Tag Archives: hibiscus

In the Garden

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After a break of almost 3 months, I finally made it back to the garden today.  I have really done nothing since before we went to the UK at the beginning of November and since we arrived home in early December my intentions have been thwarted by hot weather, Christmas preparations, another holiday and numerous social events as well as being busy at work.

However, I woke up at 5am today and decided to bite the bullet before the sun became  too intense.  2.5 hours later I came in after having made a start on some weeding in the vegetable garden enclosure.  In all honesty, you could barely see where I had been but I felt better knowing that at least I had made a start.

We went shopping this morning and as well as food we managed to buy more than a dozen plants.  Later this afternoon GMan and I weeded the area in front of the house.  This runs the full length of the house and is planted with numerous hibiscus shrubs and covered with mulch.  Where the hibiscus are well established and close together there was very little weed, however, there are still some substantial gaps and some unwelcome plants had become quite well established.  Of course, the area is almost overrun with cherry tomato plants but I am prepared to accept them as they are food.

The next job was to tackle the raised garden bed containing the sweet potatoes.  When we planted them some months ago we placed a panel of old pool fencing over the bed to keep the scrub turkeys away from it as they just dig up the potatoes and eat them and completely destroy the plants.  We had intended to remove it once the plants became established but that did not happen.  The plants had grown right through the fencing and far, far away…………  It was not easy to remove and in the process we discovered that there was a good crop waiting to be harvested.

Here is our haul.

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I can see sweet potato fries, sweet potato mash, vegetable curry and baked sweet potato in our future.

In a recent post I published a list of some of the projects we intend to tackle this year.  One of them was to create a garden outside the vegie garden.  My intention is to create a mostly native garden with a seat in the midst of it. At the moment it is just grass but that is about to change.  Today we took the first step and bought a selection of plants which will form the basis of this garden.

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This is the result of our garden shopping so I am quite keen to see my planned garden come to fruition.  Not of all the plants we bought will be for that area but we have plans for all of them.

Hopefully, I will have some more photos to share before too long.

We are planning to make an early start again tomorrow as it is really the best option during the summer months here.

Flowers in the Garden

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Most of my limited time and energy in the garden are directed to towards growing food.  However, that does not mean that I don’t love flowers or enjoy having them in the garden.

I don’t have a flower garden in the traditional sense where there were beds of seasonal flower displays such as snapdragons, sweet peas and my favourite, Iceland poppies.

We do have a number of native flowering shrubs which create a screening hedge on the verge but there are also some other gems tucked into various spots in the garden.

This is one of my newest hibiscus complete with a single flower.

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The lavender is thriving in this warm, dry corner of the front garden and has rewarded us with some flowers over the past couple of weeks.

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The marigolds brighten up the tubs on the front verandah.

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The vegetable garden is not devoid of flowers, either.  The rocket has gone to flower and is providing a pretty display.

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All of these flowers provide habitat for the bees and I am always looking to incorporate them wherever I can.

The Gorgeous Garden

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This weekend GMan and I have had 3 days at home so finally managed to catch up on some much needed work in the garden.  We have had a combination of plenty of rain plus some hot, sunny days over the past few weeks which has been a recipe for everything to grow crazily – especially the weeds.

Thankfully, the weather was not too hot and mostly fine this weekend.  GMan ploughed through everything on the mower and now I can actually see the vegetable garden area again.

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We also had a blitz in this area in front of the verandah.  The hibiscus we planted last year are doing really well and I think we need about 3 more.

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The weeds were going mad and there were piles of branches waiting to be mulched.  The mulching has been done and weeds mostly pulled up and discarded in the compost heap up the back.  The thickly mulched area in the background of the photo with cardboard/newspaper underneath has very little weed so we definitely need to get more mulch and finish the whole area.

This afternoon GMan planted the capsicum plants we bought last weekend and the 4 shrubs we bought at a new native plant nursery in Maleny.

