Garden News January through to March 2025.

 

Blog January, February and March 2025

Well today marked the end of summer and what a horrible gardening summer it has been.

Since prior to Christmas we have only had two small showers of rain yet we see plenty of rain to the South and North of us.

The daytime temperature in the shade has consistently been in the 30c plus range, the humidity has been awful.

The garden is just so dry and most of our time is spent watering trying to keep our beloved plants alive.

It is very stressful and both my knees are playing up and I am in pain all the time, but still must get all the work done.

I must be getting old as I had to enlist the help of my Grandson to move the compost from the front yard to the back, he did an excellent job and the electric wheelbarrow made it much easier for him, a good swim after and some cash made him happy.

I cut the Grumichama’s back quite severely as it has always been a difficult job, just trying to make garden maintenance easier in the future.

I thought I had lost my Lotus plants but after a while they have come up and one has flowered.

It looks like a very slow year for us as we have two bus visits booked for this year and as far as garden presentations only one booked although we do want to cut down on those especially the ones that involve City driving but we do miss the visitors.

People can visit by appointment and Judy always has a range of nice plants available.

Due to weather conditions the Caladiums and Amorphophallus are dying back early this year.

Just prior to me posting this Cyclone Albert was closing in on Brisbane, so it was time to move plants, secure everything loose, and chase up sandbags and a generator.

Panic at the sandbag station but I managed to get six bags, I had to hunt down a generator and finally found one of the last ones available, so that was lucky.

The Cyclone came over as a Category 1, then turned into a rain depression dumping 541 mm of rain in our garden.

We lost power, phone, and mobile coverage for three days, the generator kept the fridge and freezer going.

Damage, a large ‘Cherry of the Rio Grande’ was blown down as well as a Coffee tree and a whirlybird was blown off the roof causing some water to enter the kitchen.

What a terrible job it was to clean up, the ‘Cherry of the Rio Grande’ was a large tree and absolutely covered in ‘Lady Slipper Vine’, it was a tangled horrible mess to remove.

Trouble is it has left an are that was in shade now in full sun so I have started to build a cover over that areas but the plants are burnt, so lot’s more work to get it right.

Not an easy job as there are so many angles and just a few weeks before I turn 80 it’s the last thing I need, anyway at this point in time I have managed to get most of the stump out and the frame up, now have to put the shade cloth on.

We are now at the end of the month and it’s pouring rain, all tanks are overflowing, so looks good for winter which is usually our driest season.

We visited our very good friend Rod Patterson who turns 92 this year, still loves his garden.

No blog would be complete without a few garden photos.

Our Nam Doc Mi Mango crop, not my favorite.

October to December Garden News 2024

 

Pretty well all of October and part of November we were dog sitting, our son and family went To Thailand for a four-week holiday so we had a Jack Russell and a large sheepdog to look after.

This meant that all the gates had to be kept shut and made it very difficult to do a lot of gardening.

Very little happened in October and Judy had to spend a lot of time getting plants ready for ‘The Tropical Foliage Festival’.

We were back to watering the garden by hand as there was quite a few very dry spells.

I did manage to top soil the back lawn with a sand dressing.

Well, did it ever rain in November in the space of a week we had over 350mm of soaking rain and everything like crazy, I can see so much pruning will have to be done in winter.

Our Mango showed so much promise with a magnificent flowering, but of course we had a shower of rain and will only have six Mangos to pick, that is if we can beat to Flying foxes.

They have already eaten most of the Longan and Lychee crop, they eat them when they are the size of your small fingernail.

We took a lot of plants to the ‘Tropical Foliage Festival’ it was hard work setting up and the Saturday was quite busy, nice to meet some old friends there.

We had a bus visit with 37 people from the ‘Cleveland Over 50s’ visit us again as they wanted to see the mass plantings of Caladiums, they enjoyed the garden.

I have had to say no to presentations to a couple of garden clubs as we do not want to travel through peak hour traffic, and believe me it’s bad here in Brisbane. We will still do reasonably local ones.

Well, that’s it from a very wet ‘Giving Garden’ for the rest of the year, lets see what 2025 brings.

I know one thing it will bring and that is my 80^th, apart from aches and pains I am going reasonably well.

Have a great Christmas and a happy new year, all the best.

Garden Hose

I know a bit, perhaps a lot about garden hoses and the trouble they can be.

With our large one-acre garden I have to do a lot of watering so I need a good quality hose.

There is nothing worse than having to continually take out kinks in a hose.

Some hoses go hard and perish in the sun which is so frustrating, especially if they have been expensive.

I recently bought this hose from Bunnings, it was a risk as it was made from new material.

To my delight the hose has never kinked and remains supple and easy to handle and has an eight year warranty.

Yes, I am happy with my purchase and would recommend it.

July August and September Garden news

 

I am afraid I have been a bit slack in keeping this garden blog up to date, anyway as they say better late than never.

In July we did our usual trip to the Nambour Garden Expo, always interesting but only a few plants bought as we have so many already.

Then we drop in to see our friends at Natra-kelp whose factory is based at Maroochydore, really great product that we use all the time in our garden.

Still trimming back all the fruit trees, on my 24^th trip to the dump this month of July, all the summer rain has caused everything to grow so much.

No bus visits or garden talks this month, big change from last year where we were very busy hosting trips.

I got fed up with the Bombax Tree never flowering and dropping off dead limbs, so I took off as many limbs as I could then paid someone to take down the trunk, such a messy tree, one that I will not miss.

Went to get my long Fiskars pruner out and found the chain had come loose and disappeared inside the mechanism, not a problem as Fiskars have a 25 year warranty so it was off to Bunnings to do a quick exchange, great as a new one costs $239.

I love my Ryobi One tools as they are cordless and if you register online you get six year warranty, how good is that.

Judy was out of 15mm pine back which she used for her Bromeliad mix, nowhere seems to sell it so it was a trip to Bassett Bark at Glasshouse Mountain to fill up the trailer, great and very helpful people there.

 

In August and September we seemed to spend most of our time watering as it was very dry except for one day.

We hosted a bus trip from the ‘Cleveland Over 50s’ and that was good, they really enjoyed the Winter Garden and plan to come back late November to see the mass plantings of Caladiums and other summer flowering plants.

After cutting back very heavy, the Mango is showing it's appreciation.

it was also time to get my Amorphophallus tubers/corms out of hibernation and start to repot, the drill auger comes in very handy for mixing the potting media.

In September we hosted a bus trip from ‘Stafford Garden Club’, again in was a successful visit with all our visitors enjoying the garden.

Again, very dry and I really hate having to spend two days watering when there are other jobs that need doing.

Still trimming, pruning, and cutting back shrubs and trees and took trailer load 30 to the dump, thank goodness our dump is free otherwise I would have to get a bank loan.

I top dressed the back lawn with sand and thankful that I had the electric wheelbarrow as my knees are both not the best these days.

My Facebook page is doing well with 4000 plus likes and 4000 plus followers and ‘Open Gardens and Events Queensland’ has over 7000 likes, thanks Marie Jones for helping me out by becoming the second Admin.