kathies-garden.com

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 have a Wax Hoya named Magnifica and bought it at the garden show some weeks ago. It’s been put in a pot by the front door so is under shelter but open to light and fresh air. However, the big green leaf has turned yellow and dropped off and one of the other smaller green leaves has dropped too so I had to start looking up about the care of Wax Hoyas. Seems because it’s not flowering I should not be watering it much at all so will stop doing that for a few weeks and see what happens.

In the meantime, I came across some interesting sites regarding Hoyas and a blog named Hoya Garden dedicated to them by a man in Brisbane, Australia. I’m listing the other sites I found below for your interest. These are lovely plants with flowers which are are deeply fragrant and I remember the pale pink one I had at my parents’ home when in my teens.

I wonder if I’ve returned to gardening now my kids are grown and I no longer have to spend time doing things for them anymore? I remember mum and dad really getting back into gardening around the time I left home - prior to that I used to love digging and planting in the backyard in my teens and had many plants, flowers, strawberries, potatoes and other things growing. Mum and dad would have been a bit younger than I am now but similar scenario - kids off their hands.

Collectors Corner (where I got mine from)

Gardening Australia (ABC Australia)

Hoya Forum

Hoya World

Plant of the Week

wax hoya, magnifica, gardening, fragrant flowers

I go through phases of gardening passion and during one of those phases a couple of years ago I asked my family to buy for my birthday a software program relating to the planting and planning of one’s garden. They did just that and bought for me Garden Composer. I used it a lot when it was first installed on my computer, but when my computer was later upgraded I hadn’t gotten around to re-installing it - until I went to the Garden Show a few weeks ago and then I realised I should be using the program again.

It is great because I can look up various plants and check the time of year for planting, how to deal with different pests and diseases and a number of other things. You can even design your garden with the program. My family claim I’m just a software addict and perhaps that is true :-). This time round I printed off the user guide and bound it, and included inside the front clear plastic cover, a large copy of the ornamental vegetable garden I show in an earlier post of this blog.

I’ve been doing some research online as well to find various things to assist with my gardening. And as I find more, the blogroll will be added to. One thing I found to be really good is Better Health’s Planting Calendar. It tells you which food plants can be planted at various times of the year and gives you tips for each month too. You can download the calendar to write on and use. I printed it off and it’s been put inside the book I made from the program above so I’m compiling a lot of useful information about our own garden. KMT

Garden Composer, Planting calendar, food plants, gardening

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