Gardener Needed

Day17  January28th
I've been so busy being mindful of and photographing my garden that I fear I may have been neglecting to take care of it.  As I walk around it is telling me that it is time to do some actual gardening, and in particular some weeding. Rain plus sunshine = weeds.  These are particularly nasty.  They're not ugly. In fact they may have been planted as a ground cover by neighbours.  They send out shoots under the soil.  When they are small they pull out easily.  As they grow they become tougher and develop prickles.  These will require heavy gloves to pull them out.  I may even need to clip them.  They are very strong.
 The moral is vigilence. A few weeks ago  this would have been a bend and pull as I walk by job.

Sunshine?

Day 16   January 27th

The germination and early growth went well, but everything seems to have stalled.  One or two of them have sickly grey leaves. So I have started to put them outside to get more sunshine.  I bring them in at night.  One gulp from a moderately hungry caterpillar would demolish any one of them

Seedlings

Day 15  January 26th
I've never had much success with seeds. Whenever I tried in the past, after several weeks of cossetting, the fledgling plants would attract the curiosity of children or pets and end up seperated from their pots.
Earlier this year I bought a tray of mixed tomato seedlings.  Only two plants two grew well.  One was a  variety of Roma tomatoes.  What was exceptional about them, was that I did not have to pick them slightly before they were perfectly ripe in order to get them before whatever else fancied eating them.  Perhaps this should be a concern.  Why doesn't anything else want to eat them?  I decided to block this concern; I was so pleased to find a non cherry size tomato that I could pick intact. 
The others were striped green tomatoes.  I ignored them for a while, waiting for them to ripen. Then I remembered that one of the varieties in the pack had been green; so I could wait forever for it to turn red.  They turned out to be delicious and very sweet.
Unfortunately I couldn't find either type in the nurseries.  If I wanted more, the only solution was to take seeds from the tomatoes I still had. The early stages went very well. I soaked the seeds and sieved them to get rid of the gooey stuff, then planted them in small pots. When they grew two sets of leaves I trasplanted them into larger pots.
Since then there has been little development. I don't have any idea what to do next.

Slendour in the Grass

Day14  January 25th

The rain has meant that the lawn has turned into a meadow.  It's impossible to mow so all sorts of wild flowers have been able to grow. I prefer it like this, but we don't have cows or a goat to prevent it becoming waist high so it will have to be mown.

I tripped over a heavy boot a few days ago and bruise my little toe. It's a little swollen and extremely uncomfortable to wear shoes and even worse sandals. As a result I've been going ouside barefoot. I don't usually do this as Australia is home to several extremely venemous snakes plus a few spiders. If I do accidentally tred on something nasty I would prefer to be shod.  So walking barefoot in the grass was a novelty which transported me back to my childhood. I can't imagine that I went barefoot too often in England.  I can only conclude that the allure of cool grass caused me to shed my shoes whenever the chance arouse. The sensations were the same: cool, soft and prickly at the same time, and slightly damp. The smell was the same too.  I can't think of the words to describe it, just summer grass. I should probably have laid down to stere at the clouds, but I didn't.  I didn't do cartwheels either.

Artificial Insemination

Day 13  January 24th

The bees can't always be relied on to turn up for work.  A soft paintbrush can do the job. The pollen is a bright yellow colour. I wonder if it were mixed with a little oil, would it work as paint.

Day12   January23rd Not all the potential fruits grow to maturity.  Some of them rot on the stem like this one. I have heard it is because they were not fertilised.  There is a lot of luck involved.  First the female flowers have to bloom on the same day as male flowers. If that happens then the bees need to be around to do the pollen carrying. This often doesn't happen if it is rainy.

Finally a Girl

Day11  January 22nd

 Finally a female flower. What's more there are a couple of males out today too.  All we need now are some bees to do the job.

Defunct Parsley



Day 10 January 22nd

This is hardley recognizeable, but it is what is left of previously green and healthy parsley after the marauding pumpkins invaded.

Pumpkin Soup

Day 9  January 21st

Pumpkins will keep very well for several months, but once you cut into one you need lots of recipes so you can eat pumpkin fro several days.

Narelle's Pumpkin Soup

I'm not sure how accurately I'm describing Narelle's soup recipe.  We made pumpkin soup together while she was visiting  and this is how I recalled it later.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon of curry paste

About 1kg pumpkin

4 cups vegetable stock

1 1/2 coconut milk

Cook the curry paste for one minute. Add the peeled,chopped pumpkin and the stock. Cover and cook until the pumpkin is tender.

Put the mixture in a blender and blend until smooth.

Return to the saucepan, add the coconut and reheat.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with parsley or a swirl of coconut milk.

