In My Garden - Cathy - April 2022

 In My Garden - Cathy - April 2022

Like most of us in southern Tasmania, Cathy has had an interesting garden season with a very wet spring and an extremely dry summer. Join her for a tour around her garden to see how things went.

As summer closed, the garden and the gardener revived a bit. The extra wet spring and a very dry summer have played havoc with tomatoes, while other plants have reached for the sky with glee at the extra water in spring. Three plantings of corn to stagger the crop tell the story - on the right taller than me, on the left knee high!  The fig at the back has rocketed up and will need containment pruning again this winter. Loads of large figs are waiting to ripen. 

I have one asparagus plant that sends up lovely fat spears each year but the ferny leaves have never been as big (must have loved the spring deluge). This batch of tomatoes was planted in mid January (the latest I have ever planted). They are slowly ripening. Each morning I am catching and drowning shield bugs in hot soapy water after I realised they were making holes in the green tomatoes which then rot. This bed has also been recently attacked by rats who think they are moles.

The citrus grove😊. Makrut lime, Finger lime (Crystal , with fruit this year), Mandarin (Fremont, sweet fruit and crops well) two new dwarf oranges (Washington Naval and  Imperial )Finger Lime (Pink Ice) a new grapefruit (Wheeny) and a long suffering cumquat (must be over 40 years old). The finger limes didn’t fruit last year so I moved them into the sunniest side of the patio. They flowered prolifically but because they were in an area that has to be manually watered they suffered from a lack of water and dropped their blossoms during a mini heatwave. I moved them back to the automated watering and forgot about them until someone pointed out from the kitchen table that they could see fruit. Both the oranges have set fruit (which I have thinned to a couple each but probably should remove) and both have hosted tomato volunteers that enjoyed the citrus food and daily watering.

Chillis (other than Rocoto) rarely ripen outside for me so I now grow them in the greenhouse as perennials. The red Jamaican mushroom chilli is very decorative but mild tasting - this plant must be at least 3 years old. The turmeric is looking good - raised from store bought tuber a couple of years ago. The basil in the seed tray at the edge of the picture is my new way of growing basil for the kitchen - easy to find and grows in a lot less soil than I imagined.

The tropical corner of the glass house. Curry Leaf (the berries taste quite good too- inside seed is poisonous so I drop them into neighbouring pots for new plants) lemon grass and a box of Oca. The oca is unintentional- was meant to be for turmeric but was outcompeted by the oca in recycled soil (all oxalis has the ambition to take over the planet).

Persimmon (Fuyu) was covered in fruit this year but has self thinned itself over the summer. Will bag them when they change colour. 

The Yacon (behind the rosemary) liked the spring deluge. The purple in the foreground  is Perilla (Shiso) - it seeds well in the greenhouse and the seedlings transplant very easily. I love it for the colour and the bees the flowers attract. It is used in Asian cooking, particularly Japanese where it is also used to colour pickled ginger. The pumpkin I think is Black Futsu.

The most productive tomato this year was a volunteer transplanted from the front garden to the greenhouse- totally indestructible and tasteless fruit. I have made green pickles, green chilli sauce, frozen diced as a tomatillo substitute and still have this bowlful. They have stayed like this for over a month and show no sign of deterioration (a supermarket dream and morbidly fascinating).

I sowed the seed of a yellow kiwi fruit which didn’t appear to germinate, so I tipped the punnet into a green house bed last year. I thought it was a weird weed growing with a tomato when suddenly the penny dropped. Until it flowers I won’t know whether it is male or female. This seedling is just a bit of fun because my Hayward kiwi is more than enough to control: it has also loved the spring deluge and it’s triffid-like tendencies have meant the pear tree and the neighbour's tree have been colonised.

My one pomegranate for this year (variety is 'Wonderful') - maybe one day the crop will double😂. 

And lastly, a new rocoto chilli, raised from the seed of an orange variety, courtesy of a FGG member. My red one is many years old.