Overcast day

Fine misty drizzle to fne rain the whole day.

Perfect for seedlings.

Update: 2015/10/01

A gentle rain the whole day today - heavier than yesterday. Supposed to clear this evening.

Hiding in plain sight

Jerusalem artichokes, pretending to be pebbles in the middle of a garden path. Given away when they sprouted leaves.

They're really going to be in the way, so there's a transplant coming up. Where to?

Jacaranda leaves (as seen lying about in the photo) starting to fall heavily - odd how they do this in spring, not autumn. Also very latitude dependent - the Jacarandas in Harare flower in October, and those in Pretoria in early November. Here in Grahamstown they only start up in December.

Update 2015/10/22:

Jacaranda leaves still falling...

Update 2015/10/23:

Variation on a theme... a change from lying in the roof guttering to check out the passing scene.

Ace of Spades gardening thread - 2015/09/26

Saturday gardening thread.

Weekly status of tyre garden - update 3

It's been a hot and sunny week. A light misty drizzle for a few hours on Saturday, and today is mostly cloudy. Have changed the watering program from every third day to every second day. Will need to check the spray coverage.

The row of tyres is now complete (an additional eighteen, sourced in two batches), and they're all filled with compost. There's always a bit of room at the ends so I can probably squeeze in an extra half doxen, but there's no longer any time pressure to do so.

Compost

Lots of it underneath the shade of the mulberry tree, but a surprising amount gets used up filling the veggie tyre garden, now up to nearly 100 tyres.

Two areas, side by side. The original, on the right, was set up as part of the vibracrete wall and has a volume of perhaps 2 m^3. The extension on the left was set up many years later.

 It's cheaper to use stacked concrete blocks than to make enclosures out of timber. The volume of the extension is quite a bit less than the vibracrete structure.

The lower layers here are very old, so the compost is ready to use, even though there's a lot of pebbles and other rubbish to pick out of it once it's in place in the garden. There's a big square of framed netting to sieve through if required, but I seldom bother,

This needs to be chopped up a bit as it gets added to, but will be ready in a couple of months after getting turned once or twice.I'm going to have lots of little Leonotis plants springing up...

I've never managed to do compost the textbook way, where everything gets hot and quickly decomposes and kills any seeds. But in the end, given enough time, everything seems to work out. The trick seems to be to get the red wrigglers going in the pile.

All my tyres and black plastic bags are filled with straight compost. Downside is there's lots of weed seeds that come up, but they're fairly easy to control if you're paying attention. The one weed that's sometimes welcome is the Cape Gooseberry - once you have a plant in your garden, it's going to come up everywhere.

The compost set out into the containers continues decomposing as the plants grow in it, and the ground level slowly falls. Once a year or so it gets topped up. Moisture retention in the tyres is pretty good.

Update 2015/11/01:

Driveway entrance

A decorative part of the garden, as it's close to pedestrian traffic.

Ranunculus and weeds.

A closeup of the most striking Ranunculus - two tone copper/orange.

Ranunculus and Pelargoniums.

Pelargoniums, Freesias and Ranunculus.

Pelargoniums and Felicia.

On the other side - Mesembryanthemums. There's supposed to be some that'll produce orange flowers, but no sign yet.

Summer bulbs

Gladiolus; Galtonia; Zantedischia; Tigridia; Lilium.

Sandersonia; Galtonia; Zephyranthus; Nerines, pink and white; Gloriosa Superba.

Crocosmia; Zantedischia.

These were planted out into pots of compost last week, and should be flowering by December.

Many of these are indigenous, of course,

Update 2015/10/16:

Update 2015/10/28:

Zephyranthus.

Update 2015/10/30:

The next Zephyranthus coming up.

Oriental Lily looking asparagus like.

Gloriosa, or Flame Lily.

Sandersonia.

Update 2015/11/03:

Flame Lily.

Sandersonia.

White and pink Nerines.

Pomegranate

I last interacted with a pomegranate tree growing in the garden at Mamathes trading store about sixty years ago, so the details of how they work are a bit foggy. Anyway late last year, against my better judgment my two daughters cajoled me into buying one about a metre tall in a pot. It was covered in buds and flowers and looked very showy - clearly evolution at work trying to attract female attention and get it to a new home.

Soon after being transplanted, all the flowers and buds fell off, but we got one reasonable sized fruit from the single bud that regrew. It was left on too long because of uncertainty about how red the skin needed to be for it to be considered ripe. The middle went rotten, but like the curates egg, parts of it were very good.

In winter all the leaves fell off, and I had the usual twinge of guilt at having killed it. But even though it has glossy leaves, it's deciduous, so all is well.

At the moment it's doing nicely, but only one bud so far. Maybe there'll be more? This season we'll have a better sense of ripeness.

Update 2015/10/11:

It's a really attractive tree - even though it still has only the one bud.

Update 2015/11/15:

The bud fell off in the wind a week or so back, so nothing this season.

A cultural history of the pomegranate - Picking Pomegranates.

Scarlet Runner beans

Seeds from previous crop, destined to be planted against the mesh fence on the other side of  the asparagus beds.

These beans grow thickly and vigorously, putting out dense foliage. The root system forms a sort of tuberous clump underground, and appears to be deciduous. i.e. in theory, once planted, they'll keep on going.

