Lmst

First carrot of the season. #gardening #gardeningAU

a freshly picked carrot on a wooden cutting board in front of a white tile splashback

As it is Spring, many native flowers are out. These photos are of some of the coastal flora featuring Leptospermum or native tea tree.

#GreatOceanRoad #GardeningAU #Botany

Close up of little white flowers covering the branches of a plant. The flowers have 4 or 5 simple petals. The leaves of the plant are very small and green.

A view of bushes with a tiny glimpse of sea in the background. In the foreground the bushes have white flowers. The other photo is a close-up of these flowers

The roses in my backyard are starting to bloom

#melbourne #gardeningau #GardeningAustralia #bloomscrolling

We visited someone this morning who has grown this lovely tree. It is a Cedrella sinensis or Toona sinensis. It is a deciduous tree from east Asia. It has these lovely pink leaves in spring. They turn green apparently and in Autumn they turn yellow. A very colourful tree!

It is frost tolerant and drought tolerant.
#GardeningAU #CamperdownVic

Small tree with masses of pink, slender leaves. It is growing on the side of a driveway

Could someone help me identify this plant?

It looks like very much like mint but the leaves smell lemony

I'd like to know what it is and if I should keep it or get rid of it

#plants #gardening #GardeningAustralia #gardeningau

Today I am madly preparing before going away for a week to take Mum to visit family in Western Victoria.

This morning I finished mulching the street garden. I have now finished preparing it for summer. This photograph shows the view from the footpath. The part of the garden in the foreground gets some shade from the small tree so it has been easier to establish plants here. I have planted a couple of baby snapdragons here as an experiment to see if the established plants give enough shelter to help them thrive.

A number of people stopped to admire it and have a chat. Our volunteer gardening group who planted this garden wants the gardening to help lift social isolation as well as reduce rubbish dumping and improve the environment more generally. It is a small thing, but exchanging pleasantries and talking about the garden like this lifts my day. I feel that the people who stop to chat also feel good from the exchange.

It is interesting that people with limited English are more likely to stop and chat - not so much native English speakers. We do most of our gardening on the weekends and live in an area that is quite multicultural, including inner-urban native English speaking professionals and younger people.

On second thoughts, most of the people who stop to chat are older people. Is this one of those intersectional things? Maybe it is the age of a person that makes them more inclined to stop and chat?

#StreetGarden #GardeningAU #Melbourne

Rectangular garden bed sticking out into the street. In the middle background is the trunk of a small tree. On the left and right side in the foreground and around the tree are the silvery-green leaves of gazanias with a few small yellow flowers in the middle foreground are medium sized green leaves of succulents. In front of the tree in the middle are geraniums, with some red flowers and some pink flowers. The ground is mostly covered with plants, but where there are no plants in the middle and foreground, there is dark brown mulch that I lay down this morning.

Just counted and so far I have 19 pots of various tomato types planted. Popped four different types in just now. Hopefully they all grow nice and big!

Also planted some radishes, glass corn and a mix of flower seeds for the bees.

#Gardening #GardeningAU @gardening

Large black plastic pots showing some small tomato plants coming up

I thinned the #beetroot patch again today, as I want to use the space for my overflow tomato and chilli plants before too long. Alas, many of the beetroots were quite woody, despite their small size. That said, between the roots I could grate & the greens I kept, I ended up with 850g of beety goodness. To this, I added celery, wombok, and carrot, as well as garlic, cracked black pepper, chilli flakes, and salt. In a week or so, I will have 3.3kg of #fermented vegetables.

#GardeningAU #GrowYourOwn

A very large glass vessel, with a hinged lid. Shredded vegetables and leaves fill the jar, in shades of white, yellow, orange, green, pink, and purple. Atop the vegetables are some thick terracotta weights.

I was up early this morning. After watering last night and overnight rain, the street garden is nicely damp. I used the remainder of our pea-straw mulch on the hottest part of the garden which faces the road. I then gave it some more water to damp down the mulch so it does not fly around in the breeze.

Aside from finishing the mulching I think I have done as much as I can to prepare for a hot, dry summer. It is looking good at the moment but it will be interesting to see how much survives the summer and people/animals treading on plants.

I think we are no longer having problems with people stealing plants (crossing fingers). An elderly Greek woman with little English has caught some people digging up plants and told them to stop doing it. She told me this via her grandson who translated. I suspect that her limited English made her message to the plant stealers rather blunt! Guarding the garden in this way is her contribution to maintaining it. She has lived in the street for over 40 years and loves the garden very much.

#StreetGarden #GardeningAU

Rectangular garden bed with a lot of light coloured straw mulch covering the large gaps between plants. Some small plants had a few red flowers. On the right side are large succulents with large, fleshy green leaves. On the left side and the front of the garden bed are the silvery-green small slender leaves of gazanias, some of which have small yellow flowers. In the background is the small trunk of a tree that is surrounded by lots of silvery-green gazania plants with a few yellow flowers. Behind the tree are some more succulents. The garden bed is surrounded by asphalt road on the left and right, and behind the garden bed is an asphalt footpath.

