Pinepig's Virtual Garden

I'm home sick (again). I had to put the garbage out and take it to the curb so I took 10 minutes to take advantage of the nice weather. I've been inside all day, all weekend, trying to get on top of this cold. I figured pottering for 10 minutes wasn't going to make me worse, since I had to go out anyway.

I managed to chop the mustard in 1 plastic planter and 2 potato bags down and bury (needs to now sit about 6 weeks from what I understand so it can break down fully before being planted in). I weeded one plastic pot across from the back door and transplanted 2 all-season baby cauliflower plants and 1 baby snow ball cauliflower plant. The lawn is still saturated but not as bad as it was last weekend, the last couple of days of dry weather are helping.

As mentioned previously, here's some photos of how the back area looks right now. I took these around 23/7. There's a lot so I'll put most behind the cut.


This camelia has a wonderful scent and simple flowers. It makes me think of a fairy-tree. It's a weeping style, small oblong leaves with small, simple flowers. It sits outside our bathroom window and last weekend I kept looking at the dendrobium orchid I have in there to see if it was flowering, the scent was that strong! It took me a day before I realised where the scent was coming from.



This is another of our camelias, called Takanini. The company that bred it used to have a 'store' in Takanini, a place they had the camelias planted so you could walk around and see what mature specimens looked like. We both liked the double style and the colour in this.



A cherry blossom! This is a tiny tree I got originally because I wanted to learn bonsai but didn't get into it. The cherry has shot a branch straight up into the lemon tree and I didn't realise this had flowered!


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I've gone through some of my garden shots backlog. I want to make sure those of you in the cold north have something to inspire you and get you thinking about spring! This is going to be a pict-heavy post so I'll put some under the cut.

Before I do, spare a thought for the flood victims in Australia. The floods are devastating right now and that country is going to suffer a lot more in the next week or so as the "missing" become "found deceased". It's a disaster that affects the people, the crops, the native critters and pets and livestock. It's hitting main centers as well as suburban. Lots of pictures here, starting in the middle with one that gives you a staggering sense of scale of the floods. Say a prayer, send them thoughts, hug your loved ones.

Back to your garden update.

Now, remember these little tomato plants? This was on the 11/12:



Here's what they looked like at 28/12:



And here's what they look like today, after I tied them up better:



They've shot up heaps haven't they! Still not a lot of fruit on them but definitely more flowers and I did see more little green things that had been hiding when I tied them back.

More picts under the cut.

Here are some harvest picts from 28/12 I think:







And I think I'll call this my Hidden Treasure Tree. It's my dwarf peach. Looks pretty unsupposing in this shot. What's that, one lonely little peach?



Well....until you get under it and take a peek! This is the first season for it so colour me impressed. Hopefully the nectarine does better next year, it didn't fair as well this season.



Here's my older peach tree, this one I've had for a few years. The peaches seem to not be as far along as the dwarf ones and there are still greener ones on this tree so I'm hoping it means I get a nice long peach season between the two trees! I haven't had any yet, I've got my fingers crossed.



My 2nd potato harvest yesterday:






And here is what the Urenikas look like when you cut them open:


And what they look like cooked (tossed in butter, salt and a touch of mint actually....)



Hungry yet??? I've got some pictures of the salmon I made to go along with it but that's another post.........

I also have some picts of the mushroom bags/processes to upload. They are doing ok, I think I've finally managed to get the last bag to do something. I've decided to not keep growing them. Too much hassle and I'd rather put the time/energy into the other plants and rest of the garden.

I hope you've enjoyed the picts!

Yes, I'm alive and the garden is still growing. I've got some pictures from the garden a couple weeks ago. These aren't all of them and I haven't done my usual and open all the garden overview picts first & then the individual plants so you'll get a grab-bag of images in this lot. I'll get through the rest & post them later.

My first mushroom bag hasn't grown, I need to work on the 2nd one as it's sitting outside and about ready to go to the final phase. Maybe tomorrow, I'll need to tie up the tomatoes and give everything a feed too. I've got some

Then again, I might also nip out to the garden centre, I got some garden vouchers to one of the shops and want to go get some seed potatoes, maybe some potash. We also got a neat solar light thing, with a plastic hummingbird, butterfly and dragonfly on it. :) I think it's pretty cool and might see about getting a photo of it.

And onto the photos. I'll put a couple above the cut, rest below.

Tomato flowers, this is from the Great White heirloom tomatoes which already have decent sized fruit. I haven't had fresh tomatoes for Christmas yet. I need to tie up most of the plants, they've shot up with all the rain we had the last couple of weeks.



