A Christmas garden overhaul: bulbs, beds and box

I was fortunate enough this Christmas to have my parents visit Tasmania, or more specifically, help me in the garden.  We spent 2 out of the 5 days, digging up bulbs (with surprising results), weeding, de-claying soil, uprooting the evil roses, and most importantly, eating a christmas vegie feast. 

The Christmas Day vegies from the garden: artichokes, red cabbage, beetroot, silverbeet, broad beans

My Green Globe Artichokes, pre-cutting. 

Pip enjoying some cabbage company.  The purple cabbage behind her later became lunch

broadbeans, hiding behind the beautiful flowering chives

Mum's interpretation of 'dead heading' the daisies. 

Dad with his 'shovel' (apparently a shovel is different to a spade - he had to buy his own shovel for the job)

Dad's amazing digging job in the two top garden beds.  The nearest patch was the 'bulb patch' (see below)

the bulbs extracted from the 3msq patch

I decided to move the bulbs from a 3 square meter patch near the clothes line, and turn it into an extension of the lawn for now.  The patch had a revolving show of bulbs most of the year, and while it was beautiful, the patch was quite weed-ridden, and not exactly in the most convenient location.  I've not had much to do with bulbs in the past, however, the previous owners obviously loved them, as they magically spring up all over the garden.  The small patch in the back was completely overcrowded with them, and after a quick google search I found out that I should actually be lifiting and dividing bulbs occasionally (depending on their variety), so it was quite fortuitous that I decided to move the patch.  Apart from the daffodils, which mostly have their yellowing stems still attached, I'm not really sure which bulb is which - they all look very similar.  So I think I'm going to dry them all out and plant them around Easter. 

Some of the websites that I consulted had some very involved instructions: dig the bulbs up every year, store them in boxes lined with sand or peat moss, put them in the freezer, plant them in specific areas etc etc.  I think I'm going to stick to the more simple instructions: plant them, leave them in the soil, dividing them occasionally, and if they seem upset, readdress the issue then. The KISS rule...

Box hedging, which we planted around my greengage/golden drop plum tree.

Agapanthas have replaced the evil roses

 My mum helped dig up the evil miniature roses, which I've loathed since I moved in: they have tiny thorns which spike through gloves and clothes, they were always weed-infested and impossible to weed because of the thorns, they were various shades of pink, and, well, they were 'suburban' roses (not my kind of aesthetic).  Unfortunately, when we dropped the roses off at the tip to be recycled into mulch, my mum spotted someone emptying a heap of agapanthus plants into the pile too.  She grabbed them for my garden, despite my pleas otherwise.  Evidently, she's still 'boss', even though it's my house. I'm a little confused about the weed status of agapanthus - in the weeds of Tasmania booklet I have, they're listed as a weed, yet they're beautiful plants which are sold at nurseries around Hobart and planted by Hobart City Council.  I think if I'm vigilant about cutting the stems off before the flowers go to seed, it'll be okay.

The dog supervising the rose bush removal

 Mum also removed the daisy-like bushes that were responsible for my really bad hayfever last month, which turned into an infection - not a good infliction for a gardener...

My leeks in flower.  I'm glad I left some of them to satisfy my curiosity.  Such stunning flowers!

The first of the fruit trees is in!

Today I planted the first of my fruit trees: a Greengage/Golden Drop Plum combo.  While the cherry, apple, apricot, plum and nectarine trees are going to be planted along the southern fence in my backyard, I thought I'd plant the mini plum tree out the front for a bit of variety (plus I kinda ran out of space along the boundary fence in the backyard but still wanted a greengage).

I read quite a bit about planting fruit trees - many of them say things like 'start preparing your soil early, 6 months is best' (!).  Despite my best intentions, I haven't had time to even so much as weed the area out the back and the front year patch has only had a bit of minor digging in of mushroom compost.  However, I've spoken to a few v successful gardeners since then, and they all say that as long as you mix some good compost or well-rotted manure into the soil when you dig the hole for the tree, that should be more than enough.  In fact, if you believe some of Peter Cundall's recent articles in the local paper, fruit trees are pretty resilient and can actually benefit from a little neglect!

I mixed in some compost with the soil, and planted the tree in an earth mound for drainage as I have very dense clay soil and plum trees appreciate good drainage apparently.  I then laid wet newspaper over the soil and spread sugar cane mulch over the top.  I've got a lot of crazy little annoying weeds in the area and the newspaper coupled with mulch will stop the weeds from making home in the area and also keep soil damp come summer (that's if the black birds don't dig it all up like they do the pine bark).  I'll also extend my front yard watering system next weekend to include the tree.

I did a wee bit of remedial weeding as well.  As a result of my 3 week leave, I've got a mini weed jungle in the back yard including some very irritating, quick-spreading weeds that have a clover like leaf and a root that stems from a bulb like thing at the bottom.  It's quite hard to pull up the plant without leaving the bulb.  Additionally, if you leave it more bulbs grow on the root stem, and so it spreads.... ergh!

