Flower market

Here in Thailand my garden consists of a few dozen pot plants at the entrance to our town house. So I look forward to visiting the flower markets regularly.

Always interesting to see what is in season

 

And fun to come home with a BIG bunch of flowers for the house.

I love these white orchids against the white walls.

A few more flowers

It is always hard to leave a garden to its own devices. There is always something new happening, and to go away for a while is to miss it.
Here are a few more views of odd corners that have come into their own.
The pear blossom looks like snow. I'm thinking it looks like a good summer for pears.

The viburnum is really looking good against the red robin hedgings new growth.

 

I love the two colours of the abutilon mingling together on the edge of the vege garden.

 

The intensity of the colour of these iris is especially striking with the sun shining on them and a dark shadow behind.

 

Good bye garden. See you in a few months.

 

 

Planting out

I am off in a few days, so ready or not the seedlings that I started over the last 6 weeks have to be planted out. My poor babies...Will they survive or will the birds scratch them up and the slugs devour them. Some will survive and some won't. It is always interesting to come back and see how it is.
Some of the seedlings have become quite a good size. Some barely have their true leaves.
I have brocolli, cabbages, pak choi and beets on the go.
Here is a lettuce that is sizing up quite well. I have started batches a week or so apart. If it is cool for the next 2 months, the ones started 6 weeks ago may still be in good shape when I get back here in December. If we have a hot next two months then the ones I started the last week may be the ones ready to eat when we return.

 

The beans that I planted out 2 weeks ago are doing well. The sugar snap and sno peas are just starting to germinate. These ones have grown a few inches. Others are just breaking through the ground.

 

The squash and cucumbers at least seem to be growing fast. Lets hope they out grow the slug damage.

 

The basil and chili peppers are very tiny, and probably won't start to grow much until we have some really warm weather. But they are on a raised bed on the north side of a concrete building, so they may survive.

The tomato plants are a little bigger, but even they look tiny in their wire cages.

 

I planted this clematis years ago. It got lost in a grape vine, and I wasn't aware of it surviving. So I was quite excited to discover these flowers.

Today I walked past the maderin tree in full blossom. The fragrance that wafted over me was just devine. I'm looking forward to the fruit next autumn.

So my wish for the next two months is a nice balance of rain and warm weather. With a little luck I will come back to a garden bursting with veges ready to harvest.

Lettuce in a row

The first thing I do when I arrive here-often on the way down from the airport when we do that first grocery shop, is to buy a 6 pack of lettuce seedlings. The lettuce is planted into containers, and coddled in a sheltered spot on the deck. I do this because I know that in a few weeks we will be harvesting our first fresh lettuce leaves. It means that for the next 6-8 weeks while we are waiting for the seeds I plant to start producing we have something to harvest in the garden that is convenient, fresh and home grown.
Plus I love the look of the lettuce plants lined up. very decorative-who needs flowers.

I have been munching on these for a few weeks now. When I leave again next week I'll put them in the garden in a shaded spot. They may still be producing when I get back in December, or they may have gone to seed by then. We'll see.

Herbs

Having a good array of herbs available in the garden gives a good start to any dish we might think of preparing. Arriving back here in NZ at the end of winter, or is it the beginning of spring, I appreciate having a large choice of perennial herbs in the garden. They also look good in the garden.
The first group could be called the Italian herbs. Oregano, garlic chives, rosemary, sage and thyme. They provide the flavour for spaghetti sauces or pizza. Though it is hard to beat rosemary on roast lamb, or a bed of sage under the roast veges.

 

Then there are the herbs that go into a hearty soup or stew. The parsley self sows, and is perpetual without me having to think about it. My bay tree is getting rather large in spite of the yearly pruning it receives. The garlic I planted last autumn, so it has another few months to grow. The chives are looking very pretty at this time of the year with their purple flowers.

 

There are a handful of herbs for a refreshing cup of herbal tea. I would like to have lemon verbena, but I lost mine a few years ago. The pineapple sage flowers are reason enough alone to grow this herb. It does get scraggly sometimes and needs to have a good pruning regularly. The mint wanders around under the fruit trees where it can't get too out of control. The lemon balm self seeds a little too freely,but it means there is always a clump ready to harvest.

There are always a few flowers to brighten up a salad, like the calendulas and nasturtiums. The lavender gets chopped back after flowering and the trimmings go into drawers and closets to provide that traditional lavender perfume.

We do a lot of Thai cooking so couldn't do without our lime tree and lemon grass. The lemon grass always looks messy at the end of winter, but the clumps are always increasing in size to produce lots for cooking. Lemon grass tea is also delicious. The spring onions are always around. I try and move them to a new location every year or so when the clumps get large and need splitting up.

 

Then there is the black fennel which self seeds like crazy.It looks wonderful at this time of the year when the soft new growth is happening. And the seeds are delicious to chew on.

The annual herbs get started each spring. I grow several types of basil. The Italian large leaf basil is the best for pesto. The Thai basil for Thai cooking, though I would grow it just for the lovely purple flowers. I also grow a small leaf Greek basil that naturally mounds up and looks fantastic in the planter on the deck.

If the cilantro doesn't self seed I'll start more of that. It goes to seed so quickly some summers, that I try and start some every few weeks. The seeds we use as coriander in our curries-lightly toasted and freshly ground with a mortar and pestle.

We have a perennial chili pepper plant that has been producing chillies for about 8 yrs now.

I love my New Zealand garden for producing all these herbs. Most which don't require much work on my part and survive being neglected for a large part of the year.

 

Compost Bins

My compost bins aren't pretty. They don't get filled that scientifically either. But the bins I fill in the autumn have broken down in the spring to dark sweet smelling stuff that has a huge number of earth worms in it.
A few days ago I emptied two of the three bins and started filling one back up again with all the weeds etc that I have been pulling from the garden beds the last few weeks.

 

There are hundreds of worms, though by the time I got the camera ready, they had already burrowed under the surface.

 

One of the reasons that I cleaned the compost from the bins was to mound over the newly planted potatoes. It didn't take much to do that, and I still have lots to go in the garden beds that weren't turned into compost bins for the winter.

 

The potatoes are planted a little early, but with a little luck and no frosts, they'll be on their way by the time I get back in December.

As well as the three compost bins out by the garden, I also have a worm farm. The kitchen scraps go to feed them. A friend worm-sits them when I am away. If I have a surplus of worms in the worm farm I usually dose the regular compost bins with them to help get them going. 

It seems there is never enough compost to go around, but I always have some on the go. There are always a few of the raised vege beds that are resting, with a ring of chicken wire around them, and garden waste filling them up. I rotate the beds that are treated this way every change of season, so about every 3 years each bed will go through this regenerating rest.