The Veggie Patch Down South

Yesterday I trawled through the pics of my Aunt and Uncle's lovely flowers (and the ones that come through from their neighbour's side). Now is the piece de resistance - the veggie patch. I am always in awe when i venture down to their beach house. They have 3 raised veggie patches, which they mostly installed by themselves. They are over a metre off the ground and each a good size. He has three, so he can rotate crops, and also a potato patch up the back.



In one there were giant beetroots. I brought him a couple of baby golden and white ones from my balcony garden, but they were tiny compared to these.



Bush beans were lined up alongside the beetroot.


Silverbeet grew in another, looking extra tasty for a cold autumn meal.


The third had herbs - a rosemary to rival my mother's!


While I was there he also planted parsnip seeds and carrot seeds, though wished a little they were the crazy coloured carrot seeds like in my garden. They also have a lovely little herb pot, which sections off each little herb to give is a good run. I keep looking for these (usually strawberry) pots in the nursery but seem to never find them.


And last but by very much not least, I cannot post on the back veggie garden without this ubiquitous aussie icon that featured right next door to it (and in the neighbour's garden) the hills hoist. Imagine coming outside to hang your washing, and looking over these lovely veggies and flowers. Great work Aunt and Uncle!

Belated GBBD of sorts

I can't believe I forgot GBBD this month, though I guess between essay marking, thesis writing, parents visiting for Easter and road trips something had to give. So I am being a little naughty and posting pictures that were taken on the 14th, but seeing as it is the 16th, if we average the two it would be the 15th and that is Garden Bloggers Blooms Day. These are not flowers from my own garden, but from my Uncle and Aunt's garden at their holiday home down the Mornington Peninsula. How they keep it looking so good I will never know. The blooms in this post were my favourites.

The fuschias, which were technically the neighbour's blooms poked through the fence so much that you couldn't really tell what side they really were on. Such beautiful colours, and interesting shapes. I hope mine grows into a beauty like those one day.



The roses too were lovely, especially in the morning, with the dew still on them (it was quite cool down there, I was rugged up in jumpers and scarves every day even though it is not winter yet)



These purple flowers on the back step were lovely too.


I had a thing for this yellow flower, it opened up to be stunning, but the bud, which grew and bloomed while I was there was my favourite of all.


There you go, a belated Garden Bloggers Blooms Day and what's more these were blooms I cannot even take the glory for growing. But thumbs up to my Aunt and Uncle. In the next post hope to show their lovely raised veggie patch (again how they keep it lush and growing is beyond me!)

Wrapping up the Tomato Season: No. 5 Tumbler Tomatoes

I am back from my Easter break and in an upcoming post or two will reveal all the photos of my lovely long weekend away with the folks. I really want to highlight my uncle's veggie patch and garden (my aunt's too) Was just sooooooooooo pretty. However, I haven't got around to uploading the photos so in the meantime it is back to the tomato season wrap up posts. And this time the featured yummy tomato will be red and yellow tumbler tomatoes. Ok they weren't red and yellow on the same tomato (no miniature hillbillies here.) No, I had three red tumblers and two yellow tumblers. The tumbler tomatoes almost entirely occupied my hanging baskets from which they cascaded down beautifully. Cherry tomatoes really, that bush quite well in an overflowing fashion. They all grew so differently yet each really fruited impressively well.


The yellows were the first to fruit. They were tasty, subtle and juicy. Yet being the first to fruit they were also the first to die. The heatwave knocked them for six, and they never recovered. This one was really ruined by the heatwave but still managed to produce 48 fruits. This was less than the others (other than the one below) but I think if the heatwave had not hit, many of those that spoiled would have been saved (the tally only takes into account those that were ripe and good enough to eat)


Also one yellow was planted in a pot with a red, and while the yellow flowered and fruited first, it only produced seven fruits!



The red simply took over. I thought it had died, as this hanging basket was up too high to easily verify. Yet on the day of the cull I found mr yellow alive and holding a few last tiny fruits. The red in this pot was pretty prolific, managing 78 fruits of quite good size and taste.


One red grew in on itself, making it hard to reach the fruit but protecting it so well from the sun. It produced larger fruits which were as tasty as its smaller rivals. In all it managed 90 fruits!!! I am not sure where all these went, though some were made into crispy dried chips.


