Garden news from April 2009

April has been a very busy month.

Have been prawing just about every week, see photo of 'Charlie' above.

In the first couple of weeks of this month we had 225 mills of rain, all tanks are overflowing and the garden is smiling.

I put up shelving in Judy’s Bromeliad house and removed all the pine bark from ground; hopefully this will stop rot disease and let in a lot more air circulation.

I have started to use Scott’s Crown 225 as an insect spray and so far I am very pleased with the results. I am also trying out ‘Amigrow’ fertilizer mixed with ‘Natra kelp’.

Judy and I have joined the Wynnum Garden Club; we have found it to be a very friendly club who have always supported our ‘Open garden’.

We have done a big garden clean up done to prepare for our visitors from Bundaberg.

My SMART gardening course has finished and we graduated with a certificate and polo shirt, where this will take us in the future I am not sure what sort of volunteer work I want to do.

We went to the ABC garden Expo and were very disappointed as it was very small and not a lot really to see.

The International Tropical Foliage and Garden Society from Bundaberg visited our garden, they came and went quite quickly, we were the last place they were visiting and they were all tired and just about gardened out by the time they reached us.

I have been invited to join the ‘open garden’ committee but not sure if I will accept as I HATE committees and have never enjoyed the few that I have been on in the past.

As well as having a ‘smart garden’ we now have a ‘smart home’ having just installed an eight-panel solar power system, which generates 1.3 kilowatts of electricity; hopefully this will ease the pressure on our electricity bills.

I continue to make small changes to the garden and will continue to do so as it will never be finished. We are looking forward to being grandparents for the first time in mid May.

Garden News from March 2009

I was invited by the Bayside Garden Club at Wynnum to give a talk on sub tropical gardening in Brisbane, which I did and was well received. I took along a selection of plants and flowers; about 60 people were in attendance. Judy and I have decided to join this club, as they are a nice lot of people.

I am still attending the ‘Smart’ gardening course and learning a bit but sometimes it gets a bit too much technical and stuff like natives plants I must admit I do not have a lot of interest in.

I was sitting down on the back patio looking at our waterfall/pond area and realised that I could really improve it, so I started to remove the front pool fence then re- install it at he back of the waterfall of course one job always leads to another so it was more bush rocks, soil and fencing material. The fence also needed to be ‘CANE TOAD’ proofed.

I also had to buy a new pond filter and pump, so this time I bought a filter with a UV light and a 6000 litre per hour pump.

The pond area looks really great now I am very pleased with the end result.

It’s the Prawning season so I am trying to get out on Tingalpa Creek as much as possible.

Looking forward to visit from the ‘International Tropical Foliage and Garden Society’ members on 19^th April 2009, they are on a bus tour from Bundaberg.

I attended an all day Native bee (sting-less) workshop and really enjoyed it. I was glad I went.

 I have planted a couple of dozen more ‘cordylines’ In the garden but it’s hard to see where they have gone. We had a garden visit last year and I was asked, “where were the cordylines”? I replied “there’s about 200 plus if you look”.

Last but not least RAIN, it only rained once in March 20 mills only.

February 2009 Garden News

I have now been off work for six months and have been very busy all the time; I have not been bored once. There seems so much to do all the time. I keep on asking myself “how did I do it all when I worked five days a week”. The garden takes up most of my time and I must say it is looking really good. As usual my main complaint for the month is the lack of rain, we did have a few showers in mid February but as usual Birkdale missed most/all of the heavy falls. Victoria Point, which is, only a few kilometres away had over 230 mills, whereas we had about 35 mills over a few days. Anyway we are still keeping our garden alive by watering from the rainwater tanks. I find standing watering to be much the same as watching grass grow. We had a trip up to Maryborough to see our friends there who have just started a small nursery business, as usual when we go on a trip we come home with a car full of plants, this trip was no exception. I have planted quite a few nice plants this month and they should be fairly well established by Novembers ‘Open Garden’. I have started to go prawning in our local creek, I cast net and came home with my limit of 10 kilos the other day. I had hoped that I would have the creek virtually to myself when I retired but alas not the case, I counted 11 boats all prawning last week, seems the word has spread. At least they are not the yellow raincoat brigade (Viet) who take everything that they catch legal or not. Summer is now over and I really look forward to the cooler weather. I have been attending the ‘Smart Gardener’ training course during February, it’s called master gardener elsewhere but Queensland Horticulturalists objected to that, I could call them a name which started with w and ended with s but I will be polite and not do that, it’s a bit like the article I wrote and was paid 30c per word whereas a professional would have been paid $1 a word. Ah well that’s life.   

January 2009 Garden

It has been very dry and hot since Christmas, not a day under 30c and the garden is showing signs of stress from the hot and very dry conditions.

