Gardening Archives - Page 8 of 17

Autumn colour

April 30, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Autumn here is a mild season. It is accented by a flush of flowers, from orchids to vegetables, but an outstanding group of plants now is the salvias. Here our Autumn colour comes from flowers rather than changing leaves. Pineapple sage has leaves with an attractive pineapple/tangerine scent which can be used like mint as a drink garnish. It also has bright red flowers. It is forming the middle layer of a nice tiered display in our herb garden at the moment, with basil in the foreground and chia (also a Salvia) reaching for the…

Kimchi making season returns

April 30, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Wom Bok, chinese cabbage, napa cabbage; whatever you call it, it’s a great vegetable to grow. It’s super quick and trouble free if you can keep the caterpillars off it. And on top of providing delicious greens for stir fries, soups or steaming, you can keep it and transform the flavour by making kimchi. Autumn is a good time to sow wom bok here in the subtropics. The plants reach picking size very quickly. I don’t leave them too long, as they will flower in the warm weather before they…

Sunflower and monarch butterfly

April 29, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

This was one of those nice surprises that you invite by making a garden. This monarch butterfly was far too interested in drinking nectar from a sunflower this morning to be bothered by me getting in close with my phone. The combination of sunflower and monarch butterfly was a highlight of the morning.

Okra and rosella seed saved

April 28, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Seed saving is important for all sorts of reasons. There is the worthy argument that you are preserving heritage cultivars and sticking it to multinationals, but a more practical reason is that it gives you the opportunity to try out as much planting as you care to. My two star performing hibiscus relatives, okra and rosella, have just provided me with more seed than I could use. The okra pods are in the main photo. The plants had grown more than two metres tall and had given us a massive…

Zucchini Ronde de Nice

April 20, 2015December 30, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Ronde de Nice is a fine zucchini cultivar for the home garden. The seed catalogues say it is too easily damaged by handling to be a commercial crop, but for picking and using within a couple of days, it’s a winner. Picked about the size of an orange, the fruit are tender and have a beautiful flavour – think steamed and buttered, rather than chargrilled as you might with a black zucchini with its denser texture. Mine grew very well, sown direct from early Spring (we have no danger of…

Oncidium orchids

April 14, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Oncidium orchids are great decorative plants for subtropical gardens and apartments. They flower twice in the year, Autumn and Spring, and are ideal for bringing in as a showy houseplant. I have two types; one with sweetly vanilla scented burgundy flowers on very large spikes, and a smaller one with dense spikes of yellow flowers. The yellow one is easy to divide, so I have a few pots which conveniently manage to flower a few weeks apart. The orchid world is full of complex crosses, and Oncidium is a catch-all for…

Beefsteak tomatoes

April 13, 2015 Stephen Carlin

For flavour and texture, beefsteak tomatoes are hard to beat. Their large size and fairly flat fruit make them good for sandwiches, and they have thick flesh and less seed than other tomato types, meaning the flavour is less acid.

Burnley Bounty tomatoes

April 1, 2015 Stephen Carlin

Burnley Bounty tomatoes are an Australian cultivar. They have a good classic tomato shape, about 7 cm round and slightly flattened top and bottom, with a nice orange colour ripening to red. I selected it from the catalogue expecting it to have a good chance of being suited to the climate.

Going up: vertical frames for vegetables

March 31, 2015 Stephen Carlin

A little inspiration in the garden can make a big difference. Vertical frames for vegetables, like these pyramids or teepees, can take trellising for plants beyond stakes and fences and create features to break up a flat expanse of vegetable beds.

Time to plant tomatoes

March 27, 2015 Stephen Carlin

It’s great being on the Web and seeing posts from around the world. The gardening blogs and posts from the Northern Hemisphere have swung into Spring preparation, which includes getting your tomato seeds sprouting indoors, but it turns out that for us here in northern New South Wales the garden advice is to plant tomatoes too.