Goodbye dear sunflowers

I realised that I'd been at the art school too long the other day when I rationalised to my neighbour that I was retaining the blackened and aphid-infested giant sunflowers in my front yard as "a reminder of my own morbidity."  It was in part true; however, there were a few other reasons why I left it 'til today - council green waste day - to remove the majestic creatures.

tied up with string on the nature strip [sob]

Firstly, I was so proud of them - most grew bigger than me, and they fed bees with their pollen, then birds with their seeds (the birds would sit on top and swing upside down), then aphids, and by consequence, ladybirds.  It seemed a waste to remove them while the leaves were still green, despite the fact that the flowers - the reason for planting them - were black.  They also created some height in a garden that is filled with low (albeit growing) plants. 

 Frontyard sans sunflowers.  It looks so bare!

I'm also ashamed to say that it had a little bit to do with the neighbour.  He's nice, but he and his wife are the type that has a perfectly manicured yard, with hedges that have not a leaf out of place and cut with the assistance of a spirit measure, a weedless lawn, and grey painted concrete.  He also has the unfortunate habit of giving me business cards of the local mowing company every time my grass dares to grow beyond 2cm high.   As a result, when he suggested to me that it might be time to remove my sunflowers because the flowers were dead, I told him that I liked them like that, and that I had no intention of removing them.  I also added that I liked the way that the aphids were attracting ladybirds to my garden. 

In all reality, I'm not a annoying neighbour.  For a Y-gen I'm pretty quiet - I don't listen to loud music until 4 in the morning, throw weekly parties, or let the weeds grow higher than my sunflowers; however, I take a rather organic approach to gardening and don't mind if I have natives mixed with cottage garden plants, or if trees grow larger than expected, or plants sprout in the wrong place.  Letting the sunflowers live out their natural cycle was just an extension of this gardening philosophy.

in their prime (RIP)

I look forward to planting them again next spring.  They're certainly amazing (even if ephemeral) additions to a garden.

Easter Weekend Gardening Part 1: the front yard

The distinctions between the vegie garden backyard and ornamental frontyard are slowly melting away.  Apparently the (now) old couple who built and lived in the house for 50 years had a deal where he would tend the vegie garden in the back and she would do the ornamentals and flowers in the front.  Of course, when I moved in the vegie patches were just bare earth with the exception of the rhubarb (oh and a lot of weeds!), however the front yard had a lot of cottage-gardeney kind of plants.  What's even more exciting are the bulbs that keep sprouting up.  Not a month's gone by without a new variety springing out of the soil, such as these brilliantly red flowering ones to the right and below (no extra points for the old daggy plastic edging though - I think that'll have to go).

Many people have advised me to live in my house for a year before planting so that I get to know about the weather, sun patterns and wind etc. to make informed choices, however, I was rearing to go.  However, the bulb thing is another reason to wait.  The ugly plastic fenced patch above, which is in an awkward position in the backyard, was first on my list to go when I moved in, yet 6 months later I'm enjoying the near constant changeover of bulbs.  These red ones are dying back now, and there are some pink budded ones just about to emerge.  It's kind of like bulb tag!

Anyhoo, my Easter weekend list had a lot of things on it, and gardening was not high on the list in terms of deadlines.  However, as gardening is a fantastic procrastination method, I actually got quite a lot of digging, planting, weeding and strategising done. 

Firstly I got myself a couple of tiny box hedges (left) in a first step to realising my life-long dream of creating a topiary of my dog.  I figure that my sculpture major should be utilised somehow.   I planted one in the front yard, and I think I'll put the other in the backyard, just in case I find that I get performance anxiety.   I was going to topiarise (?) my bay tree that I planted when I first moved in, however, they grow so slowly and I'm chomping at the bit here!

My other purchase was a large native that, according to the woman at the Hobart Farmers' Market, is apparently very good at screening out nosy neighbours, being sufficiently tall, bushy and quick growing.  I don't think she knew who she was up against, but I bought the Dodonaea Viscosa (or Hop Bush) anyway, and strategically placed it down the side outside my kitchen window behind the bay tree.  I do worry quite a bit about blocking light to other parts of my garden, however, there are some sacrifices you have to make...

At the New Town Station Nursery, I came across a large number of blueberry bushes.  Considering the number of punnets I go through each summer, I felt that their $20/bush price tag was relatively reasonable, so I bought two.  While varieties of plants usually have fairly abstract or esoteric names such as 'Tigerella' tomatoes, 'Cox's Orange Pippin' apples, or 'Good King Henry'; my selected blueberry bushes are called Brigitta and Denise.  I laughed when I saw the names, because only the night before I'd been drinking with two women by that name (one of whom is my PhD supervisor). As a result, the plants have become quite personified in my mind. 

I planted Denise, which is shorter bush growing to about 1.5 meters and which produces big fat berries, down the side of the house next to the pepperberry bush.  Apparently blueberries can deal with part shade to full sun, and while I'm a little concerned that Denise won't get enough, it'll be interesting to contrast it to the larger growing Brigitta who I planted in the comparatively very sunny front yard.

