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

[Lillylane]

Hi All,

Some heavy rain overnight here, still listening to it now. I was just thinking how much we’ve really needed some good soaking rain.

I have a long list of trees I want to plant, even though I probably only have room for about 2, haha. Will have to decide what best suits the location.

Trees I have on my wish list? Lots of native trees like lemon scented (and every other scented) myrtle, blueberry ash, grevillea, banksia. Other trees I’d love are snow pears, olive trees and some other fruiting trees like apricots. Maples too.

Have made some progress with the front garden. Over winter it’s been overtaken by weeds and I felt so overwhelmed by it all. But I’ve tackled it bit by bit, weeded and mulched the main garden bed and it feels so much better. I can start to visualise what to do with the rest.

Hope your greenery is providing some peaceful moments, no matter how big or small.

L.

[ecomama]

Good morning BB Gardeners,

I understand the feelings of overwhelm and anxiety (all too well).... the garden is a wonderful place to let it all out and cry. I've done that for years at times. It's like the garden soaks up all those tears and responds in the kindest of ways.

Much love and peace to anyone struggling today. Hugs.

DNG lots happening in your garden! Sounds amazingly creative and so nice you have excess produce to give away too. Yep lol I agree, replacing a food tree with a non food producing tree is always fun and satisfying 🙂

Awww Lilly I hear you! If you took a drone up and looked over my property compared to the neighbours, you would barely see the ground for all the TREES in mine, and others have manicured lawns they labour over lol.

It's hard to decide which trees to plant when we want to grow SO MANY!

When I feel down about stuff, I try to turn it around to feelings of GRATITUDE that I even have a garden space to make choices with lol.

There's always the Community Garden spaces too, they're part of our custodial land also 🙂
So if they're growing certain foods, then we don't need to.... BUT tomorrow I will probably cut some Rosemary from the CG near here, so I can propagate the cuttings for my garden. It's more the fruit trees I was referring to.

Have a wonderful day today, I'll be exploring WHAT has changed in my gardens since the rain.

As usual I'll get out my trusty leaf blower and go for our walk around the property.

Happy days,
Love EMxxxx

[Lillylane]

Hi All,

Your garden sounds lovely with all the trees EM. Do your Lilly pillies ever get psyllids? I’ve noticed them on some of our older trees and cut off some off the affected branches. Newer planted varieties seem to be more resistant to it. I really don’t want to loose our old ones because they are very tall and birds are in them all the time.

LL xx

[ecomama]

Hi LillyPilly!

I had to search for photos of psyllids online to know what they were lol.

I have seen them at times but can't remember if they were in my garden or elsewhere.
I don't think they're in my garden but not 100% certain. I'll keep a look out for them and let you know 🙂

I'm pretty sure my Lilly Pillies are quite old, older than 50y I'd say, because of the History of my property our elderly neighbours told me about when they lived next door. Less likely they are "newer" varieties.

But still, alas my gardener told me the BIG one in my back yard is on her way out. There's a disease he could see and it looks like a mould of some type growing in spots here and there on the trunk.
I guess she knew something was up!
This tree is right in the middle of the proposed side path for the cabin we'd need (if all DAs are passed of course). So .... yeah.

I found BLACKBERRY growing (again) and wow I was heated when I saw it!
It grew SO fast in 3 weeks there were tendrils everywhere.
I thought I'd dug out the only plant. I believe it must've been used as the base of a graft on a Rose I planted there, not happy.
The Rose died years ago. The Blackberry not so.

I had to dig about 40cm DOWN to get that primary one out and now there are 2 more. Looks like I have some more unforeseen heavy grunt work to do.
A gardener's occupational hazard lol!
I had to fill that hole and thankfully the grass grew rapidly over the new soil.

I've only done some gentle weeding recently. More inside work really.

Whichever I buy, being a hedger or a electrical garden saw OR a bigger chainsaw (which I doubt)... I need to heavily prune my huge Conifers in the front garden. I don't want to cut them down but they're getting so high and too close to the electrical wires.
They'll look awful for ages after that lol, but I'd rather do this than get rid of them.

Happy gardening everyone!
I'm off to cook dinner.
EMxxxx

[Lillylane]

Hey EM!

Haha yes I had to google ‘psyllids’ too just to be able to spell it! 🙂 They make a whole lot of bumps on new leaves, which then end up curling over instead of growing into normal healthy leaves.

I’ve tried to cut off as many affected branches as I could. Not easy when they’re up so high.

I just noticed that a talk trunk has fallen on our carport - I didn’t hear it happen, it must have been during a storm we had recently. It was an old Lilly Pilly growing on our neighbour’s side. Lucky no one was hurt, and I don’t think it’s caused damage to the carport.

Oh my, that blackberry sounds like hard work to remove! I have some oyster plants that I thought I removed completely last winter. But they are back now, looking like nothing ever happened! Ah well, they do have really interesting flower spikes at the moment.

Roses seem to have gone nuts this season where I live. Must be the right kind of conditions for them this spring. I’ve not tried to grow them for a long time - previous attempts haven’t gone well. But I can understand why people love them so much. It would be nice to have roses you can pick and bring inside.

Happy gardening adventures this weekend all!

L

[ecomama]

Hey Lilly

Oh okay so they're the little bumps that cause LEAF CURL?
My darling old orange tree has periodic leaf curl, darn it lol. I cut the leaves off and have used Eco Oil once but the conditions have to be just right and it's hard for all that to come together for me to use it.

Wow so was it a huge branch that landed on the carport?
We've had very strong winds here too. A very pretty "dry" storm with just a lot of lightning and thunder. Light rain before and hours after but wonderful to watch from the balcony.
I had lots of branches fall down from the Faraway Tree lol. Still no one knows what it is.

