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

[Matchy69]

Hi all I went for a drive down to a craft where I sell some of my things through and took down a load of plants.Just as well I did as I have sold all the ones I had there.I took down a heap of different types of geraniums and I sold a red one the moment I put it on the shelf and I took down a few fruit trees as well.

The drive down was lovely and it was all green and farm dams were all full but on the way back I came back a different way and one area was still so dry and looks like they missed out on most of the rain we had which was surprising ASI it was only half an hour from me.

Take care,

Mark.

[Jstar49]

Hi all,

Fun to read about the pumpkin advetures Shell!

Em your place sounds like a food forest! All that prolific growth! As is usually the case tho the trouble is containing the unwanted growth....glad your gardener is so kind and will continue to work with you while you have the momentum......Pray the roof is sorted quickly and affordably!

Mark great news on the popularity of your plants- well done. It's strange the way the rain skips around- I would have thought everywhere was green by now, it's been so widespread....

I'm mainly just watering atm, watching for the seeds to pop up, and watering tomatoes, cabbages, lettuces.

Seeds are pak choy, allysum, and peas/beans. We loved our pod peas love year, couldn't get enough! Hope they grow well again this year.

It's nice to have a garden to look after again, rather than just weeds.

Happy days green thumbs!

Cheers,

J*

[ecomama]

AWESOME news about your plants selling so well Mark! That's exciting!

Nurseries won't touch our home grown plants here. I'm happy they'll take our clean, used pots back though.

Looks like you need to get more young plants going. Do you propagate plants in Autumn? It's a great time to get cuttings and make new plants - you already know this Mark, more for others here lol.

Hey J*

My GOAL is one day to have 5 or 10% of my time spent in the garden on all those happy things like planting, sowing seeds, harvesting lol.
Atm it's 100% weeding and maintenance. Okay 150% I won't lie lol.

I had a real grumbling attitude about it all before but now I'm viewing my work as uncovering, excavating, removing the unwanted things to discover the beautiful garden I want to see.
It's easier having a better attitude.

Funny thing is that the garden being uncovered is so much different to what I imagined it to be.

Can't wait to get a MINI DIGGER in there YEAH! Gonna RIP down that old pool and the pool fence and have some excavations done... in the future ofcourse. Atm I'm still DREAMING hahaha.

Thanks, the roof should be repaired in about 2.5 weeks now, counting the days lol.
Then all the ceilings, it'll be a right royal MESS for a while here.

I didn't realise how deeply stressful this has all been on me.
Now that "affordable solutions" are presenting themselves I realise it all.

Having such high levels of stress has been pretty destructive in my life tbh. It's wonderful to have creative pursuits to even it all out!! lol.

Love EM

[Boudica]

Hello all,

It sounds like you all have such beautiful big gardens, I am quite jealous. I live in a townhouse so have two small courtyards only 6 x 5 metres each plus an entrance way that is 15 x 2 metres, so my gardening space is very limited. Nevertheless I do what I can, and I am presently developing one courtyard as a kind of green room retreat. So far I have a grapevine overhead which gives beautiful filtered light in summer and sunshine in winter, and I am working on masking the walls with foliage. I have strelitzia and tree ferns and monsteria and one large staghorn, but I am looking for suggestions of plants that will create lush green walls without taking up a lot on space horizontally. My soil is very sandy as I live quite near to the beach, so that adds an extra challenge. Any suggestions would be most welcome.

[ecomama]

Hey Boudica, LOVE that name! It's powerful.

Welcome to the Gardening thread and to the forums overall!

SO LOVELY to have another green handed person join us. You'd need alot of knowledge to grow plants successfully in small spaces.

Your garden sounds beautiful.

Maybe some others can chime in with suggestions for your green wall... my only suggestion taking up minimal space is English Ivy or Hedera Helix I think it's called.
I'm training some to grow up an ugly metal fence lol. Hopefully it goes GREEN all over.

