The Chez Stutters Garden - September 2014

Since the beginning of September, we've really kicked into gear with the garden.  In the ordinary course of events it's possible that we may have started too early with some of the planting, but it's so much warmer than "usual" earlier than usual that I think we're beyond the threat of frosts.  (It's now almost October, so maybe we weren't quite as reckless with planting things like tomatoes as some people may have thought us.)

Anyway:

This is the Chez Stutters Mk 2 garden.  Three vegetable beds, two citrus trees in the ground, and lots of pots.

If you follow me on Instagram you will have met Groot, the raspberry cane.

This is Groot on September 25th

This is Groot on September 28th

 You can see why he got his name.

We also have an Imperial Mandarin called ... The Mandarin (funny, that) and almost had a Washington Navel orange called Ichabod.  We left him at the store and will get one next week.  Who will possibly be called Ichabod or Ichabod II.  (We are not sure when we became these people.  Apparently our plants have names.)

A selection of pots, containing (from the left) a tomato and basil, basil, basil, perennial basil (M is looking forward to when she can make pesto), lavender and a nastursium.

Sadly that's kind of the extent of the photos of the garden at the moment.  I'll work on some more for next week.

Make me happy... BEDiM Day 19

So, this was actually yesterday's prompt... Ten things that make me happy

1.  Top Gear - I hate that this makes me happy, but it does.  Top Gear (the real one, not the Australian one) makes me happy.  Despite the fact that I hate it the homophobia, racism and sexism of Clarkson, in particular.

2.  Pro cycling.  See previous posts.  An additional love is #trolldj on SBS - the people who choose the music for when you come back from the ad breaks. They're snarky and awesome and I love that we get even more #trolldj with extra Giro coverage.

3.  KikkiK - the Swedish design stationary store. It's a very good thing there isn't a KikkiK store up here or I'd be entirely broke and swimming in stationery.

4.  Project Life - even though I'm so far behind.

5. Tea2 - as I write this I'm guzzling down my umpteenth cup of T2's Lemongrass and Ginger tea, made in the Teamaker, which is also awesome.

6. Our new house. It's awesome, and I love it and it's ours. So much love.

7. Cooking. The kitchen of our new place makes me want to cook, which is fabulous, because I love cooking, and the kitchen in the old place didn't encourage cooking.  I may even get around to baking one of these days.

8.  Good coffee. When I have the chance, I go to the Deli Bean for a morning coffee, but I also have the joy of a wonderful coffee machine at home.

9. Flowers. In particular daffodils and tulips. My GF puts up with me planting flowers because she knows it makes me happy, and at the moment we have a bunch of tulips on the kitchen bench for the same reason. Yay!

10.  First and foremost, my girl. She makes me laugh when I'm down; she buys me presents even when she shouldn't; she buys me purple tulips and cooks and cleans the house, and she hugs me and tells me that everything will be okay when I'm being neurotic, which is too much of the time. She puts up with all my faults and foibles, and on top of all these things, she loves me. I don't entirely know why. But I love her too. Lots and lots.

Beginning the Chez Stutters Garden - BEDiM Day 4

I'm going off prompt today, because we've just spent the last hour and a half out in the garden for the first time since we moved in, and this did start out as a gardening blog

Unlike Chez Stutters 1, where it felt easy to just start digging and planting, Chez Stutters 2 has a very small lawn and large patches of concrete.  We've got some raised garden beds to put together that can go on top of the concrete, but today's gardening was pretty much all planting in pots.

We're going to have flowers at the front door and herbs at the back, which we started today with rosemary and a bay tree.  At the front door, along with mostly pansies, there's a pot of nastursium, which counts as both flowers and edibles, obviously :-)

Today we also got three little garden gnomes.  I know - garden gnomes!  But Bunnings had Smurfs and the Seven Dwarves and Beatrix Potter, and once it was obvious that the GF was determined to get Dopey and a gardening Smurf, I figured I could at least get Jemima Puddleduck to join the party.

It was cold out there, and beginning to get dark, but at the same time, it was so very nice to be gardening again after what feels like quite a long time.

An update

Yes, I know - there have been no posts since New Year's Day.

One definite element of that is the current state of the garden.  Which is not great.  And since we had such fun posting photos of our lush, green garden for you to see, I feel bad now that the garden is no longer lush or green.

We've been having some very hot weather - starting back in December, right around the time of M's graduation and a visit from her parents.  A time when we were very busy, and watering the garden wasn't exactly at the top of our to-do list.  Oops.

Minty and Coloniser (with random flower
in foreground) in happier (and younger) days.

While that one is our fault, the state of the garden since is mostly not.  The weather has been unpredictable, and far hotter than recent years.  Plants that have sailed through previous summers are visibly burned this year, just from the sun and the heat.  Remus Lupin may not have made it through (although Teddy is still struggling along, surrounded by the Coloniser.  For all that we laugh about the Coloniser, it seems to have provided Teddy with sufficient cover from the heat that he will survive where the far stronger Remus is struggling.)