Scarlet Runner plants and Deep Secret rose:



Check out how long the Scarlet Runners are! I've harvested a few and they are drying. They are named for their scarlet flowers but the beans are an almost unnatural flouro-pink when fresh! Does anyone have any recipes or ways to preserve/cook them?


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The tomatoes are still in the starting blocks, but spring has been kind to some of the other plants! I took a bunch of picts on the 6th & am going through them. I'll put up some of the individual plants in this post, then get the rest of the garden-as-a-whole ones done and uploaded into another post.

Mostly the garden is doing well. I lost all the jicama plants shortly after transplanting so I've popped a couple seeds in the ground, hopefully they'll do something.

I put some generic seed raising mix into the ruined mushroom mix (from the first go, the stuff with the green mildew in it) and followed the directions as if it was fine. I've got it outside and I see more of the fluffy myceneum in the bottom growing mix. Maybe it will do something. If not, no big deal since it wasn't supposed to grow after I found out it had too much green mold from the mushroom company. I've innoculated the 2nd bag of grow mix with the new spawn they sent me for free.

I picked some lettuce (we have/had 2 plants) for dinner tonight, supplemented it with some of the spinach leaves.

Both peach plants are doing well, you'll see that momentarily. The nectarines are ok, but seem to have a disease or something (pict below). Some of the berries have flowers, I think the other 2 plants are late fruiters so they'll probably come through next month. The dwarf apple (Blush Babe) has a few flowers, but I don't expect much as this is the tree's first year. It's the dwarf peach & nectarine first year as well but they seem to have a lot of fruit despite that.

Most of the rose plants are doing well, not at the peak of flowering yet by a long shot but doing pretty well.

The potatoes are doing great. The leaves and stems are tall, lots of flowers on the urenika but something seems to be cutting/eating the flowers off the Red Rascals.

Onto the picts.

Scentasia Apricot (or Sunscent?):



Tequila Sunrise:



Double Delight, these have a great scent and last a very long time in the vase. They remind me of watercolours, each flower slightly different with the whites and reds looking like they are watercolour painted on:



Baby dwarf peaches:



Baby dwarf nectarines, with some sort of disease. Maybe a fungus??



Baby peaches, this is a dwarf tree too but not as dwarf as the others:



My columbines:



The Scarlet Runners, I learned that I can cut these back at the end of the season and they'll regrow. Cool.



More later, enjoy!

Don't mind the long grass. I need to get another line trimmer since the mower doesn't go well on the sloped grass & the fact it's been a bog out there means even if we had a working trimmer I've been trying to stay off the grass as much as possible to keep the damage down.

These were taken on the 3rd. There's been a lot of changes since then, even if it hasn't been quite 2 weeks yet. The oranges and lime are both covered in flowers and it smells divine out there. I love the early evening because the wind has usually died down a bit and if I walk outside I can smell them strongly. More of the roses are starting to bloom, the dahlia plants are starting to come up (no flowers yet, too young).

I peeked at the dwarf peach and nectarine today, both have a few tiny fruitletts (and yes, that's a new word I made up and I'm fine with that).

I planted out some of my tomatoes, the bigger ones that were doing ok: A Big Rainbow, Purple Cherokee, Mortgage Lifter & Great White. I prepped the pots with a big scoop of coffee grounds and a handful of blood and bone. I sprinkled some egg shells around after planting them out. There's a volunteer in last year's Big Rainbow pot. I kind of shifted that around so I could put another one in with it. I planted a couple seeds: 2 Mortgage Lifters (2 different pots), Purple Cherokee, Garden Peach, a White Cherry & J Walsh (a yellow one, I think an egg-shaped cherry sized). I've also got a few I planted last weekend still inside, not yet sprouted of course.

I planted out my 3 jicama too. Fingers crossed they don't decide it's too cold. It's been warming up so I think they'll be fine.

I put a few more corriander seeds & lettuce in their pots.

And now, onto the pictures. I'll put most under the cut. Squicky warning: there's going to be 2 with worms so don't click the cut if you get really grossed out by worms. And there's going to be about 20 picts all up.


These metallic ladybugs always cheer me up a bit. This one was on the citric acid free orange tree


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It was another decent day out there. A bit cool and breezy at times, but it's starting to dry up some finally and I was able to get out and do a few things after my Spring Cleaning Inside chores this weekend. I've got a lot I still want to get done but it's a case of little at a time.