Denise (with a small Camelia in the b'ground)

My two other major tasks for the weekend were installing a watering system in the front yard to counter my laziness in watering, and fixing the front lawn and weeding around the f#@*ing roses (which I loathe but feel guilty about pulling out). 

I've never been much of a lawn fan.  I can put this down to a couple of reasons: a) I'm allergic to grass, b) I've lived in so many rental houses where the grass has been the bane of my existance - it's grown and I haven't had a mower, it's been weed infested, it hasn't been watered so it's died, it's been killed by overexuberant house parties etc. etc. 

Little wonder then that when I moved into this house, I planned to get rid of the lawn in favour of a front yard overgrown with plants and a fairy path down the middle. However, I think I'm coming round to the grass thing.  For one, I haven't enough money for all the plants in my fairy garden scheme; secondly I can see that perhaps it might provide a nice background to my future topiary (in a kitschy, Tim Burton kind of way). Plus the dog appreciates grass.  So my task for the weekend was to scrape off the mat of brown spikey weed seeds that had scared the grass away on the southern side of the lawn, so that I can plant some grass seed (while trying not to sneeze).  You can see the patch left behind in the image below; and the bags of weeds and seed in the image to the left.
 

The foggy bits in the photo are due to my watering system which I finally installed (woot!).  I should point out that strangely, it's cheaper to buy the bits for an entire Neta watering system than to buy a good hose.

The end of my epic post (but not on the weekend - vegie garden update still to come)

Sunflower-Guzzling Bees

 

My sunflowers are out and happy.  Happier still are the multiple bumblebees that seem to be constantly attached to the sunflower 'faces'.

Here's an 'update' frontyard shot:

 

 

I also have to share my finally flowering sweetpeas.  Only two plants out of the entire packet actually sprouted (ripped off!).  They tried to climb some dead flower stalks at first, and I had to unwrap their tiny tendrils and curl them around some wire which I hung on my front fence (in the laziest of fashions).

Then there's the lavender that my mum planted from a cutting when she came down from Sydney a couple of months ago.  She introduced me to the world of stealing stalks of other people's plants.  Who would've thought cutting a chunk of lavender, sticking the end in honey, and then sticking it in the earth would yield a brand new plant?! Brilliant.  When she planted the stalk, it was a mere twig.  Now it has branches and flowers...

Lastly, is my 50c Chickenfeed seed garden, which is in the small planter box built into the house at the top of the front stairs. I wouldn't have thought seeds from Chickenfeed would actually grow, but at 50c I thought it was worth finding out.  I picked the 'blue mix'.  It turns out that the Chickenfeed seeds were much much more effective than the expensive sweetpeas. 

Front Garden update

I've been interstate for the Xmas break, so I've had a bit of a blogging hiatus, but I thought I should post the developments of my front garden.  I had been doing a vegie garden course, so most of my posts have been on the backyard which is the 'practical' garden, whereas the front garden is my flower/ornamental garden (for now anyway).  Apparently the previous owners had a system where the husband had the backyard, which was all produce, and the wife had the front, which was all flowers and pretty.  I'm trying to do both.

Here are photos of the front yard at the time that signed the contract for the house (late August '09):

And just before I went interstate for Xmas (mid December '09):

And this afternoon (it was very very hot in Hobart!):

 

Those big things in the front centre are my giant sunflowers, which I'm very proud of.  I should point out that I was wrong about the transplanting, as here are the sunflowers that were looking very sad in my last pessimistic post:

I'm thinking sunflowers don't like being transplanted...

I planted a number of sunflower seeds in the front yard recently as an 'instant' plant to fill some of the space in the front yard, and they've been coming up really well in the areas where I shifted the soil significantly, such as the circles in the middle.

However, none of the sunflowers planted in the strip along the front of the house have sprouted, and I think it has something to do with the quality of the soil.  Instead of taking the hint and mulching, I decided just to 'transplant' some of the sunflower plants from one of the circles to the bad soil strip. 

Before transplantation:

One day after transplantation:

Lesson learned.  Tomorrow I'm going to head to the nursery to pick up some mushroom compost for the front yard.

Catch up post. The garden's original state

I set this blog up as a visual garden diary.  I want to record images of my garden so I can look back in years and exclaim 'oooh, it was so naked' (obviously I'm planning on a few more trees), or 'gee, look at all those weeds' (which I'm actually doing still at the moment'.  I also want to record what works, what doesn't, my mistakes, what I've planted (easily forgotten), creatures that lurk under leaves or emerge by night... and so on....

I've been living in the house for 2 months now, and in that time I've have planted and weeded in both the front (pretty flowers, ornamental etc.) and back (vegies, fruit, practical stuff), but have only scratched to surface really.  I'll be doing some catch up posts ie.  how the garden looked before I even bought it through to the present.

So here are a couple of images of the garden when I inspected the house:

The front yard

The side of the house (unfortunately, by the time I moved in all the daffodils had gone for the season)

Backyard