The other red was inside, and he was an absolute mammoth. Maybe I fed him too much from too early an age or maybe this shows the power of perfect sun, shade, water and calmness. He housed the lego mansion for a long while, only losing it when the wilt, that seemed to affect all myy tomato plants in the end, took hold. In the end he produced 60 fruits.



These are definitely coming back next year. Not only do I have two more hanging pots, they will probably constitute the only red and yellow cherry tomatoes in the garden. I had a Tommy Toe this year, and some random Kmart tomatoes that turned out to be cherries, and I will post on them later. While they fruited magnificently, they just fill the space of something more exotic on my tiny balcony. Whereas the lovely tumblers can take a hanging basket and make it their own fruity home. I'll probably have more yellow than red, that's just my preference, but hopefully they will be as plentiful and as unique next year.

Easter On The Run

Inept Balcony Gardener is putting the garden in the care of the gods this weekend and taking off down the coast with her parents. There I plan on lazing around, not doing too much.


Luckily Hurricane J has promised to try and water it on Sunday, and hopefully there will be a tiny bit of rain to tide it over. Given the pots are so small and it is a sunny but windy position they have a tendency to dry out. Finger crossed they survived. Hope everyone has a lovely Easter, or passover, or whatever thing it is that this 4 day weekend brings you (even if it is just testing limits of your body with a deluge of hot cross buns and alcohol)

Melbourne International Garden and Flower Show 2009

It was10am last Saturday morning, I was sporting a mild hangover after a rather more raucous round of Friday night drinks. In an attempt to stave off the headache my housemate dragged me out of the house (minus sunglasses which were missing again) and hauled me to the 2009 Melbourne International Garden and Flower Show. It should be any gardening buff's pleasant dream, and really I should have been more excited. But the fact that my veins may still have been carrying pure champagne created a bit of a quieter mood.


But then the lovely Autumn morning hit and with some caffeine in my system I braved the crowds. It seemed to be mostly nannas and families and a few very crazy ladies. My favourite was the lady with a ruby cavalier by her side - in a pusher! It was her own little pride and joy and no walking for this little dear. My parents have a ruby cavalier king charles spaniel so I was smitten at first sight.


The garden show itself was interesting. It was very much flower orientated, as the name might suggest and I am more of a vegetable freak myself. Still I found some cool bird sculpture people and sent SMS pictures to my Mum who just loves all things ornathological. Given the state of me I got a little lost looking at the cut flower arrangements. Awesome Housemate's Friend came too, and she will be getting married at the end of the year. This gave us some extra impetus to seek out the most beautiful flowers and get some ideas. Personally I kept falling for the orange and red flowers of any kind, tulips, specialty roses, ornamental peppers, maybe I thought they may morph into a tequila sunrise and give me the extra energy boost I needed.


I didn't buy much. I almost purchased a cute pastel purple watering can with a floret (ours is an Ikea one so does not spray, it just looks cool, stainless steely, and stores well!) I also almost purchased some black and curly succulents. In the end all I purchased were some cut lillies which are pictured haphazardly throughout this post. At $2 a bunch you really couldn't go wrong and so many show goers seemed to have found this bargain. All in all this was a good morning, though by one o clock the crowds had descended, coinciding with the most hellish parts of the hangover so we made a hasty exit. Some nice exhibits, some interesting bulbs and things to purchase if you wanted to and one of the best coffees I have had in a while. Good to do once a year but glad it is not on as often as Friday night drinks!

Snappy Dressers - Snapdragons

I have snapdragons on my balcony. Some are in hanging pots while another hides away in a tiny little pot waiting for get the call up to be transplanted elsewhere. They like a bit of colour in their outfits - brilliant reds, nearly neon yellows, crisp whites and sultry maroons. I gave a couple away this year too - to my birthmum (pictured below) and to totally awesome housesitter. I wonder how theirs are going ...


These are mine - random colour combinations but they are flowering brilliantly.


Sometimes I wish I grew them from seed, and that they were the awesome heirloom variety Zach showed me. These are a bit run of the mill but they are still very pretty.

Snapdragons - some people love them, some hate them. What is your opinion?

Lettuce

This is what happened to the last pot of lettuce


Heat + Exposure = Going to Seed Rapidement

Time for lettuce round two - once more with feeling and much more variety.

