Hardenbergia's revenge

I have a blind spot with plants. I read their labels, and then assume that they won't grow as large as is suggested. Case in point: planting four hardenbergias in the rose garden, thinking they would spill out over the ground like a ground cover. Wrong, of course. They grew at a rate of knots and were attempting to take over completely. It was time to bite the bullet, admit my mistake, and say goodbye. But not before these plants could exact their last bit of gardening karma on me: I began by digging around the stems of the plants with my pitchfork, and quickly moved on to a levering action, using all the strength in my arms to push and pull these plants, feeling the snap and pop of the roots and their springing resistance, until finally, with a great crack, and as I was standing on the handle of my pitchfork using it like a trampoline in an effort to remove these tenacious beasts, the handle of my well-loved fork snapped completely. Lessons learnt: some plants will hang on grimly to teach you a lesson; a plant in an appropriate spot will indeed grow to its projected size; and never plant strong climbers unless you are absolutely sure they will grow as you want them too.

Rose wish list Mk2

Eons ago I made a list of a few roses I wanted to get for the garden. Now that Autumn is here, I am browsing rose catalogues again and making more lists. Long, long lists. I need to pare my rose wish list down to less than a dozen, because I just don't have the room out the front really, and because if I bought everything I wanted it would cost me a small fortune. If I spent as much time reading about native plants as I have about roses lately, I'd rapidly be becoming an expert in my job...

You might remember that my front garden is packed with Iceburg roses, in other words, about two dozen white shrub roses. They bloom profusely and seemingly endlessly, but have virtually no scent and are on the boring side. Last year I ordered and planted five David Austin roses: Graham Thomas, Jude the Obscure, Charlotte, Crocus, and Lichfield Angel. These are all yellow/peach/apricot/buff tones. The Graham Thomas, Jude the Obscure, and Charlotte have all done well and are lovely, healthy plants which have bloomed all summer though are still small. The Crocus was attacked by a mysterious leaf-eating bug all Summer and has struggled along with barely any greenery at all. Now, at the change of seasons, it's finally got some leaves and has stopped being eaten so I'm hoping this will help it get lots of energy back ready for the Winter dormancy. The Lichfield Angel inexplicably died almost immediately after it was planted.

So this Winter I want to plant more yellow roses, some pink, and one or two others that I love too much to not plant even though they don't really fit in with my front garden colour scheme (white/lavenders/blues/yellow). I'm hoping this post will help me shorten my short list!

First, thinking of the garden bed which goes from the front gate and down the side of the bed...

By the gate I'd like a Raubritter rose (Rosa macrantha 'Raubritter'). It's supposed to be a largish groundcover/sprawling rose. I have a low wall along there and I think it would look nice spilling over the wall, but it's apparently quite thorny so that might not be the best place if people are going to walk past it. I'm determined to have one, however!

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

Source: davidaustinroses.com via Katie on Pinterest

Further back along the path I think I should stick with the pink tones. I'm in love with Strawberry Hill (a David Austin rose). This medium sized, arching shrub made my original wish list and since it's still on the list I think it's a goer;

Source: treloarroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

I've got a real soft spot for Saint Cecilia... way back when I was in a Catholic highschool and most of the other kids were choosing saints for their new middle names for their confirmations we all had to research a particular saint and I chose Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music (that might not be why we were learning about saints. It was a long time ago and my memory is a little hazy, but that's how I remember it in any case). Anyway, Saint Cecilia is another shrubby, upright David Austin rose with lovely pale pink/apricot blooms. This one was on my original list as well.

Source: davidaustinroses.com via Katie on Pinterest

Up the back of that side bed, by the house, I'd like to plant a gigantic climbing rose. It's not the most sunny of spots, being squeezed in between the fence and the house, but I want a rose which soars overhead so I think once a plant grew upwards it would get enough light. I'm tossing up between a yellow Banksia rose (Rosa banksiae lutea, enormous, close to my heart), or a Crepuscule (awful name, lovely noisette rose, yellow/apricot flowers), or something old-fashioned with lovely red rose hips like a white Rugosa rose (Rosa rugosa alba). Descisions, decisions...

(Banksia rose)

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

(Crepuscule)

Source: diggers.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

(Rugosa rose)

Source: davidaustinroses.com via Katie on Pinterest

And at the risk of a total rose overload, here's just a few others (all shrub roses, all David Austins) that I keep thinking of and can't strike off the list.

The Pinks:

William Morris;

Source: flickr.com via Katie on Pinterest

Brother Cadfael;

Source: sugarfromsunshine.com via Katie on Pinterest

The Alnwick Rose;

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

The Yellows:

Golden Celebration;

Source: treloarroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

Teasing Georgia;

Source: magicgardenroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

Molineux

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

And the randoms I can't get past:

Summer Song (in a pot because it wouldn't fit anywhere else)

Source: magicgardenroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

and finally, Munstead Wood (I'd like a climber).

Source: treloarroses.com.au via Katie on Pinterest

Hope you enjoying this look into my brain tonight :)

(And for referencing purposes, none of these photos are mine - obviously! - but if you click on them it will take you to my Pinterest boards, and then if you click again it will take you to the website where the photo was originally posted. Or at least, that's the idea).

Gardening by moonlight

No, not the kind where you refer to a chart to see what to plant when according to the phases of the moon, but the kind when it's already dark outside, and the Mosquitos are out in their hordes, but it's such a beautiful, balmy, sublime autumn night that you steal half an hour outside to do some planting (raspberries into styrofoam boxes, in this case).

