Silky Poppy

  I am glad that I decided to sow some poppy seeds last autumn for spring flowering as one of my new experience of growing flower from seeds for this year. Living in Mediterranean climate I found that sowing time play a very important role ensuring the success of certain plant. Growing up in tropics you can plant all year round. Here in Adelaide I had to do my own research on determining when is the perfect time to sow certain plant seeds I would love to grow. At first I thought I sowed those poppy seeds too late and they won’t produce any flower for me at all. I almost gave up on them and thought to clear them up to giveaway their space for other plants. I got worried  because when I walk around my neighbourhood nobody has poppy plants in their front yard garden except this one house which grow Californian poppy that has bloom 2 months ago which mine has not even after a month back then. Luckily I was patient enough and now got to see the reward. There is so many different shade or colours of poppy blooming now in my garden. Which one is your favourite?

We grow one of the hybrid of Shirley poppies (ornamental poppies). The first time I touched poppy petals, my first thought was silk or soft tissues.

Fresh poppy bloom is on the right side where the something (don’t know what its call) around the green capsule is yellow where as on the left it has already turn brownish in colour. Poppy don’t bloom that long about 3 or 4 days, the petals are easily carried away on windy day. But I am not worried because not long they will be new bloom to replace the old ones.
Sexy red poppy dancing facing the sky. 


The first poppy bloom colour in our garden was crimson red.  It so much remind me the colour of cheongsam and blood.


For more bewitching red colour hop on to Mary blog the host for Ruby Tuesday.




This is an old entry but I would like to join Tracy party at Fishtail Cottage for Cottage Flora Thursday’s #3.

November Allium

I decided to post about allium today as I am a novice at growing them and need much needed advice on how to harvest them.

GARLIC

Last year was the first attempt at growing them. I bought 2 bulbs of Spanish garlic (hard-neck variety) from the central market and grow about 10 cloves from it in June. Instead of all white skin, the garlic skin has a bit of purplish skin which I have never since in my whole life before because I have been using the one imported from China almost forever before I live in Australia which trigger my interest on growing garlic. All of them produce nice size bulb exactly like the one we bought and we had no trouble growing them. However, as I had miscommunication with Lenay, I did not realized that she kept the big cloves for next season planting in plastic bag instead of just leaving it in dry places. Imagine my horror when I was cleaning the kitchen and found them all black and mouldy. So this year, I decided to grow more garlic and plant them in containers because we had success with it last year the ones grown in containers. We planted garlic from June last year but this year we planned planting the cloves early in end April. However, I could not get the same supply of Spanish garlic when I went searching in the central market. The only available garlic that time was the one imported from China. I searched for some local grown garlic in the local market and bought some. I think  I made a bad judgement, although the cloves sprouted nicely it was not that healthy and with lots of rain this year compare last year half of the garlic plant died. However the Spanish garlic cloves that we managed to rescue from last year  never gave us problem (sad only 3 cloves). I think I should stick on this variety as it does well in our place. In July when I went shopping in Coles I bought one bulb of Mexico garlic and planted 3 cloves to see how happy it will grow in our garden. At the moment, the Mexico garlic plants looks very promising.

One of the earliest planted garlic (local garlic) in a small long containers look so wilted that we decided to harvest them. The garlic bulb were small but at least we don’t have to buy them at the moment. Have anyone notice that garlic prices goes up every year? Spanish garlic is the one at the most front and big in the picture,it has been left too mature because it was hiding in between carrots before I found it and the rest are the local garlic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To harvest or not to harvest, is it ready? Left the day before, right is picture taken today (local garlic). It is garlic produce season here in Adelaide. I assume it is because when I went shopping for fruits in Central Market there were heaps of it.

LEEK

The youngest leeks growing in the garden and in polystyrene container. Leek is so slow growing. Finally today we got to harvest some decent size of leeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPRING ONION

Germination of spring onion seeds in spring this year for us is not really good below 20%. I wonder what could be the reason of this. We have 2 variety of spring onions growing over winter and ready to be pick anytime. One of the spring onion is Red Welsh onions which in winter will develop red colour stem.

  CHIVES

Yippee the chives are loving the weather now and producing more leaves. How many times did I thought it will not survive the winter and will not grow more leaves. Chives is not easy to grow from seeds as the germination rate is so slow. We grow from seeds but I hope in the future the chives will be a bigger clump so we can grow more by divisions.

  Do you think the chives will be good companion for kang kong (water spinach) living together in this polystyrene box.  The kang kong is still a small seedlings hiding itself behind chives.

BROWN ONIONS

Brown onions grown from seeds. It looks similarly like spring onions at this stage of growth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Onions grown from sets in August at the other side of the fence of our house. This is our first trial. Do you think it will produce onions? I am starting to have some doubt now.

This is the only allium which we are growing now for November update on allium. How about in your garden?

