Good bye lilies!

 My little curry leaf tree is looking well; the rosemary and thyme are also looking happier.  This is in the side front where my monster sweet potatoes (white fleshed) and sick looking cape gooseberry are.

 My flowering prostrate rosemary is a constant lunch bar for the local bee population... who don't seem bothered about me at all.

 In my postbox bed we have globe artichokes which have resurrected themselves now the weather has cooled down.  We have also put saffron in near the top corner and put two rows of garlic in coming straight down that edge and across the bottom.  The leggy plant in the foreground is a Lemon Verbena which will if it thrives make some nice lemon tea and scent the house nicely of lemons as the breeze blows through.

We have our first (okay second but first not to get knocked off by an excited junior gardener!) lemon!  Fruit Fly is a problem here in Western Australia and so to avoid the problem and NOT spray any chemicals on our fruit we are employing exclusion bags.  This one is a jewellery bag but it will do the job until the lemon gets a bit bigger.  The nutrient deficiency has been treated (pale leaves) but it takes up to a year for the leaves to show improvement so we will keep on feeding the soil - it got a lambs heart yesterday just for good measure!   The rosemary hedge is starting to take shape.  In the mid-shot is the postbox bed with rosemary, globe artichoke, a mandarine tree and some chives. 

Passionfruit!  Well I was worried that these were NEVER going to fruit... Hubby decided to threaten them loudly with being chopped and composted.  I guess they were paying attention.  I still need to figure out which is gold and which is red... I suppose time will tell!  I am thinking maybe the first one might be the red... it is a little darker green?  That vine is in the background... it used to be over an arch but they don't build archways like they used to!
  In the fore-ground you can see the remainder of the sweet potato after bandicooting and a good cut back.  Ignore the plastic bags - they were from the lambs hearts, fry and kidneys - we were attracting the flies to our Orb spider web so they didn't bother this gardener! ;-)  I just planted a Lots-O-Lemons at the front of this bed so more fruit here we come!

 I am thinking these might be from the Gold Passionfruit?  They really took Chris' threat to heart and are producing like nothing else!  My dirty-garden hand is dwarfed by the fruit... such a pity I don't like passionfruit... but Chris and the boys will be happy!  As well as the neighbours with the amount of fruit setting!

 I ran wire through star pickets when the archway broke and apparently the passionfruit is much happier occupying this against the nice warm fence!  In the foreground you can make out lots of Sage, some ruby chard - not much as the crickets like it as much as we do.. some ornamental viburnums that we plan to eventually remove and replace with fruit trees and Sugar cane that came from a cutting at Jetto's Patch... it now has 4 stems on it and so far I have managed to keep everyone at bay - Chris wants to pull it out before it takes over and the boys want to cut stems to eat!

 This is my current work in progress - messy aren't I?  Top of the bed is asparagus then sage, then Midyum Berry, Sage, Midyum, purple sage and then right at the bottom of the shot is the new liquorice.  In the rear of the shot is the Ice-cream bean which we will bend along the wire - espalier.  There are also broad beans that Brandon planted all along the back of the bed - we are still waiting for them to show us where!  This whole bed was full of very scruffy looking Dietes Lilies.  So we are making progress!

 The passionfruit is making its way down the fence to meet the ice-cream bean.  The Dietes clumps are still on the lawn in the foreground - they were painful to remove - thanks Chris for the help!  The bed is looking a little bare right now but it will be worth it as everything settles in.  I would love to expand the bed forward but the water, power, council keep on digging up the lawn.

 So the Ice-cream bean went in  and got a new bed mate - a Pineapple Guava which will also be espaliered (maybe) along the fence.  Some of my Kale and chilli's can also be seen in this shot.

 I still have 4 more of these clumps of Dietes to dig out to make room for more Ornamental edibles...

 I managed to keep two rosella bushes alive and they are currently a mass of flower buds, flowers and more importantly seed pods.  Besides them is the last remaining Pop-pop's Super Tomato... Hopefully this one will not seccumb to wilt!  Behind it are some Diggers Mini Capsicums that have been producing nicely and in the front right is a ground apple - Yakon.  I have yet to try one of these so I am really hoping it manages to produce after an extremely slow start. 

 In this bed we have a Tangelo at the back since the boys tried them at Jetto's Patch and decided they were a MUST have!  I am not going to argue with boys wanting to grow and eat fruit! To the left there is another Passionfruit - because we thought the others may have been Nelly Kelly - thankfully I found a label the other day and they are simply "Red" and "Gold"... so we may end up with passionfruit for the whole neighbourhood!  To the right of the Tangelo is the Kumera which I hope to encourage to grow up the wire support.  In front of those are two dwarf pomegranates that are slowly finding their feet after transplant.  In front of those are Kale and Globe Artichokes... and dwarfed at the front is a tiny Goji berry plant which hasn't done a whole lot - we will see! I might need to get Chris to threaten to pull it out.

 At the very end of the bed I popped in some garlic and leeks at the front of the bed and more Mini Capsicums and chillis.  Oh and another Yakon.  To the rear of the bed are some ornamentals that have a reprieve until I can replace and some lemongrass to supply my neighbour as rentals don't allow grow-your-own!  Anyway thats part of the front at the moment. The blueberries and mulberries are plodding along and  we will add more as we go I am sure.

Oh and when I am not looking after my garden I look after a friends twins and meander through her garden... I found one of this years baby bobtails sunning itself by the vegetable bed.  Good bye slugs and snails!

An outing and a visitor brought carnage!

Dear Hubby took me shopping today to Bunnings *swoon*... so I could get two brackets to sure up the  new arches and a roll of corrugated drainage pipe to go into my wicking pots for the trees.  We also stopped at the bottle shop to get a beautiful bottle of ... Swan Draught *chuckle* fear not!  It is not for us but for our slugs and snails that have been extremely busy pruning my plants.  It seems we should have got several other bottles as I ran out after filling the first 6 traps!

On our return I walked out the back to set a cup of beer in the worm farm for the slugs that have decided to squat in there I came upon carnage... pipe fittings; hydroton (round expanded clay balls); pipes and mess all up the back corner... and two very, very excited dogs.  Well I followed Rex who made it quite plain he had found something... I am actually quite relieved this little bobtail was whole and unharmed but probably had several nose prints on his back as the dogs investigated his obviously interesting odour!  

Ice-cream container to the rescue and a quick walk out the front and this lil garden buddy got to go explore under the cape gooseberry bush... so I guess its now the season I better start wearing shoes in the garden as the snakes will start coming out of the conservation land!  

Now I know that technically I should not harvest my rhubarb this year however it was so crowded at the top of the fence I decided I better thin it out and taste test... yet to taste but so exciting.  So Strawberries from my garden (big ones) and hydroponics (little ones), cape gooseberries, broad beans and snow peas. Not a big harvest but every little bit helps :-D

I enjoyed my afternoon watering with seasol and aquasol... hoping this is the pick me up some of my plants need to survive the onslaught of the never ending caterpillars, slugs and snails.  Anyway that's it from me tonight..

Happy Gardening!

*hugs*
Sarah