Our zuchinni plants are producing at a great rate - possibly too great a rate - and there are lots of cherry tomatoes around the place.  Other than that, though, it's a very non-productive garden right now.

My plan is to wait until mid-late March (either Labour Day or Easter weekends, depending on the weather) to cover pretty much the whole garden with compost from our bin, then newspaper and zuchinni leaves (a hint from the One Magic Square book), water it well for three weeks, and then start on the winter planting, hopefully with some vaugely recovered and partly healthy soil involved.  I think it's going to be a complete restart on everything from Minty and Coloniser onwards - if Minty makes it through summer.

Mystery and rogue plants

Our jungle of rogue tomatoes,
pumpkins, and the three-quarters hidden
compost bin.  Christmas Day, 2011

So, after the disappearance of Mystery Plant #1 AND all our cucumbers, I'm somewhat wary of blogging about our mystery plants.  I don't want them to disappear just because I blogged about them.  (Yes, I'm paranoid.)

However, those we've already pulled out cannot be affected by the blogging jinx, and today I discovered a rogue tomato plant.  We'd decided quite some time ago that we would pull out any rogue tomato plants.  Rogue tomatoes come from supermarket tomatoes, which are not the greatest in terms of eating quality, especially in the second generation.  Last year we had three rogue pumpkins and two rogue tomatoes (I think) and the tomatoes in particular took over the back garden  (see photo) for no real profit of taste or quality.

So, we figured we'd pull any and all rogue tomatoes we found.  Today we found our first - and pulled it - and a suspected second, that we're going to leave for a few days, just to confirm that it IS a tomato, and then we'll pull it.

This weekend's intended purchases include:

• additions to the wall planters from the Hume Murray Farmers Market, with a focus on sorrel (advised by Indira Naidoo's book), Vietnamese mint and/or baby spinach;
• two Diosmas to replace the shrubs that were transplanted from the backyard to the front and have never really thrived
• possibly some more Petunias, because I want to have lots of flowers out my front window.

Introducing: The Lupins

Remus Lupin early in the 2011 season

When we were planning the back garden I wanted a small part to be a flower garden, because I love flowers.  For the OH, gardening is a brand new experience, and while she can understand growing things to eat, she doesn't get growing flowers yet.  And my small flower garden has had to cede ground to the edibles as we've become more confident and have wanted to grow more (lettuces are in the middle of the flower garden this year), but I've also added edible flowers (yay, nastursiums!)

One of the flowers the OH has taken a great deal of interest in, however, have been the lupins.  She's a Harry Potter fan, I'm a semi-fan.  I've read all the books, seen all the movies, and love certain elements, but still don't consider myself a full-on fan.  And yet, the three lupin plants we planted last year were quickly dubbed Remus, Tonks and Teddy.

Sadly, Tonks didn't survive the summer (or the final novel - sigh).  She simply never flourished.  Remus has grown the best of the three, and Teddy did well but never flowered, and has had to be saved from weeds a few times.  At the moment, Teddy is under attack from a ground cover I planted called "White Surprise" (I can't find the scientific name right now (recording such things is part of the reason for this blog) that we've nicknamed the Coloniser because it's taking over so darn well.  I don't want to let him be overtaken, not when Remus is doing so well (two flowers blooming at the moment).

We planted another three lupins last week, and we haven't yet named them.  Suggestions so far have been that one ought to be Sirius, the "honorary" Lupin; the werewolves from True Blood (which OH watches but I don't), names from Melissa de la Cruz's new Werewolf series...  I've just realised that if we call one Sirius, another should be Bill, which leaves one Lupin and/or werewolf to be named, although I suppose we could go with Fleur, who married Bill...

Our Garden (without any actual up-to-date pictures)

Welcome.

Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen
Garden Companion

I wanted a way to document our vegetable garden as it grows, beyond making occasional notes in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden journal which I don't update on a reasonable frequency.  And so here we are.

I don't yet have decent photos of this years garden, however: so far we have planted the following -

• snow peas
• green beans
• zucchini
• capsicum
• basil
• nasturtiums
• lettuce
• cucumber
• spinach
• cherry tomato

We also (well, it was mostly me - the Other Half doesn't understand flowers) planted lupins (see more below) and a punnet of petunias are awaiting my pleasure - which will hopefully occur tomorrow.

We transplanted the mint, which was struggling in its pot; and we already had sage, rocket, parsley, and oregano.

A half-blooming Lupin (Remus)
from last year.

We have a pot given to us by my cousins with a bay tree, thyme, and some struggling chives; and somewhere in another pot should be some rosemary.   

Meanwhile, in the flower part of the garden, the Minty is doing beautifully, Coloniser (aka "White Surprise") is taking things over, and the bulbs are doing beautifully.

So, that's the garden as it stands.  

Perhaps at some point I'll draw a plan.  Also, tomorrow I will do a separate post about our Lupin family.  Because I love our Lupin family.