I started a new garden while Judy was incapacitated (new knee) as I knew she would not be happy with more loss of lawn, so she came home from Hospital to a 'status quo'. It is probably the last major project in the back yard as the water situation will only get worse and we do want to keep some lawn. I am very happy with the end result and I think Judy is too, but of course she will not say so.

I have been off work for five months, hasnt that gone quick, I have been very busy with lots to do and still to do.

We signed up to have Solar Power installed, we opted for an eight panel system which generates abot 1.3 kw of electricity a day, that with our solar hot water, insulation and roof whirlybirds make our home very green and smart.

Had a couple of Heliconias flower for the first time, 'Chocolate Dancer' and 'Manoa Sunrise', I still get a kick out of seeing a plant flower for the first time.

I must admit I had more time when I was at work to write this blog, I hate being indoors during the day.

January Garden 2009

It has been very dry and hot since Christmas, not a day under 30c and the garden is showing signs of stress from the hot and very dry conditions.

I started a new garden while Judy was incapacitated (new knee) as I knew she would not be happy with more loss of lawn, so she came home from Hospital to a 'status quo'. It is probably the last major project in the back yard as the water situation will only get worse and we do want to keep some lawn. I am very happy with the end result and I think Judy is too, but of course she will not say so.

I have been off work for five months, hasnt that gone quick, I have been very busy with lots to do and still to do.

We signed up to have Solar Power installed, we opted for an eight panel system which generates abot 1.3 kw of electricity a day, that with our solar hot water, insulation and roof whirlybirds make our home very green and smart.

Had a couple of Heliconias flower for the first time, 'Chocolate Dancer' and 'Manoa Sunrise', I still get a kick out of seeing a plant flower for the first time.

I must admit I had more time when I was at work to write this blog, I hate being indoors during the day.

December 2008 News

It's the last month of the year and alltogether it has not been a bad year.

The drought has finally broken,admittedly we have had a few dry spells but the rain did come at regular intervals.

It is always a relief when the 'Open Garden' is finished, I am not sure if the visitors realise just how much work goes into the opening.

December started off with some good rain, then we went for three weeks without, then the garden started to get that stressed look mainly due to the heat , we have had temps up to the high 30s.

Judy went into Hospital to have a complete knee replacement and I have been looking after her these past few weeks, looks like the operation was a success and Judy will soon be able to get back to her Bromeliads.

The best news of the month was from Scott and Eliza, seems that we are going to finally become grandparents in May, what wonderful news make it more than special as Scott is a paraplegic.

The garden is looking very green and lush the only thing that spoils it is the Gum trees losing their bark, very messy all the time.

I have often thought about opening our garden in February but realise the garden will be missing colour as the Day Lilys, Blood Lilys,Costus and Caladiums are already past their best.

I have decided to open a week later in 2009, so it will be the last weekend of November, the 28^th and 29^th.

I have decided on 2009s new project which will be an expansion of an existing garden in the back yard, Judy hates it but I think it will look nice.

Now that I am on long service leave I have time to do everthing, no more rushing.

The prawning season starts soon and I will be leaving the garden for a couple of months while I fill up the freezer (hopefully).

Open Garden 2008

After months of preparation it was close to our opening weekend, as always you pray for good weather. Well, the week leading up to the opening was very, very wet, in fact we had 265 mm of rain and the yard on the Friday was absolutely waterlogged.The garden was looking very good as this was our first opening where we had not been in drought Saturday was forecast for severe storms, supposedly worse that what had hit Brisbane earlier that week, the state Premier even went on radio to advise people not to leave their homes.As a result of the weather only 200 visitors came on the Saturday and the storms did not eventuate although it was very hot and humid.Sunday turned out to be fine but very high winds all day, but the visitors did arrive and we had close to 450 that day.Everyone enjoyed the garden especially one ten year old who signed the visitors book with this comment, “gardens are boring, but yours sure isn’t”.A lot of our usual visitors did not come and after talking to people later it was the weather that put them off.We had lots of helpers and at one time had five Swiss helpers; our connection with the Swiss is quite amazing. As usual Warrick and Fabienne's dogs provided lots of entertainment, ‘Diggity’ by diving into the swimming pool and the children loved the new pup ‘Fifi’.The caladiums were a picture; best I have ever seen them and the new front gardens were also a hit.The Capalaba Lions were great and the catering went off without any problems, the ‘Lions’ raised over $1500 from the catering and raffle and were going to put in more to help a girl with multiple sclerosis.Everything was down by 25% including plant sales, Judy hardly sold any of her large  $20 Neos, which was a shame as they were very good healthy specimens, mainly plants $10 and down sold, may have something to do with the financial situation at the moment?It was a pity about visitor numbers, 1000 seems to be a magical figure that is very elusive, and it’s strange as all our visitors say our garden is far better than any other garden they have visited.There’s always next year and of course there will be a new garden for people to see, this one will see the landscaping of the back yard completed.