July 2013 Garden News

July already and it’s time to visit the Nambour ‘Garden Expo’, we have been going to this event for many years and really enjoy it and we get to catch up with many of our gardening friends and acquaintances.

We are now old hands at knowing which plant stalls to head to first. We were lucky this year to get Amorphophallus bulb, a couple of hybrid sinningia’s and some crinum bulbs. We bought a few other plants including anthurnium’s.

 Medinilla.

 Anthurium

 Eucharis Lily.

Abutilon double pink.

After lunch we headed to Maroochydore to see our friends at the Natrakelp factory they gave us new kelp product '10.2.2.4' to trial, we have since tried it and wow we are impressed.

On the Sunday Helen Curran from the Sydney tropical Garden Society paid her usual yearly visit to our garden.

On Saturday 20^th we hosted a bus load of visitors from the ‘Queensland Council of Garden Clubs’, most were garden plant judges from Victoria. I told them our garden was a summer garden and there was not much in flower at the moment, they left very impressed mainly commenting on how healthy our plants were.  I said that was thanks to our continuing use of ‘Natrakelp’.

That evening I was the guest speaker at their dinner and gave the ‘Bizarre and Beautiful Botanical's’ presentation.

Impatiens 'Grandis'.

On the 23^rd we went to the ‘Albany Creek Garden Club’ and gave the ‘Passion for Plants’ presentation. What a nice club this was and they bought almost all the plants we had brought with us.

I have started to buy a few rare bulbs on Ebay and some plants that are impossible to get elsewhere, so far so good.

I walked into one of our shade houses and noticed that it was just about to fall down, well out came the plants and down came the rotten timber and a few days later I had built a new shade house.

We have decided to assist the Lions Club again by opening our garden to raise money for a special charity, so we will open to the public on the 23 and 24 November 2013, all money from the gate, catering and raffle will go to the Lions Club.

This opening will coincide with the ‘Tropical Foliage Festival’ being held in Cleveland, that’s OK because we always help each other out when dates coincide.

We will rejoin the ‘Australia’s Open Garden Scheme’ for 2014.

In the garden plenty of new plantings, trees and shrubs pruned and started to raise all the rocks lining the pathways.

 Costus cuspidatus

 Medanilla

Geranium 'Big Pink'.

This turned out to be quite a painful job because over the years so much crusher dust has been laid on the pathways and each rock had to be dug out by hand, half way through my back gave way and I am having to take it a bit easier at the moment due to being in pain and unable to bend, very frustrating for me.

 Nothing is sacred to the Noisy Miner birds.

My fertilizing corner.

June 2013 Garden News

Well, it’s been very funny month weather wise.

In Queensland we usually have our dry season during winter with mostly sunny days.

This month has been just the opposite with rain and mostly cloudy days.

The garden needs a bit of sunshine.

 Impatiens grandis

We visited the Ipswich Horticultural Society and Kilcoy Garden Clubs this month and paid host to a group from the ‘Rose Lovers’ Association.

We were invited to the Bayside Garden Club for their friendship day where a guest speaker showed many slides of her holiday in France, I am afraid I am not one for looking at holiday photos so found myself getting quite restless.

I have now sprayed the whole garden twice with Natra-kelp to help it through the winter, it is magnificent stuff and we use a lot of it both spraying and watering in new plants.

I ordered a truck load of loam and have topped up one of the front gardens and filled a few holes in the garden.

A big problem is ‘shrinkage’ where the organic element in the soil eventually decomposes and leaves holes and areas that need topping up.

Nowadays I try to use soil that has minimal organic content.

I have been buying a few rare bulbs through ebay and would really like to collect more of the Amorphophallus type plants; I did bid on a Titanum bulb but was well and truly outbid.

I have had my third article published on ‘Garden Drum’; it is a very informative site with good articles.

http://gardendrum.com/2013/06/30/how-to-open-your-garden/

We are looking forward to going to the Queensland Garden Expo at Nambour in July; we go every year and really enjoy hunting for new and rare plants.