Before I get into "what I did this weekend" (I'm sure y'all are on the edge of your seats...or not), a few seeds to plant:

-Thank you to sam_gardener for the mention in his Follow Friday post. :) If you're poking your head in from his post, welcome! And welcome to our newest reader, marchskies. If anyone stops by from the "Latest Things" thread, feel free to peek around & comment.

-I peeked at the mushrooms. I've got the growbag in a huge stock pot. (I used it for canning a couple of times but has been gathering dust in the pantry so I pulled it out a couple weeks ago to give to the Salvation Army or post on Freecycle, then realised it would be nice to hold the growbags). I've got the pot sitting next to the couch, there's a space between the couch and the wall and I've been worried it might be too cold but there's really no where else I can put it that isn't going to be too cold or too hot or just plain in the way. I lifted the lid this morning and peeked at it. It's smelling kind of "mushroomy" so it's gotta be working! I didn't see a lot of change, some of the spawn looked a bit more 'fuzzy'. I've got some photos from the step just before popping it in the pot, but I'll wait until the next step when there's gonna be white fuzzy things supposedly that will be more exciting than just a bag of grow medium.

So this weekend I've managed to:

-Plant 4 more of the Red Rascal potatoes and since the 4 I planted a few weeks ago were poking shoots above the soil I've mounded more soil on top of them. I used some of the Tui Vegetable Grow Mix & chucked some potash and special potato food on top of the soil just to be on the safe side. I'm hoping the Urenika potatoes are at the PO Box in the next day or two so I can try to convince C to check the mail on Wed. If they are then I can plant some in that giant grow bag (wait, I didn't get a photo of that set up for you yet did I???? I'll put the old photo of me in the bag at the bottom of the entry to remind you what it looked like in it's not-soil-filled state yet) I prepared last weekend. I'm hoping to fit 6 in there, another 4 in the last potato planter bag that I've got the Red Rascals in.

-Plant 14 rainbow carrots in one of the wood troughs and 12 parmex carrots in another. I used some of that veggie mix in both troughs, mixing it with some of the existing potting mix.

-Plant 7 of the heirloom "Perpetual" spinach in the extra space of the grow bag. (Picture a rectangle divided in 1/2 down the short side, then divide one of those roughly into 1/2). I'll put potatoes in the left 1/2 and will put the jicama in another 1/4. Since it's a root it can grow down so I put the spinach in the other 1/4.

-Plant 4 heirloom "O'dells" lettuce & 4 heirloom (? can't remember which one) silverbeet in my long green plastic troughs.

-Decided to move my herbs closer to the back door so I took 2 round pots that had corriander sprouting & gently scooped them out and into my long green plastic trough. I moved that to under the lemon tree, by the path, and moved the oregano pot near it.

-Sprinkle the pelletised pea straw around the roses, guavas and apple and gave it a bit of water (not that the plants needed it!) to start the break-down process before the ducks decide to eat them.

-Transplant the "Freesia" rose, the "Fragrantissa" (?) rhododendron as well as one of the pohutakawas and gave each a bit of a feed and some pelletised pea straw.

-Chuck a little bit of grass seed on the part of the lawn (leading to the lemon tree) that has become a major bog & chucked some potting soil on top of it to hide it from the birds.

-Replant the tomatoes in the new seed raising mix, in the hopes that they will actually grow this time. If both the original ones and the new ones do manage to grow that's ok because I do want 2 sets of each variety. If only one grows then I'll still be able to plant the 2nd ones a bit later in the season to spread my crops out.

No wonder I'm tired! And there's still a lot to do. We've got time off coming up, from the 10th-20th. I'm hoping for good weather so I can finally get some copper spray on the peaches, nectarine, apple, roses and berries. And not have it get washed off immediately after! I've got a ton of whitefly already and need to look at getting some neem on them as soon as possible after the copper.

And under the cut, here I am with that "grow bag" (ok, I keep calling it that because it's going to grow things but it's really a garden garbage bag) I mentioned earlier. I'll try to remember to get the photo for y'all of what it looks like next weekend. Most of y'all have seen this but I feel like I'm supposed to post a pict today & since I don't have anything new & have talked about the bag, it's what ya get!

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Had some decent weather today and as well as getting a couple things done in the garden after baking (including pruning some branches off the lime & Valencia orange trees that might have been infested with borer), I grabbed the camera to get some "My Garden In Spring" shots. This will also help me keep track of how my garden changes and hopefully help with planning while it's still too wet to actually go out and do anything.