The Last Batch





Day 8  January 20th
This is the last pumpkin left from the previous batch. I didn't plant the pumpkins; they must have emerged from the compost mixture I added to the soil. I use a bokashi bucket.  Each evening, all the kitchen scraps go in  and are covered in a mix that looks like sawdust and smells of yeast. When the bucket is full I leave it for a couple of weeks, then transfer the mix to the garden.  The scraps are still recognizeable at this point, so a stray pumpkin seed could have accidentally made it into the garden.  For obvious reasons it's not a good idea to add seeds to the compost, but mistakes can be fortuitous.
Apparently two seeds made it from the kitchen to the vegie garden because two plants grew.  One yielded butternut pumpkins, and the other the more traditional shaped ones.  They could be Queensland Blue or Jap.
After I had picked all the pumpkins (about 7 in all), I was all set to pull out the plants.  In fact I did start.  Most of the leaves were pretty shrivelled and brown, but one stalk was sending out very healthy looking shoots and leaves, so I thought I'd leave it at see what happened.    It thrived with all the rain and has re colonised the garden bed. It is not a butternut pumpkin.

New Garden

Day 7   January 19th

My new garden has arrived, stacked neatly on the front lawn.  There was some concern that the delivery truck might not be allowed all the way along our road. The heavy rains we have had since before Christmas have caused part of the road to sink a couple of metres. Apparently where we live was once on an island joined by a bridge to the mainland. A causeway was built in place of the bridge and that is where the road collapsed.  It has been made stable, but we still only have a single lane controlled by traffic lights. For a while only local traffic was allowed in.  I rather liked that.  It was very quiet without al the traffic, especially without the jet skis hooning in the bay. I would like them to be banned.  They are hazardous to turtles and dougongs and a complete waste of fuel.  Instead, surf kites have been banned! Actually they are not banned from the water, just the park they need to go through to get to the bay.  Fortunately most of them ignore the ban. 

Now, the only limit on the road is weight; 4.4cwt.  The landscaping people used the smallest of their trucks and carried only my planks, so I am all set for a new garden bed.  

Starting over

Day 6      18th January Apparently there are some animals that want to eat the actual yams.  They are weevils. I think I have come across them, or rather the results of them eating the yams. When I planted the current bed of yams I just buried pieces in the ground.  If I do this again, I risk transporting any weevils and any diseases to the new spot. The way round this is to take cuttings and plant them.  So I have taken a couple and put them at the end of the bed currently housing the pumpkins. I need to be vigilent to make sure they are not overwhelmed by the pumpkin plants which I swear I can actually see  growing.  Those in the current bed are still very prolific, but I am told over time the will develop diseases and possibly weevils and I will need to start again. They take a very long time to produce sizeable roots so I am thinking ahead by planting these cuttings.

Sharing the garden



Day 5    17th January 2011

It appears that I am sharing my garden with creatures that I  am guessing have six legs in their adult form. I have not actually seen any of them dining, so I presume they come out at night.  For pumpkins and yams there does not seem to be any reason we can't all have our share; they eat the leaves and I harvest the fruits and roots. For tomatoes it's a whole other story. First come, best served, and that's because we all want the same bits.

Amazing Yams

Day 4 January 15th

Yes, I know they are officially sweet potatoes, but surely they must be a type of yam. I always refer to them as yams, so I might as well continue in print, if for no other reason than it is shorter. Anyway, whatever they are called they are amazing. I started these by planting pieces of yams from the fruit shop.  Pretty soon I had a box full of leaves and shoots- quite impressive. I think visitors were impressed, or maybe they were just polite. My garden looked really productive, but it was several months before anything substantial grew beneath the soil.  I still don't know the best way to find where an adequately matured tuber will be found. I just poke around with a trowel until I hit something that feels substantial; then I lever it a little and the yam seems to rise from the soil. It feels magical, especially when I'm not expecting to find anything. Because finding the yams is so hit and miss, occasionally one will be left for a long time and can grow huge before it is discovered. I thought that the giant I found yesterday might have been beyond eating. But not so; it was perfect.

Giant sweet potato

Day 3   January 14th

The title says it all, but this monster, just like its smaller brethren is destined for dinner.

Melissa's Delicious Roast Vegies

Ingredients 

sweet potato

regular potatoes

pumpkin

chick peas or hard boiled egg

avocado

tuscan spice

• Peel and cube the first three ingredients
• Spray them with olive oil and coat them in italian or tuscan spices
• Roast in the oven until they are cooked.
• Put them in a bowl and add chopped avocado and chick peas.
• Non vegans can substitute the chopped hard boiled egg for the chick peas.

Only Males

Day 2   13th January

The pumpkin patch looks very healthy after all the rain. There are plenty of flowers blooming, but since the last batch of pumpkins they have all been male flowers.  What is causing this?  Could it be the rain? Do female flowers know to wait for the sunshine? My fear is that finallyy the females will appear and there will be no males to fertilize them. They are open for such a short time, usually closing by midday. They have to come out to play together.  

The rain has stopped

Day 1

January 12th 2011.

       Finally the rain has stopped  and I can go out into my garden without an umbrella. It's  surreal walking around in the sunshine, knowing that a few miles away the Brisbane river is starting to flood.  By tonight houses close to the river will be part of the river, but here, the sun is shining.

The dramatic events of the last few weeks around Queensland have left me thinking that I take things too much for granted. So starting with my garden, I am resolved to be more mindful of my surroundings. Taking a photo every day for a year, I hope, will help in this.