The current moon phase, by the way, is a waxing crescent and supposedly a good time for planting and encourages leaf growth. I only learnt that five minutes ago...

More interesting to me is my SP's current complete fascination with the moon. She tells me she wants to sit on it; bless little toddlers! Always seeing our world in a different way.

Virtually free food?

Last time I told you about my butternut pumpkins (that's butternut squash too, for any overseas readers). Those were the pumpkins I planted myself in carefully prepared ground. But then, up the back are three GINORMOUS self sown pumpkins. They came out of the compost heap which I moved - and spilt - because it was in the way of the chicken coop which we were building (and still are, slow work in progress). I'm not sure what kind they are, I'd guess Jap or Queensland Blue since they're what we'd generally buy from the supermarket.

(Please ignore the weeds, they have gone mental and I'm telling myself I'll get on top of them once we move home...)

These three pumpkin plants are a demonstration that plants can - and will - adapt to the conditions they have. Self sown at almost exactly a meter apart, they have never had any water beyond the rain and yet never got wilty except on the very hottest of days. The butternuts, on the other hand, wilted at the first hint of heat and had to be watered almost daily through the summer. The butternuts got completely covered with downy mildew after some summer rain and the few nice warm days which followed... Not one spot of mildew appeared on my mystery pumpkins. Now, they're covered in male and female flowers, and although I was tempted to continue to leave them completely to their own devices I have been hand pollinating the baby fruits at every opportunity (many more fruits on each plant compared to the butternuts too which had about one each). Now I just have to wait and see if we get nice pumpkins from my irrigation-free plants or if they are completely inedible.

My first pumpkin.

Not bad, hey?! I'm quite chuffed with it! 777g.

To be truthful, last year I had a single butternut pumpkin, which was about the size of a tennis ball. I think I planted my pumpkin plants too late and was too ambitious, planting half a dozen different varieties which came to nothing.

This year I only planted butternuts, though I was thwarted in my attempts to plant them early by nefarious snails, who ate my home grown seedlings twice before I caved in and bought a punnet of them and ringed them with ghastly (but effective) snail bait.

The other day I picked this first pumpkin and tonight I made soup with it which tasted like perfectly normal pumpkin soup, so I guess I got something right?

There are eight more of these babies still waiting on their vines out in the veggie patch :-)

Dumb gardening decisions

We all learn by making mistakes, when we do the wrong thing and think, 'oops, won't do that again!' But the problem with making gardening mistakes is that you might be stuck with them for a long time, perhaps forever.
So here's one of mine: thinking that since I've never managed to grow mint particularly well in a pot I'd put some in my boggy spot in the front garden. Even though I knew it could be (is) a weed. And what do you know? It's taken off. In the space of six months it's become quite enormous and is sending new shoots out and rapidly colonising the front garden at an alarming rate. I used to think you could never have enough mint in the garden, but I might have to eat my words (literally).
So, fess up, what are some mistakes you've made in your patch?

The K-Paw project.

For ages and ages I've been blathering on about wanting to plant a sea of kangaroo paws in my front garden. They really do look fabulous when they're planted en masse and are in flower. I did a bit of a search in this blog and found that I'd been talking about seas of kangaroo paws as early as January 2011, and moaning about the cost as the cheapest I'd found them at that point was $8 each. Since them I've found them for less (about $3 each in tubes), but even better -for me, not the general public- is that I could get them from work for even less than that. (I started work at the nursery in July.) Bonus!

I have to make a confession here: I had put myself on a plant-buying ban for February. I didn't succeed on buying no plants at all; what plant addict would? But until the other day all I'd caved in on was an Agonis 'After Dark,' three Nepeta 'Walker's Low' and two irresistibly cheap Philadelphus mexicanus (mock orange). Then, last Monday, I brought home two boxes of babies and three bigger pots.

I had bought 11 yellow- green kangaroo paws in tubes, 13 red kangaroo paws, five Patersonia occidentalis (purple flag iris), and my three larger plants were Anigozanthus 'yellow gem' (an old and proven cultivar and I chose bright yellow in the hope that they'll make my 'yellow-green' flowered plants look yellower than they'll really be). The Patersonia and the K-paws have similar requirements - full sun and fantastic drainage - so I'm hoping they'll grow well together. Basically, I didn't just break my plant ban, I blew it right out of the water.

(Patersonias)

Months ago, I planted half a dozen K paws in the western corner of the front garden, and they've done so well it gives me high hopes for the next batch (they've done so well, in fact, that I think I've planted them too close together!)

(Paws left, Lomadras right, persimmon in background and mad roses behind that)

On Tuesday I was able to plant them all. It was quite a job and took me all afternoon: laying them all out; digging the holes; adding the compost, manure, blood and bone, mycorrhizae tablets, dynamic lifter (k paws are quite heavy feeders so it's best to get them off to a good start).

By the time I'd finished my front garden looked like this:



And best of all? The next day it rained and rained and rained all day, which hasn't happened for months, so I couldn't have asked for better 'settling in' weather for my new babies.

(our state awash... unlike in other states, rain is rarely a problem in SA.)

The photo below is taken from our bedroom window (splattered with raindrops), the design idea was to be able to look down over my see of kangaroo paws which will sweep off out into the garden to the left, framed by the persimmon tree (the stick at the bottom towards the left) and my new crabapple (ltop left in photo, almost invisible) and the Lomandra border on the right.

In a couple of years I hope to have not just a garden with a glorious swathe of kangaroo paws, but to play host to dozens of native birds as well.

xx