Garden Photo Tour

Thanks for all the kind words yesterday. Despite my inability to control the inside of the house, the outside seems to be thriving. Thanks to a low-maintenance yard, a helpful husband and some kind parents who visited a couple of weeks ago, I seem to be managing quite well outdoors and I love being out there.

I thought I’d do a quick photo tour of the front yard this morning with Little D and show you a few of the developments out there.

Here’s the front of the house:

Most of Bed B (along the front of the house) is empty now and is destined to be planted out with onions. This is the south side of the house, so it gets very little sunlight in winter. I hoped to get the onions in this week to take advantage of the few hours of morning sun it gets in summer/autumn, but the chickens did this this morning:

Well actually, that’s after I turned them back over and tried to cover the roots with soil as best as I could. Pity, because they were looking strong too. Do you think I have time to sow another batch, or should I buy seedlings at this point?

Also in Bed B is my magnificant rhubarb:

This was planted as a crown sometime in September I think, after my first crown (planted in July) never emerged.

I think I’ve been very restrained in not harvesting it yet- don’t you think? Very unlike me, but I want it to survive the winter, when it will get next to no sunlight.

Right down the other end of Bed B is the asparagus.

I planted the asparagus almost exactly a year ago – a total experiment because this soil is heavy clay. I planted 1 crown and 4 seedlings from seeds  planted a few weeks earlier. This quite impressive specimen is one of the seedlings. I thought it took 3 years before you could harvest asparagus, but at 1 year from planting from seed I have a spear that is considerably thicker than my thumb!

I guess I should have labelled the plants, but I suspect that this must be one of the ‘fat bastard’ variety.

Along the front bed my strawberries (in the polystyrene boxes) have finished and are slowly being covered by wild edamame plants.

My potato bags live along this path too, as does my neglected olive tree and a few potted tomatoes that never thrived.

My eggplant are next to the massive edamame patch, and the capsicums that I potted out are now thriving next to the chillies

I’ve written about these bird’s eye chillies before, but they are really amazing – they turn from green to black, then stay black for ages until -pop- they are suddenly red. This plant is overwintered, and I can see it surviving for years to come. I’m going to try the same thing with all the chillis and capsicums this year. This particular capsicum has been really happy since being potted up out of the garden bed. It has some reasonable sized capsicums on it and countless flowers. My other larger capsicum is on the retaining wall next to the roses in the picture two above. It has a similar number of fruit and many more flowers.

Further along the front bed is my next crop of dwarf beans. I’ve interplanted them with beetroot, which is a total experiment.

I really need to mulch here once the beetroot has emerged a bit more.

And further to the left my black cherry tomatoes have just started sprawling prostrate:

Plenty of fruit, I just hope they resist the fruit fly.

Also in there is my massive basil bush. I think there is a bucket of pesto in my future.

Skipping over the pathetic tomatoes, my apples are bagged against fruit fly and filling out quickly.

Then there’s the multitude of new flowers:

And the ones that are dying off, but looked like they have fruit set:

And the ones that definitely have fruit set, so I’ve bagged them already

Some fruit trees you struggle with, and others are just effortless. This tropical Anna apple just loves it in this location.

As does the dwarf black mulberry that is fruiting again next to the asparagus:

But still can’t fruit fast enough to satisfy this little boy

Over the other side of the front yard between the roses are my winter brassica seedlings:

But what photo tour would be complete without a quick trip round the back to the passionfruit?

Because we have fruit developing!

Probably too late for a decent crop this year, but confirms the hypothesis that the vine was just too young. Next year will be the year of passionfruit, I can see it now!