I was given some cuttings from a friend years ago but have used it for Celebratory Headdresses and decorations for years now, it hasn't had much of a chance to grow lol.
It should now though, since we've reduced those things.

I like it because it copes in shade AND in the sun.
Though I think it's more beautiful when grown in the shade, deeper greens and softer foliage.
Looks a bit shabby with too much sun imho.

You've packed alot into your spaces there. Our Monstera is MASSIVE since all this rain.

Is the wall in the sun or shade?

EMxxxx

[Boudica]

Hey EM,

Thanks for your suggestion. Ivy is a good idea, I will try to get a cutting from someone. I have tried a ficus climber, but the light conditions are low at the ground, so it is growing soooo sloooow. It is hard getting things growing as the light varies between very dim at the ground to scorching sunlight when plants grow to 1.5m.

I have lots of monstera, but I have secured them to the wall so they grow up instead of trailing along. I just love the huge leaves and they are tough as boots. I also have planted aspidistra in the dimmest areas as that can take the shade.

I love that you have had such a strong demand for celebratory headdresses in your life!

[ecomama]

Lol it wasn't THAT much ivy we cut off, just alot of children at one point for those events.
And they carried those into their birthday parties for a while.

The kids went to a Waldorf Steiner school for a while, that's where it all came in useful lol.

Monstera are beautiful plants. I love their huge leaves... some growing in a huge area near our Vet's just harks back to the Dinosaur era! Gorgeous.

If you're willing to put in the maintenance by cutting it back all the time, then Ivy would grow well. It seems to cope well here in both full sunlight and shade. It seems to prefer the shade though, wants to grow towards the shade like it's hiding lol.

But I love it! I love it covering ugly metal fences.

Gosh we have a ficus that's a monster. Grew 3 stories high and it's a real nuisance. I keep cutting it back but it's a tree... not sure if there's a difference?

EMxxxx

[Matchy69]

Em most of my plants I grow these days are from cuttings and seeds.I use to do a bit of grafting and air layering but don't do much of that these days.I don't even know where my grafting knife is.Gradting was a bit of a hit and miss for me though I had some success.

Happy gardening,

Mark.

[Boudica]

Good Morning,

It is a perfect gardening day here today, not to hot or cold, sunny with a slight breeze.

Em, keeping ivy under control would be no problem for me as I am prone to being a slight control freak in the garden and hence have electric shears for my hedges already 🙂

The monstera plants are a dedication to my Grandmother who had masses of them. She liked to paint and had a beautiful water colour painting on her sitting room wall of monstera. We also have a chinese tallow tree that was planted to remember our old cat, who is buried there (chinese tallow is a weed in places with higher rainfall but not here). The leaves are just starting to colour up for autumn.

Mark, it is great you have grafting skills, I am yet to learn this, but I want to. No idea what air layering is. In the future I want to graft some different grape varieties onto my existing vines. Someone I knew from hiking who knew about grafting offered to come and help, but I got a bit panicky about having him come to my house and declined 😞 I think I will try to learn about it from youtube, it is where I learn most things!

Today I will finish pruning my grapevines that cover the pergola (that I built after watching youtube videos). Sadly I had to throw out several wheely bins of grapes this year, as we are under a strict fruit fly quarantine in SA due to an outbreak (SA is usually fruit fly free and primary industries are having a blitz of baiting and releasing sterile females to try to control outbreak). No fruit can be given to others, and the children cannot even take fruit to school, even shop fruit.

[Matchy69]

Hi Boudica that's sad about the fruit getting in to SA you have to throw out all your fruit.

Air layering is simple to do.Its the main way of propergating Lychees and Long and.You just ring bark a branch and wrap it with moist sphagnum moss and wrap it with plastic tightly.It will develop roots and you can cut up in two to three months and pot up.You can use this method on Azhalias and Maples.

Happy gardening,

Mark.