Who else likes gardening?

[ecomama]

Hi everyone

I hope you're staying well today.

Who else likes gardening? I would love to connect with people here who are happy to share their gardening adventures.

For me I know that gardening helped heal my soul during tough times. I hope it will again.
Then with other things going on, it became a jungle.
I'm part way into rediscovering it again and doing A LOT of hard yakka atm, when I am motivated.

I have new dreams and ideas to put into the many bare places, as I remove thickets of lantana etc. This will all be on a tight budget and I'm ok with that.

I want to create a peaceful place where I can be.
I would like to grow food again (tell 'er she's dreamin' atm lol).
I would like to re-establish my worm farms and compost heaps.
Autumn is such a beautiful time of the year in the garden.

I'm 'alone' in my gardening journey and would love to share and hear about other's gardening antics. Hopefully we can troubleshoot any issues in our gardens and talk about any healing we're feeling too. There's a lot of knowledge we can share. I hope this thread can brighten your day!

Love Ecomama

Please

[PamelaR]

Hi Matchy69

Thank you for that. I've tried hand pollinating (once) which was not successful - so I gave up. It's all new learning for me. Have to know which is the male flower, which is the female flower, what is the stamen. How do I make sure I'm doing it right. My hands fumble and I feel awkward. Not much that I give up on, but this veggie gardening is all new and takes it out of me sometimes. But I will persevere. Although, at the moment I've ceased putting pumpkin seeds in the compost so I don't get any vines. They get out of control.

[Lillylane]

Hi Boudica,

I love the sound of the nursery with birds and an Alpaca! That would be amazing 🙂

I had to buy someone a gift from the nursery yesterday. What a chore! Just kidding, of course I was so happy to have an excuse to wonder around and I completely lost track of time.

Found some native trees I’m considering planting.

One is a Tulipwood. It’s described as a ‘well-behaved small tree’ which sounds promising!

The other is a cinnamon myrtle (the leaves smell really nice). I want to plant more trees for shade. But have a lot of work to do to get soil ready and not sure when I’ll be able to get to that.

Happy gardening all,

Lillylane

[Matchy69]

Hi PamelaR the flowers are easy to tell apart the female flower has a little pumpkin on it and the the male dosnt.Break off a male flower and all the petals and exposing the Stamen and using it like a brush,brush it on the female flowers pistil which is inside the flower and brush the pollen on all the segments on the pistil and job is done.You just have to wait to see if the pumpkins start to get bigger.

[PamelaR]

Wow, thank you Matchy!!

[Matchy69]

I have done hand pollinating with the cucurbits family and had success with it.It is nice if mother nature does its job but it is fun and rewarding when you have success.Custard Apple is on fruit tree that benefited from hand pollination.They really can struggle to set fruit and require high humidity to do so.It is really interesting that different conditions plants need to set fruit.

[Guest_1055]

Hi Em and all

You wanted an update on the pumpkins.

I ended up putting bricks under most of them. The ground was a bit soggy. I have picked one very large one and it was given to someone that wanted one. I picked 2 more and placed them on my laundry bench. I kept as much stem as possible, I read that somewhere.

Then today someone wanted 2 so we picked another one and I gave 1 a way from the laundry.

I don't see any white stuff on the leaves. But there are holes in the leaves. Some of the older ones a dotty. I am almost certain they are japs or Kents

[Matchy69]

Hi Shellll that's great to see you are getting some pumpkins and their is always someone wanting one.

The best way of storing them is in a cool dark location and on their sides as this helps to prevent them from rotting and store them on cardboard or something.Not on bare concrete.Dont have them touching each other and try to leave 5cm-10cm of stalk on them when you pick them.

[Guest_1055]

Thankyou Mark. Ah ok, I was going to place more in my laundry. Too much light in there. I will look somewhere else.

Appreciate you

[Lillylane]

Hi Mark,

I was just wondering what the name is of the rose in your picture?

It reminds me of one I remember from childhood but I can’t think of the name. Does it have a strong fragrance?

Lillylane

[ecomama]

Hello precious BB green thumbs lol, what a lot of wondrous adventures you're having in the garden & Nurseries too! LOVE that colonisation of land nearby lol, that's awesome!

I loved reading back, THANK YOU for sharing! It's so joyous to read, happy days.

I took Leave over a week ago due to pretty extreme family pressures, ev-er-y single MOMENT I've had "spare", I've spent in my back garden. Some mornings I'm down there at 5am and alot of nights I'm still down there way after dark lol.
LOTS of business elsewhere but I really needed my garden to ground me.

I cleared a massive landing against the house, moved every timber & metal plank.
I decided to put my largest terracotta pots up there with plants that will survive the heat.
I can do this with cuttings, I already have some established plants like Dragon's Blood Trees and yuccas.

I've weeded to the high heavens lol, spread soil, made LOTS of weed tea, bought a long sprinkler hose that's attached to my tank that I can move higher up my garden to "drip irrigate" which was a magnificent idea lol!

Brought up huge tree branches to either use or burn up.
I'm using them to form surrounds for trees which works marvellously.

I've appreciated my gardener's efforts, but wow has he made some errors too, which caused me to spend MORE time than required which annoys me grrr. I'll deal with that and be far more explicit in my directions from now on.

Still finding LOTS of rubbish - I'm dealing lol.
I've layered the whole bricks around my chicken coop & have LOTS more to dig up from the soil to keep going.
I made a 5m x 2m compost against those bricks, great for all the Autumn leaves.
Pavers are layered in other non garden spots.

I'm down to 2 thirds of the garden now fully cleared of lantana YAY! Spots sprouting up in the other third. I'm dealing with those by putting carpet & sheet metal all over them.

Alexa wants to visit a Nursery that sells ONLY indigenous plants and is run wholly by Aboriginal people. I want too many plants to list lol.

My bush lemons & limes are SO juicy!
Oranges are coming in.
I'm giving away raw macadamias in 5kg lots, crazy lol.
I have bananas growing that are as thick as my arm ugh! That's a meal, not a snack lol.

And our sweet new baby girls just began to lay. I'm glad they kept me company in the garden, they ate TWO Funnel Webs I disturbed ugh. The bananas due will have spiders there too.

ALL GOOD lol.

I can SEE my garden forming, it's beautiful.

Love EM