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The plant in the foreground was a Christmas gift and has more than doubled in size in the 6 weeks since we planted it.  The one up closer to the road was also planted towards the end of last year.  The new plants are barely visible in the photo but can be identified by the areas were the lawn has been dug up.

Although it is not clear in the photo, this is quite a steep embankment and difficult to mow.  So, we have decided to cover the entire area with native shrubs and groundcovers.  Nothing will be more than a couple of metres high and we hope to have it densely covered and eliminate the lawn in this area entirely.  It may seem like a vain hope when you look at it now but here is a reminder of what can be achieved.

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This planting is along the front boundary a provides privacy from the road.  The whole area was just a wide expanse of lawn when we came here 10 years ago.  It took about 4 – 5 years to get this level of screening.

We have many grand ideas for the garden and look forward to getting more done but in the meantime it is gratifying to see how much we have achieved.  The chicken run, vegetable gardens and fencing in the first photo have all been established since we came here, the area in front of the verandah has been completely revamped and the native screening grown.  Many other areas of the garden tell a similar story.

I hope you enjoy seeing some snippets of our garden.

Winter Morning

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Yesterday morning I walked along the verandah.  It was sunny but quite cool and this was the vision that greeted me.

002One of the newer hibiscus shrubs which has only been in the ground for about a month and there were half a dozen bright pink flowers.  I am hoping this is a preview of things to come as these shrubs grow and we have a mass of dense foliage and brilliant flowers in front of the verandah.

Salvaged and Spread

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Now that the weather has finally moderated it is a great time to be out in the garden.

2015-04-18 01We took the ute up to the neighbour’s place to collect the first of 2 loads of mulch that they had kindly offered to us.  This was from when they had some trees trimmed and mulched about a month ago.  Although we have had some light rain in the past day or two the ground was not too wet and GMan was able to bring the ute close to where we wanted to use the mulch.

The newspaper collection has been replenished somewhat, thanks to the generosity of friends and also some that GMan collected from his office.

2015-04-18 02Once again, the newspaper and mulch covered pretty much the same area.  We now have more than half of the front garden deeply mulched.

2015-04-18 03Here are the first of the sweet pea seedling peeking their heads through the soil.  There are also some almost microscopic seedlings which I suspect are the snapdragon or heartsease that I sprinkled in front of the sweet peas.  I am very excited at the prospect of growing some old-fashioned flowers.

2015-04-18 04These are some of the flowers on one of the hibiscus shrubs in the front garden.  It is in the part that is yet to be mulched.

2015-04-18 05It was 4.30pm and I had just finished photographing the garden handiwork when I noticed that this sunshower.  It is the regular rain and relatively warm climate that we enjoy which keeps everything lush and green.  Of course, the rich, volanic soil helps, too.

Fruit and Flowers

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We planted the new blueberry bushes on Sunday.

Blueberry patch

We bought 3 each of 4 different varieties that seemed appropriate for our climate.  I collected enough rocks to create a border around the new patch.  At the moment there is residual grass but we are planning to mulch the entire area.  We will order a load of pine mulch which is acidic and suitable for the blueberries.  Underneath the mulch we will place several layers of newspaper to suppress the grass.

The passionfruit vince which we bought at the same time as the blueberries has been planted next to the chicken run so that it can grow on the fence..

Passionfruit vine
Finally, I wanted to show you one of the ornamental plants in our garden.  It is a gorgeous apricot hibiscus which was here when we came.  The shrub is nothing to look at but the flowers are stunning.  Here is one that managed to escape under the old sleeper which is placed to stop the chickens escaping under the fence.  There are lots more buds on the plant and soon it will be covered with beauties like this.

Hibiscus
We are considering planting the garden bed infront of the verandah with a selection of hibiscus shrubs.  There is a display at Woombye (Sunshine Coast) on Saturday so we are hoping to go and get a few ideas.