My first asparagus

Now I thought it took 3 years before an edible asparagus formed, but one year after digging them in, one of my crowns has delivered a wonderful specimen:

asparagus amongst the daffodils

I planted five crown last year, but most got dug up by the idiot blackbirds. After spotting the lovely stalk,  I decided to visit Salamanca Market at lunch today and buy a few more crowns to replace the four that had been destroyed. So now I have six.

I also stuck in a number of Rialto Fragrant Lilium bulbs.  There's a good bulb stall at the markets which sells seasonally only those ready to plant straight away.  I didn't plan to buy bulbs at the markets, but I guess there are worse things to impulse buy.

I might post an image of the ceremonial inaugural asparagus picking tomorrow...

I'll come back when the bulbs are flowering

bulb-surrounded naked fruit trees

As my previous posts indicate, I've been dancing round the other hemisphere for a couple of months. There's nothing like 2 summers!  My lovely sister house sat for me, and not only looked after the garden, but planted half the current garden.  At Easter, I blogged about digging up the massive patch of bulbs, which I then stashed away to replant a couple of month later. Of course, I didn't get around to it, but Clo did it while I was away. House Elf to the rescue!

from the paved area (spot my lovely new mandarin and magnolia trees)

daffs are a sproutin'

My family trekked down to Tassie for Easter, and I put them to work (picture me with whip).  Collectively, we built this whole landscaped side area, and I transferred the rhubarb from the square up the back, to act as decorative (but delicious) border plants around the scallops.  They're starting to sprout back, as you can see from the photos.  I should give a giant shout out to my dad, who did more grunt work than the rest of us combined. He's a star.

Pip's helping to garden by devouring a bone twice her size.

Clo bought this little guy today. He's meant to be scary.

 Below you can see House Elf's (oh sorry, Clo's) amazing vegie garden effort:

beetroot

fennel

pea

 

 

 

 My Japanese plum has broken through and is the first of my budding deciduous trees for the season:

for the living room

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!

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)