PYRETHRUM natural solution against pest

Pyrethrum refers to several Old World plants of the genus Chrysanthemum which are cultivated as ornamentals for their showy flower heads. Pyrethrum is also the name of a natural insecticide made from the dried flower heads of C. cinerariifolium and C. coccineum (from wikipedia). This is the reason I decided to add this plant as one of the member in the garden as royal bodyguards against pest in summer. Pyrethrum is a perennial plant and can be grown from seeds or division. We grow a hybrid one from seeds last year in autumn. From our experience germination is rather slow. If you sow earlier, you might get a few blooms the same year. We wait after a year for the plants to bloom like now.

Pyrethrum bud about to bloom indicating summer is just around the corner.

Shadows of pyrethrum in full bloom for Shadow Shot Sunday where interesting shadows picture from all around the world can be enjoyed together. 

Pyrethrum is a tall plant which can grow more than 50cm tall. At the moment, this plant is like having who are the tallest of them all in this patch competition with the climbing bean

Pyrethrum was used for centuries as an insecticide, and as a lice remedy in the Middle East (Persian Powder, also known as "Persian Pellitory"). Because of the natural insecticidal properties of the pyrethrums, they are used as companion plants, to repel pest insects from nearby crops and ornamental plants. They are thought to repel aphids, leafhoppers,spider mites, harlequin bugs, ticks, pickleworms and imported cabbage worms, among others that are in gardens and farms.

Pyrethrum spray: Coarsely grind the dried flower heads and to every firmly packed half-cup of flowers, add 1 litre of boiling water. Leave to stand until cold, strain and add 1 teaspoon of pure soap. Shake well before use. Don’t spray in temperatures over 32degree Celcius. The spray will kill bees so use it when they are not active –in the early morning or evening. Although relatively harmless to people, pyrethrum is still a poison so needs to be carefully labelled and stored out of the reach of children and pets. (from the book~ Herbs for Australian Gardens by Penny Woodward)

I have not try home-made pyrethrum yet. We don’t have any dried flower heads as yet. I would like to try it during autumn/winter when the bees are having long holidays.

This is my entry for today's flower and flowers on Saturday .

For more great plant visit Eliza our hostess for How to Find Great Plant#3.

Colourful November

I don't have that much space to grow many flowers that I would love to see them in my garden. But I am learning how to to grow them with vegetables side by side. Hopefully, pollinators will happily stay at our garden and we have much better luck with the fruits that need to be pollinated this summer. You can see almost every patch has coriander that is flowering profusely in the background of the picture when you see small white flowers.

I have never seen a poppy grown outside the nursery. This year we grow our poppy from seeds. I thought it will make a nice border for the veggie patch. However, never did  I expected that it will grow so tall and eventually shade any nearby plants. Every morning since our poppy starts to bloom I spend more longer time in the garden before I am off to school. I am still surprised and excited looking at the different colours of poppy flowers that are blooming in the garden. As I was looking at one of the bloom this morning, a big bee was off and on that flower, and I can see the pollen flying away and how it attach on the bees legs.  I felt like the bee was giving me a special lesson about how important its role as a pollinator.

This corner is near the front of our kitchen window. Self-seeded viola is growing below sunflower plant and nastartium has  to be tamed not to invade other plant spaces too much. Its neighbour zucchini has some bud developing when I peek yesterday.

The pansies has hide the leek stem from front view. We don't have to cover the leek stem to get those long white stem instead of green. The pansy is not just a pretty face but have done a good job on shading the leek stem.

The linaria has bloomed for months now since middle of winter. I should have stake them but like poppy I never thought it will grow so tall. Luckily I planted them at the back.

We still have many poppy plant which has not bloom yet. I wonder will we have another different colllection type of colour. I am making a mental note , I should have sowed the poppy seed earlier this year. Well I can try again next year.

Second week of November harvest

It is late spring and most of the growing summer vegetables are still in the early stage of development. I am starting to worry what next week will be available to harvest from garden to kitchen for preparing food on the table. For this week, we harvested some baby potatoes (nicola variety) from potato plant grown in polystyrene containers. Some of the potato plant leaves grown in polystyrene box has turned yellowish and dying. So I pull out the plants and rummage into the soil to see how much potatoes I can get from a 2 months old plant. Surprise, surprise can get my hands on some baby potatoes.

One or two tomato from this “Stupice” tomato plant that shoot up during winter when it died from summer heatwave.

. The last cauliflower for this year. Not a beauty and big like it sisters that have been harvested a while back but nevertheless taste good like it sisters. We have to wait another 8 months to eat fresh cauliflowers again. Although we do have some frozen one if we crave some.

Some winter veggies still growing in the garden to harvest~ carrots, celery sticks, leeks and spring onions as shown in the pictures except for “Red Choi” grown from spring.

Which vegetable is heading towards your kitchen?