Despite their showy appearance, they're delicious.

Transplanting "Powder Blue" blueberry into large pot

The second specimen, purchased because "Powder Blue" looks promising, and blueberry plants aren't commonly available in Grahamstown. See if you can make out the price tag to see why.:

This will need to be irrigated, so all the fittings to do it automatically need to be set up. My previous erratic hand watering regime in the garden was probably the main reason for a high attrition rate, and I can't afford these exotic berries going belly up on me.

The spray head that'll keep everything inside a large pot damp. Obtained from BUCO, but other, earlier. similar, components were obtained from Builders Warehouse in Port Elizabeth over the last few years. It appears there are different but compatible components available.

I was doing drip irrigation into a black plastic bag of compost growing broad beans at this location, but they need more room, so they'll be grown in tyres from now on. The drip head, with the "help" of one of my assistant gardeners, Ixia,, was snipped off, then the

end of the 6mm tube dipped into a cup of hot water for 30 seconds or so to make the next step easy.

New spray head fitted onto tube. Builders gravel in the bottom of the pot, which was recycled from an unsuccesful Cape Gooseberry attempt elsewhere in the garden.

The planting pot is filled with acid compost (obtained from Builders Warehouse earlier this year).

The plant is neatly dug in, then the micro-spray head lined up more or less in the middle. This sector, getting continuous direct sun from mid morning to late afternoon, has it's own controller and is given 3 minutes of water once a day just after 07h00. It's too much water in winter, but about right in summer. To the right are raspberries, also lovers of acid compost and irrigation.

Now to sit back and see what happens.

Update 2015/10/16:

I've seen a lot of these on sale over the last few weeks. The ones at Builders Warehouse in Port Elizabeth are about R50 cheaper than the local ones. It was a similar thing with Sharp Blue a year or so back, and those are doing very well in pots so I'm optimistic that Powder Blue will also suit local conditions.

Update 2015/11/11:

Ace of Spades gardening thread - 2015/09/19

Saturday gardening thread.

Weekly status of tyre garden - update 2

Update 1 is at the end of this post.

Here's what things look like this week:

The weather has been overcast with occasional rain, but nice and warm.without being really hot.

Planted sweet corn, pop corn, zucchini, strawberries and flat parsley all intercropped with radishes in the 10 prepared tyres of row #3 in the foreground. When I went to look for tyres on Thursday at Wessons, they'd just sent off their pile to the recyclers, so I had a limited choice. I still need to fill in the 8 new ones with compost. Can probably fit another 14 or 16, but want nice wide (i.e. tall) ones.

In a sunny corner, off to the left of this photo, have just planted giant Nigerian oilseed sunflowers, some hybrid squash, which looks like Gem squash, and butternut, all straight into the ground. Hopefully the butternut will climb into the bougainvillea. The hybrid squash migh be compact enough to put into a tyre, but let's see.

The kale planted a few days back is already sprouting - more quickly than radish... Also filled in gaps where celery hasn't sprouted. Parsnips aren't doing that well - only one has sprouted, so I sowed more. The carrots are also being slow. Broad beans and bush beans have sprouted, but no peas yet.

Lettuce seedlings are transplanted into the compost filled spaces between the tyres, together with some ranunculus, which are just starting to flower.

Bought a White Genoa Fig to replace the useless pecan nut tree.

There's a thunderstorm brewing, so probably a fair amount of rain coming up shortly.

Update:

Eventually rained, quite hard, at about 20h00. Will clean out the first flush diverter tomorrow.

Tomato trellis

I started getting all complicated trying to work out how to set up a tomato trellis that wouldn't serve as a convenient ladder over our back wall, which faces onto a railway line and sees reasonable pedestrian traffic, including, sometimes, burglar/scavengers. Anything made out of timber such as brandring might be leant over to provide an easy exit path.


The solution was to provide a human unsupportive framework of light bamboo stakes cable tied to black plastic binding string suspended from the eaves above the rear wall of our outside room.

The top part of the structure - only a few cross stakes. It's easy enough to add more as required according to what the tomato vines want to do.

The bottom part - more cross stakes at a lower level. To keep things manageable, the bottom of the strings are tied to wheel weight ingots diverted from my reloading activities.

Tomatoes are slow off the mark, and I'm not sure what the problem is. Had the same issues last season.

Cabbages

Can you grow them (successfully) in a container?

We'll see... bought as seedlings, and intercopped with radish.

The other eight seedlings are planted out more traditionally, but are shaded.

Update 2015/10/17:

After a month starting to curl over in the middle and start thinking about forming a head. Could have planted three in each tyre, perhaps?

The ones in the main bed are not much larger than when first transplanted. Shade and soil condition?

Have recently planted baby red cabbage seed - they all sprouted.

Update 2015/10/31:

Update 2015/11/12:

Update 2015/11/15:

Cranberry

Another experiment:

In acid compost, and irrigated. This is their second year, and they're definitely spreading. If I can get some of the growth to root, I might try it as ground cover in the overflow area of the water tanks. Problem there might be lack of sun, and not acid enough.

No signs of flowers or fruit yet, although last season there were some flowers.

Update 2015/10/22:

Update 2015/10/31:

Flowering. Non-descript would cover it...