Japanese Windflowers

Well at least the Japanese Windflowers are doing well this autumn. Last year they were burned by the late hot summer sun. Sometimes its unpredictable when the weather will come and go and the plants suffer.

Harvesting Garlic

Woohoo! I'm harvesting my garlic! These are the first lot of garlic I've ever grown so I'm really excited. I can't remember the date I put them in the ground..probably around March so they should be ready by now. Traditionally you should plant garlic on Australia Day and harvest them on Melbourne Cup Day but I go with my instinct so here they are. I'll keep them in a cool dry place and they should keep for some times.

Blue Moon Climbing Rose

This is my Blue Moon Climbing Rose I have growing on the south facing wall of my backyard. Though a prolific flowering rose I have hardly many roses each year all thanks to the possums who come along the fence in the night and eat all the flower buds before they get to bloom.

I have struggled for years to overcome this possum problem; I've tried all kinds of remedies I could find on the web but they all have limited success. From deterrents to electronic devices I've tried them all. Still I found the Poss Off deterrent by Beat-A-Bug to be most effective. I have to keep at it everyday though and a bottle of Poss Off is very expensive.

Lucerne hay mulch

The weather's slowly warming up so its time to put on the mulch. I prefer organic mulch than inorganic and my favourite has got to be lucerne hay. Got a big compact bale for $20 to mulch the tomatoes I just planted. Grow tommies grow!

Compost are ready

My compost bin full! I need to use up some of the ready compost so I'll have room to make more. I shouldn't have thrown in the garden clippings last time coz now I gotta separate them out before I can use them.

Time to feed the roses

Time to give my roses a feed; I use Sudden Impact for roses for many years & it doesn't disappoint. From now till April I'll be feeding my garden every 6 weeks with all the goodies I can muster.

Planting the tomatoes

The tomatoes are planted in the greenhouse, this year I'm trying out a new trick I learned from another gardener in America; putting dry milk around them to give them extra calcium to prevent blossom end rot & also as a fungal deterrent.

I think dry milk is called milk powder here in Australia because we don't have dry milk! Just milk powder.

Basic tools

All gardeners need some basic tools. You can always find a hand trowel, fork and dipper in any garden. They're a must for good gardening, apart from good soil, location and good maintenance but we'll leave those for another post.