First harvest of golden shallots

I was keen to start harvesting the tangled mess of golden shallots that were starting to cure while still in the soil, so I grabbed my 13L tub and starting pulling them up.

I had barely plucked a third of what I had growing and already my tub was full. Looks like I'll have lots to eat and plenty of bigger bulbs to replant for a crop next year!

Hot Chocolate Lily

Earlier in the year at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, I bought a bulb of the lily that I had been admiring in various gardening catalogues for a year - the Hot Chocolate lily. 

But as spring cautiously arrived, I began to fear I'd not given it the right conditions. Then I saw signs of life in the form of leaves. I was so relieved that I hadn't killed it that I didn't even think I might get a flower until the following year.

So it was a complete surprise when I opened the curtain this morning and discovered the beautiful bloom. So happy!

Preserving cherries in brandy

This is the recipe I've been dying to try since my mum, my sister and I did the Christmas Preserving class at My Green Garden.

Whilst we didn't have time to make cherries in brandy each, we did learn to make and took home a jar of each of the following: 

• Savoury onion jam
• Figs infused with Earl Grey tea preserved in brandy
• Cranberry Chutney
• Spicy Eggplant Pickle

As you can see from the photo, we also learnt a variety of techniques for dressing up the jars so that we could give them away as gifts, if we wanted to. (Not a chance! These are mine! I will admit that my decorating needs some work, but I was rushing a bit)

In addition to all of this, our lovely teacher Maria gave us all a copy of the instructions for preserving cherries in brandy.

So when my mum and sister drove out to Cherryhill Orchards to get our cherries for Christmas, I asked them to get me a box as well. 

My sister's cherry tree had produced almost enough cherries to fill her own jars (only one jar ended up mixed), leaving me to use the dark red Cherryhill Orchards cherries for my own. 

As you can see from the size of my jars, I was maybe a little bit too excited about preserving cherries in brandy. 

We were a little bit rushed towards the end, as we did this at my parents' house on a weeknight, so I had to get home so I could get home at a decent hour to go to bed as I had work the next day.

It's all looking good so far!

Cherry harvest

I know it doesn't look like much, but having lost all my cherries last year to either birds or possums, I'm thrilled to have any cherries from my trees at all. I had to pick them a bit earlier than I wanted to because I noticed that ants were had eaten a couple of them already. 

The one on the left is a Lapins cherry and the ones on the right are from the Stella cherry tree.

Surprise find

I pulled up what I thought was a dead spring onion from the pear tree pot, only to find that it was garlic I had planted the winter before last. Apparently leaving it for an extra year meant I got a decent size bulb!

I don't know if it'll work, but I'm seriously considering leaving my garlic in for an extra year in order to see if that's how I can get decent bulbs in future because I have so much trouble trying to grow them in a single year like everything says you're meant to.

It can't hurt to give it a go.

Sunflower fail

After none of the sunflowers germinated, I opted to put in eggplant seedlings instead. I must shamefully confess that I bought the eggplant seedlings because the slugs and earwigs ate every seedling that I grew from seed myself. I did try to deter them but obviously their numbers were far greater than my efforts. 

I resorted to growing some seedlings inside again and just praying my cat didn't destroy them with his curiosity like some of my earlier seed plantings. I managed to get a couple of cucumber seedlings that way.

So I planted the two cucumbers into the top front garden bed. 

Progress on planting out the front garden

After looking around my alfresco I realised I have a fair few dahlias in desperate need of a proper home. 

Remembering my friends' beautiful dahlia border along their driveway, I thought it might be nice to have a row of dahlias along the front of my garden. That way I'd be greeted by a row of colour whenever I come home. 

Most of my dahlias hadn’t come up yet, so it was fairly easy to plant them with a roughly equal distance between them. 

Behind them, I planted two rows of sunflower seeds. As I don't yet have irrigation in place, I had to water it all by hand, so you can easily see where the two lines of sunflower seeds were planted.

In the back garden, the pepino plants were trying to take over the large garden bed.

Whilst this looks mainly like more pepino plant, there is actually a pear tree behind it all! I'm not sure why only this section decided to grow up and over rather than along the ground like the rest of it did before I got around to tying it to the wire trellis that I have attached to the fence.

My kiwiberry vine has flowers! I know it's a lot to hope for, but just maybe I might get fruit? This particular kiwiberry vine is a variety known as Issai and it's self-pollinating, so it is possible.

I'm also amused to see my purple cauliflower had produced a tiny little cauliflower floret for me. I don't think I'll crack out the au gratin recipe just yet though.

Lastly, I was finally able to mulch the second berry garden bed. Having enjoyed the abundance of purple African daisies in the first berry garden bed, I decided to use the many different coloured African daisies sitting around my alfresco to create some visual interest between berry brambles in the second bed. This left one extra gap, but I solved that by putting in one of the many lavender plants that have been waiting for a home.

It looks much nicer now with the mulch to help keep the soil friable and moist through summer. 

Soil pile disappearing

Some times you need to take a moment to see how much progress you've made, especially when you're tired after doing all the work on your own. Looking at the photos of the garden beds, I can clearly see how much I got done. Yet equally as satisfying is noting how the soil pile has shrunk in such a short time frame.

Saturday 8 October, 8:30am. Just after soil had been delivered:

Saturday 8 October, 7:22pm. After my first day of filling a garden bed in the back and starting on the main front garden bed:

Sunday 9 October, 1:07pm. As the winds ramped up even more and made further garden work impossible:

Monday 10 October, 3:25pm. After I finished the top of the main front garden beds:

Monday 17 October, 6:21pm. Having made a decent effort towards the bottom garden bed, I can now almost completely cover the soil pile with the tarp:

Sunday 23 October, 6:43pm. The pile after the bottom of the front garden bed was finished. I was finally able to get my car back into my garage!

Saturday 29 October 2016, 6:22pm. Not much is left after topping up the eastern side garden bed. 

Sunday 30 October 2017. The pile was gone completely from the driveway. I didn't bother taking a photo of the empty driveway. There’s three garden beds that still need topping up, but they'll make do with last year's soil for now. They'll be a first dibs on the next soil I get, whenever that may be. 

Mystery plant identified!

Have you ever had a seedling sprout in a pot or garden but it doesn't look like any weed that you recognise? 
So then you leave it to grow a bit longer just in case it's something good.

Well, I had that happen in a pot that had a gaura bush in. This is what it turned out to be:

A beautiful red snapdragon. :D So glad I didn't pull it out!

Finding homes for plants

Realising that I need to start clearing my alfresco of plants so that I can someday fulfil the goal of being able to actually just sit and admire my garden, I decided to plant some of the potted plants even if it's not in their intended final spot in the garden. 
(Truth is I bought plants because I liked them and had no ideas where I was going to put them anyway.)

Also, while I had my phone out in the garden , I couldn't help photographing the promise of fruit, the vibrant greens and beautiful flowers.