Snow Peas are the New Tomatoes

For those of you who pop past here regularly (and for all my real life friends who had to put up with it all) tomatoes have been an obsession. I grew more than twenty plants over the space of 6 months on the balcony. There were copious amounts of updates on here, and all the uni folk got to hear about the progress of the plants almost daily (Sorry)


But thanks to this wilt, and the changing of the seasons the tomato obsession has waned by necessity. I still have a couple growing but they will be turfed soon because this wilt is just out of control. Over the winter I will grow one inside, and hope it does not continue the wilt. Fingers crossed. Toes crossed. Legs crossed. Arms ... With the obsession at the tail end I decided I needed a new one, and one appeared quite by accident. Snow peas. I don't like beans much, unless they are fresh and not too stringy. Taste is ok, it is just the texture. But snow peas, they are a delight. Lovely and crunchy is salads and stirfries they are a friend in my kitchen anyday. They are now growing in no less than three large pots on the balcony and I am considering putting in more after the final tomato cull. (Don't worry i thinned them out after taking the below photo, I think one too many peas fell in the same area!!!)


They all get odd and individual trellises. Some get bamboo candle holders (because the nursery was curiously devoid of stakes), some have old tomato stakes that have been bleached and washed to rid any residual effects of this wilt incase it mutates and crosses species (don't laugh, anything can happen in the Balcony Garden) Some are just thrust up against the dividing wall, which isn't a wall really but a bit of metal with tiny holes. I am hoping that the snow peas will latch onto this impromptu trellis and give us some peace and quiet from the snoooty girl who lives there. She is less than friendly, maybe giving her brother some tomatoes was a bad idea! Who woulda known neighbourly niceness could backfire.


I am also growing some seedlings for friends as well as myself. Here is a picture of one. Whiles't snapping this picture I also managed to catch a glimpse of his own view. Et voila - this is how a snow pea sprout views my balcony!


For Autumn and into Winter snow peas will be the new tomatoes. Less colourful it is true and not a huge amount of heirloom varieties but these goliath ones are powdery mildew resistant and hopefully will do just fine! As for the tomato obsession, it lingers, and will manifest itself in behaviours such as lurking around northern hemisphere gardening blogs in the hope of vicarious pictorial tomatoey goodness.

A Room with a View

You may remember this post a while back that gave you an insight into the view from my bedroom window. I tend to take moments, when I can, to gaze out the window, or the open door, and take in the balcony garden - it is surprisingly calming. When writing a thesis on Third Reich memoirs calming things are definitely necessary.

To jog your memory this was how it looked then - full of ripening tomatoes!


This is how it looks now in all its early Autumn beauty.


There are the last of the tomatoes, Purple Cherokees hanging on for dear life as a wilt attempts to consume them whole.


The red geraniums, bought to add colour in the heat seem much larger than they really are, contrasting with the green and brown. The brown-filled pots with stakes have seeds in them, mostly snow pea seeds. When their little heads poked out of the soil a few days ago, I was pretty excited. I will trellis the poles as I go making a lovely little canopy of green stir fry veggie goodness. In the middle is an early brocolli. Hopefully it will sprout before it is completely covered over. It is such a shame that sunflowers and sowpeas are alleopathic, because it would be so much fun to train a snow pea up the stalk of the sunflower growing in this lot. He is starting to form a head now, can't wait to see if it is yellow or orange or red (surprise packet).


In other pots we have yellow carrots, bush beans, corainder (wrong time of year but I just want to try) and some flowers, of which I cannot really remember the variety. The bush beans have also started to push out of the ground, very exciting!


Autumn has also been designated as the time I move the lemon tree back into the full sun. In Summer it hid around the corner, making room for tomatoes in the sunnier positions and enjoying the ample but mottled sun in the back corner of the balcony. A few friends said it would never survive there but they were wrong. It thrived, indicating just how much sun does get to that part of the balcony, and that IBG knows best for the balcony. I think in Winter this warmer and slightly sheltered position will be better. He has about 4 lemons at present, all green, but promising nonetheless.If I look out the door I see greenery and colours and lushness. It wont stay that way for long, this Indian Summer we have will pass and the cooler weather will become the mainstay. Still enjoying it while i still can!!! Do you have any garden areas that you find yourself gazing at for periods of time that might be considered a little too long?