australia's national pastime! I discovered that only when we started working in our garden and discussed it at work. A colleague told me about Morrison's nursery which was very popular. Another colleague told me about Bulleen Art & Garden nursery, whose abbreviation is coincidentally BAAG, which means 'garden' in Hindi. We decided to visit both and expand our plant collection.

Morrison's nursery was owned by two brothers who grew up on an orchard farm on that land. The farm had been in their family since 1944 and they started the nursery in 1979. The speciality of the nursery were the fruit trees owing to their upbringing and this is what we set our sights on. We did not have any particular fruit trees in mind, we just wanted to have a look. Their collection really surprised us though! They had the expected citrus family trees like lemon, lime, oranges, etc. But they also had guava and pomegranate, two fruits that are rarely seen in Melbourne. Along with an orange tree, we bought one of each of the pomegranate and guava!

Guava

Pomegranate

Orange

Our next stop was at BAAG. They are more than just a nursery, they have a lot of sculptures and other things that can be used in a garden. We set our sights on their native plant collection though and bought a plant called Kangaroo paw. It is a native plant and has velvety flowers that resemble a kangaroo's paw. It attracts birds to the garden. We also bought a couple of native shrubs from a species called Hebe. Pictured below are Emerald Green and Pretty N Pink.

Emerald Green - Hebe

Kangaroo Paw

Pretty N Pink - Hebe

By this time, our vegetables had begun to take shape! We could harvest the first lot of methi leaves and were beginning to see the potatoes taking root. It was the start of summer and we were looking forward to more harvests!

Methi