Outside screen door,come take a walk with me through the garden:



Along back fence across from screen door:


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I had a bad headache today so didn't go to the archery range. Instead I did some light work out in the garden. I still have a lot to be done. I got sidetracked briefly when I was cutting back the old tomato plants. I have a bromeliad that has stayed pretty small & it's been a few years since I bought it. It's multiplied and the stick I stuck it onto is disintegrating so I've been trying to figure out what to do with it. I hit on it: Terrarium Baby!!!

Kind of. I pulled one of the babies off and did put that into a terrarium, but also made what I'm calling a "brom in a bottle" (not quite a terrarium as you'll see below). The terrarium brom will be an in-house brom. The brom in a bottle one will be an outdoor one. I'll see how they both do.

I used an old square ceramic water saucer (brain on vacation still from the headache) and one of the jar things I got from a thrift shop. This one wasn't so much a jar as something someone had candles in. I liked the shape and have turned it into a modified bell jar. I put a very thin layer of river rocks at the bottom, a tiny bit of charcoal and then some dried sphagnum moss for the plant to grow in. I've also put some moss/lichen stuff I collected from a friend's woodpile but we'll see if that does ok because last time they didn't so well when it was just them in a wet container. I've put some of the moss/lichen around the outside of the container too, and haven't put the spagnum all around the outside of the container, have let the rocks show through since they are nice ones (tiny versions of this kind of rock).

For the Brom in a Bottle I used an old chicken salt seasoning jar, put a lot of the river rocks and more charcoal than I usually would in and then packed the moss around the broms and poked it hard into the jar. I figure the rocks will help with drainage in the winter and water storage in the summer (more than what it had been attached to did).

Here are some picts of these two, plus a pict of the dendrobium and living sphagnum jar terrarium I did several months ago and try to keep you updated on.

Brom terrarium:


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It's been awhile. I've been busy & autumn is here. We've done our time change, days are shorter and cooler. I need to get out and do a bunch of weeding but we're going through a drought here so trying to pull weeds out of dry soil is tough going. I've gotten accustomed to the rainier weather here than Calif and haven't watered quite as much as I should have this season. Although saying that, I did better this year than I did last year so I haven't lost anything yet. Close on 2 camelias though, I didn't realise they weren't getting any of the spray from the irrigation I put in and haven't been looking good.

But hey, feijoa harvest picts! C loves this time of year, she's big on her feijoas. We've gotten 2 decent-sized harvests already and there's still some on the tree (which is maybe 6 to 7 feet high and about 3 to 4 years old). It's one of the few fruit trees (along with the lemon) that is in the ground & not in pots.

First photo of feijoas. Rest of feijoa spam & other picts & update below the cut.



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A few years ago I took some stained glass classes. While looking for books on stained glass patterns I came across one for terrariums. I picked up some of the gear & some bottles, jars & glasses. I played with it for awhile but life took over.

I didn't loose interest, just time.

I love the idea of a little garden that can sit safely in the house, one the cats can't get into. I love the idea of creating. I love the idea of growing things indoors as autumn starts kicking its way towards us, to be followed by winter. I love the idea of a miniature world in a bottle/jar/glass. I love the looks of these things, especially the ones in the books. And I love love love the aspect of reuse, where I can go to a 2nd hand shop and pick up some jars or glasses cheap, breathe new life into them & make things of art. They're nice gift ideas too, which I haven't taken advantage of but will do this year I think since I've got some time to start. If you have a friend with brown thumbs you can also give a 'certificate' to maintain the terrarium on a regular basis (ie--check it monthly or every couple of months) for them & to teach them how to take care of it.

I have one terrarium that's been ticking along since that first attempt, one didn't do so well (not enough lighting at work), one I completely forgot about and because it was in a brandy glass it dried out and the plant died :(

When I was making them I picked up a glass gallon jug, I think it used to be for mineral water. It's been sitting in the living room collecting dust and cat hair. Every time I move it to vaccuum I think about it, think about making a terrarium out of it again. I found my terrarium materials & pulled out the jug. I've played with it and the old brandy glass. And I remembered why I was inspired by that book.

So here's some picts, some links and a brief how to. Keep in mind I'm a beginner at these things so check out the links & read some of the more-experienced people's suggestions. Take a look at Thyrza Segal's gorgeous terrariums and critters for some inspiration.

Here's the one terrarium that I've had that has been ticking along for awhile. It's a square jar that's got a maiden hair fern in it:


And a top view:


More under the cut:
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