I don’t have much space in my garden.  We only have a 400 square metre block so all my plants have to be squeezed into a small area. I’ve decided to try all my cherry tomatoes in hanging baskets this year to try and free up some space in the ground for the bigger varieties. I’ve potted up two hanging baskets each with a red and a yellow cherry tomato in and the remainder I’ve put in a half basket hanging off the fence in behind the mulberry. Hopefully the mulberry will provide a little shade from the fierce afternoon heat to come. I did a surprise basket for the mother in law who was delighted and is busy counting tomato flowers and reporting back daily. Mind you, she’s phobic about caterpillars so we have to keep a watchful eye out and at the first sign of anything wiggling in the greenery the emergency call goes out and the basket comes back here until declared caterpillar free!

Spring has arrived officially and the garden is beginning to wake up. I’ve had a big clear up over winter and enriched the soil in preparation for spring planting season and now I’m itching to get things going. Most of my seedlings aren’t quite big enough yet though so I’ll just have to wait a little longer. I have planted a sweet persimmon fuyu tree, a Barbados cherry and a rose apple to start to get an upper storey and some sun protection happening. They’ll take a while but I hope they’ll get established over Spring to have a good chance of surviving the hot weather to come.

It’s the best year ever for peas. The honey snap pod peas are looking and tasting great. I’ve never managed to grow them before and I’m not sure what I did this year but I hope it continues! My artichoke is getting ever larger and the nasturtiums are running everywhere.

The fig leaves are just breaking through and there are baby figs forming. Can’t wait until they are ripe and I can eat them on my breakfast. Quite a while yet unfortunately!

Our local primary school has a fete coming up in October and I’ve started potting up some herbs and edibles for my neighbour to sell on the plant stall.

 

The citrus are all bursting into flower, the tangelo in particular is covered. Hopefully a sign of a good season to come. The Rangpur lime has lots of new growth and has greened up nicely after its long trip West from the Eastern States. The mandarin has more flowers than last year, this may be the year that it actually fruits….. Even the tiny finger limes have flowers coming. Fingers crossed.

This is my mini greenhouse that I got from the local hardware store. My first foray into seeds. So far the tomatoes are going well and the penis chilli have germinated! So hope they grow well, they look amazing in the pictures! The rainbow capsicum and granadilla passion fruit are steadfastly refusing to do anything but I’ll give them a while longer. They might perk their ideas up with some warmer weather. Also planted some perpetual spinach, snake beans and Mexican coriander in there yesterday. The Mexican coriander seeds were the tiniest I’ve ever seen. Hopefully a few of them went in the right place.

Finally I had to buy some boronia yesterday as it was the first day of spring and it is the best scented flower in the world. It smells divine. It’s a strange flower, it’s hard to smell close up but from further away you get a sudden waft…beautiful. I have two so I can have one inside and one outside while they’re flowering and swap them round each day. Time to get out in the garden again, this time to fix the reticulation up,  happy gardening all!