After slouching on the couch watching TV this afternoon, I got out onto the street garden and planted a couple of snap dragons. In keeping with the principle of spending nothing on plants for that garden, the snap dragons are plants that had self-seeded in pots in our backyard. I have pot some more pots under the flowering snap dragons to catch any seeds.

I also transplanted a succulent that was getting crowded out by other flourishing plants in the back of our street garden to the front part. The front part faces the road and gets brutally jot and dry during summer. It is hard work establishing plants there. The back part seems to now be well-established. This means that I can have a go at growing more sensitive plants as the established plants provide some shelter and generally help to lower the temperature.

Tomorrow I need to mulch it thoroughly. Then it will be hopefully ready for summer.

#StreetGarden #GardeningAU #Melbourne

This is an Araucaria bidwillii, the bunya pine, bunya bunya or general major arboretum hazard. They make huge seed cones that drop like a bomb.

They originated in the jurassic period on the Gondwana superconinent. The leaves are super pointy and sharp... and incredibly beautiful.

This one was grown from a seed cone that narrowly missed hitting visitors to Centennial Park in Sydney.

The lesson from the bunya: if you want to be around for a long time, be pretty... but prickly. #gardeningau

Repotted a tree I grew from a tiny seed into a 2.5m high thing, from broken plastic pot to a terracotta one found at the market. Then it got a fresh lot of fertiliser and soil and told it was a Very Good Tree for growing so big and so well.

Also repotted one small flowering plant which had been quietly labouring in a corner, covered up by other plants. It's got nice pink flowers on it so it got a bigger pot and a prominent spot to get bigger in.

#Gardening #gardeningAU @gardening

Our gardening group contributed all the plants pictured (up to the man standing in the background) and more to a lawn bowls club this morning. At a working bee at the bowls club we and lots of club volunteers cleared this patch and planted all these plants.

I am relieved. I was looking after these plants in pots in our tiny backyard. A lot of them needed repotting so it was good to get them planted out in a garden where they were needed.

The plants are geraniums of various sorts grown by our group from cuttings from my mother's garden, from our garden and succulents donated by our friendly meter reader as well as my mother. We potted them up in March and nurtured them since then. We now have some welcome space in our backyard!

I thoroughly enjoyed working bees!

#GardeningAU

A large garden bed with small plants planted in 4 rows stretching to the background. In the foreground the plants are surrounded by rare dirt . There is brown wood chip mulch surrounding the plants on the left side and the over the entire garden from the middle ground to the background. A gardening fork is lying on the ground on the left. In the background the legs of a gardener can be seen.

The Geranium Eradication Project is underway

#Canberra #GardeningAU

looking down on the corner of a garden. piles of branches lie on the ground near a newly cleared area

I managed to get 1 nasturtium flower out of our hot, dry street garden! @deirdres

I am celebrating a very small thing. 😁
#StreetGarden #GardeningAU

1 small plant in the foregroundwith roundish green leaves and 1 yellow flower with dashes of red close to the centre. The plant is surrounded by brown soil and pebbles. Behind the plant is another small plant of a different type with plain red flowers

I can't get over what a glorious day it has been. This afternoon I planted an additional plant in our street garden. Last weekend I spread the hydroponic tiny clay balls that someone had dumped on our garden. Our soil is sandy and denuded of organic matter so I feel that adding the clay pellets helps us. I dumped some down the bottom of the hole that I dug for the new plant. Then I did my usual thing of adding lots of water in the hole prior to putting the plant in.

The street garden is a great place for conversations. An elderly Greek woman who lives near us stopped with her grandson who she is very proud of. She is not confident with English but through her grandson she told me how she had stopped someone from digging a plant out of our garden. This is an ongoing issue but we have found that people are less likely to want to steal plants we have grown from cuttings.

Tonight I gave the garden a good long soaking water. I must get some mulch on the garden soon.

I also planted some cosmos seeds in our backyard where it is more sheltered. Let's see if they come up.

#Melbourne #StreetGardening #GardeningAU

Garden in a street at the base of a small tree. There is a lot of dark dirt showing, but there are also some small nasturtium and geranium plants. There are some larger succulents. In the background and around the tree there are lots of silver-grey leaves of gazanias

My mother's garden is stunning at this time of year. In this photo masses of campanula flowers grow along the steps with white jasmine profusely flowering in the background and a couple of large red flowers from a camellia next to the jasmine.
#GardeningAU #Melbourne

In the foreground are a couple of garden steps with masses of small purple flowers growing along the left side and a handrail on the right. Below the handrail small green plants line the right side of the steps. In the middle of the photo is an area with terracotta coloured tiles. In the background pots with plants in line the edge of the wall. Above the pots are masses of white flowers lining the wall. On the right of the white flowers are a couple of large red flowers and large green leaves of a small tree. Most of the tree is not in the photo.

I have been growing a lime seedling for a little over a year and today it has flowered for the first time. I'm looking forward to my first home-grown lime.

#gardeningau #GardeningAustralia #gardening