Oyster plants? I'd never heard of them, so back to Google lol!
You don't like them?

I like Spider plants but NOT planted in my garden. Only in pots, that's it.

I had to burn off lots of those dead branches a few times this week.

I'd have to say that my proudest moment this week re: my garden, would have to be repairing my long armed mini chain saw. It only worked for about 5 seconds and plain stopped.
This is a trigger for me - things breaking like demon did all the time.

So I took it upstairs to the balcony. Got some Isopropyl alcohol and a clean rag and cleaned the WHOLE thing. This is what my Engineer BF does when he's not sure of what's wrong in the million dollar instruments he works on lol. I invoked him!
Then I put it all back together and lo and behold, it worked!

Omg I'm so proud lol.

So it's in my nice clean hallway along with my new electric lawn mower I also put together (but with BFs support to co-regulate me over the phone).
Both ready to go for tomorrow plus I need to wash and vacuum my car.

The former being FUN and the latter not lol.

Gotta go pick up kids from work!

Talk soon,
Love EMxxxx

[ecomama]

Good morning BB Gardeners, I hope your gardens and YOU are doing well?

What's everyone been up to in their gardens?
Sipping tea in your favourite spot perhaps?

That's exactly what I'm doing now 🙂

My energy has been low, being unwell and all.
I still managed to get out there for a short time each day most days.

Before I was very unwell, I got my electric lawn mower with all the long extension leads way out to the front of the property and mowed away.
It worked REALLY well!
There's not much grass out there but still I filled the lawn catcher 4 times, so that was surprising.

I spent many more hours sitting and weeding. Pulled lots of Bindii out ugh. They're huge and crusty lol, ready to spike!
It took many days to weed the driveway 😞
But it looks GREAT now lol!

I've scheduled my boys in to lift the massive cast iron grate that goes over the drain in front of the garage door.
It's CHOCK full of awesome soil with big fat worms.
Lots of weeds there too.

When I do this next time, in 6 month's time, I'll have to lay concrete along it as the roots from trees are breaking through ugh.

That's for later lol.

My back neighbour DID hang her extra Hippie plants over the fence and I was SO HAPPY to receive them!
I need to pot them up today.

My Queensland Arrowroot bulbs have shot up so big, so quickly! They're absolute BEAUTIES. Big shiny leaves and so happy 🙂
I only have them in pots atm as IDK where to plant them with proposed building works planned.

My front Courtyard is surrounded with various trees and they're looking really "unkempt" even though I've trimmed and hedged them. I filled my green bin this week with just one tree's cuttings from there.
I've decided to try and idea I had lol.

I'm thinking to "Bonsai" them. Like, select a certain branch here and there and chop it. I accidentally did this with the Camellia and it looks really pretty. I think the Bottlebrush and all other trees my respond happily this way too.

I'm distracting myself with other, more delightful chores, so I'm busy and not getting the cabin stuff together.
All that involving outside Authorities freaks me out a little atm.
I'm sure this will pass once I return to work on site and get used to that interaction more... hope so anyway.

I'm SO grateful we put the 3 shade sails up!
It'll be another HOT Summer and these help keep the heat down in the garden, somewhat.

Happy gardening everyone!

Love EMxxxx

[Lillylane]

Hi EM,

I’m sorry to hear you’ve been unwell dear Em! I hope you’re feeling better soon. Sending you big hugs! You’d be missing your gardening so much I imagine. Are you feeling any improvement in the last couple of days?

Electric lawn mowers! Such a game changer! I totally get it 🙂

Not much happening in my garden lately. But my neighbour did help me remove the tree that had fallen on the carport (yep the entire tree!) so that was a relief!

Take care xx
LL

[ecomama]

Hey Lilly! Hi everyone reading 🙂

Wow what a HUGE achievement removing that TREE! I bet you feel great about doing that. How nice of your neighbour to help!

What did you do with the tree? lol. Knowing what to do with trees or branches I cut down is a constant battle here.

I am SLOWLY getting better but not sure how long it will take or if I'll fully recover tbh.
I'm alot better than the first week after the vax that's for sure.

I did get out in the garden on the weekend, no visitors which helped.
I OPENED up my Leaf mould and the beautiful black soil in the middle was rich with fat worms so was very exciting!
I was going to use it all for the Half Wine Barrel but decided to use the soil in a closer spot to begin with. I put them worms in my tower worm farms.
I levelled the front Courtyard with the soil. The scrappy grass was trying to grow across hardened, downtrodden soil. Now it has healthy black soil to grow in to and with the light rain, it's already looking MUCH healthier!

There's still plenty left for when I have the energy to bucket it down the back for the barrel.

I have to focus on work a WHOLE lot more atm. Plus follow up on medical things etc, plus a few other financial issues but what's new!

Early start today as I was in bed SO early yesterday.

Have a wonderful day and I hope everyone gets to enjoy some greenery.

Love EMxxxx

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Hi EM and everyone,

Wanted to report that the orange tree we planted a couple of months back is doing brilliantly, just about doubled in size. And the parsely, 2-3 times the size it was. Most of the natives we planted have held up well, one didn't make it and one is looking a bit frazzled from a few quite warm days. The rest are growing really well and looking healthy and happy. Oh, and we have two surprise tomato plants that sprung up under the orange tree. No doubt some tomato seeds in the home-made compost that decided the time was right to sprout. Pretty delighted about those.

EM, I'm glad you're getting out in the garden around all the rather pressing stuff you have going on at the moment. The rich soil and all the worms sound great. Though we have pretty heavy clay soil, we have been finding loads of worms in our garden, so it must at least be pretty healthy.

Fairly cool Spring so far here, everything (unfortunately including weeds) is growing like mad. Many birds and bees in the yard, the former breeding in and under our trees - loving all the baby birds around.

Blue.