kathies-garden.com

I’ve noticed a lot of petunias and pansies out in flower outside florist shops and supermarkets and just couldn’t resist buying some for my own garden too.  Also cyclamen. But I’ve had a sore wrist and not been able to dig easily so am waiting on my husband to assist.  In the meantime, they are sitting in pots in the garden and do not look out of place as the surrounding plants have pretty much hidden the pots from sight.  And the recent rains have kept them looking great!

The vege garden is slowly progressing and I check on it daily as I go to feed the rabbits at the end of our garden - the vege garden is in full view of the rabbits cage - it must be a tease for them, I’m sure!

I was visiting a client’s place a couple of months ago and noticed they had a large pot at the front door with flowers spilling out of it. It made their place look really warm and inviting and I mentioned it to my husband. We had a large pot out the back that was just collecting cobwebs and nothing else so he carried it to the front verandah for me and I found a pot to put inside the opening (so we didn’t have to fill the entire thing with soil) and then I planted Petunias and Pansies with a reed plant in the centre. The pot is now spilling over with flowers and looks really lovely, in fact welcoming as people come up to the front door. The Hoya is sitting behind it - I’m waiting for it to show signs of picking up still

How often do you see something you like elsewhere and then come home to duplicate that? That’s what I’m doing with my vege garden too but it’s going to take longer than a few weeks - for that I have to be patient!

Petunias, Pansies, verandah, flower garden

I forgot about the pests you can get in a garden. We did plant Rosemary, Thyme, and Sage, things I had read about that would assist with warding off pests, but I guess being such young plants they are not yet doing their thing. So we have leaves being eaten from the ends (a nursery experienced friend asked if it were holes in the leaves or eaten from the ends) and believe it may be caterpillars.

I had already put snail and slug bait out and not seen any evidence of them around but had to go and invest in some spray suitable for vegetable plants. I did think about powder but we have cats that love the garden and so we didn’t want them sniffing or licking it and making themselves sick so I steered away from that. Think I better do some more reading. Currently we also have planted: Strawberries, cabbage, chilli peppers, lettuce and parsley.

I’ve been gardening for years but never studied it and it’s always been flowers, bushes, etc for a cottage style garden so the vege garden thing is new to me. Comments/suggestions from readers who are experienced in this area would be very welcome. KMT

garden pests, caterpillar, snail bait, vegetable plants

About two years ago I finally got around to working in our front garden. We’d had a new paved path laid several months before for our eldest daughter’s wedding but we’d not done anything else with the garden after our home was renovated several years ago.

The neighbour across road had removed their top soil to make changes to their garden and it was left in a pile on the nature strip for anyone to take. So Graham took our wheelbarrow over the road several times and filled it up and brought it back for me so we could level off the ground on either side of the pavers and I began to work on our garden. We had a couple of trees and some bushes but nothing else.

Over a 6 month period (Nov - Apr) I made constant trips across the highway to Bunnings (so convenient being that close to home) and brought back more plants. I’d take the car if I needed to buy things that were too heavy to carry (like 40ltr bags of bark) but otherwise I walked so the exercise was good too.

Eventually we began to see flowers in the garden and different ground covers starting to reach across the ground. We also have a fish pond which we put in around 10 or so years ago so that is not looking so bare now, with lots of plant life around it.

With the drought in Victoria my main challenge is keeping things watered and to stop weeds growing. After several months indoors I’m venturing back out again into the garden. The cooler weather is more pleasant to work in, and hopefully we’ll start to get more rain. We’re allowed to water twice a week in the morning but the rest of the time we place buckets in the showers with us and I also collect all the rinsing water used in the kitchen sink. So we have containers sitting around in the house for the collection of ‘grey’ water so we can keep watering our garden. Below are photos of the garden about six months after I started work on it.

flowers, ground cover, drought, grey water