The weather has been so lovely over the last few days which has really made it feel like it is spring already. The nice weather is not going to last for long though because they are forecasting rain and cooler weather from tomorrow. Regardless of the weather, it is great to be planning for our September gardening jobs because it means that spring is just around the corner! Earlier this month we had some quite chilly nights and mornings, it got down to -3 and -4 °C for a few nights in a row … [Read more...]
Protecting Garden Hose Connectors
We have a fairly large garden which means that we have a few taps around the garden. Many of these taps have to have multi outlet hose connectors attached to them. This allows us to send water to where it is need during the warmer months. We find that we need to have two way connectors (up to even four way connectors) on most of our garden taps so that we can connect multiple hoses and drip irrigation systems to the one tap. This way the hose connectors allow us to water more than one garden … [Read more...]
August Gardening Plus What’s Going on in My Garden!
It’s so great to be writing about August gardening! I don’t really want to be wishing the year away but now that August is almost here it means that spring is just around the corner -yippee! If you are following me on Instagram you will have seen that Mother Nature gave us a spring teaser this week. It was just glorious out in the garden on Monday - it was cool but there was not a cloud in sky! On Tuesday we were brought back to winter though with a cold wind, grey skies and showers (here’s the … [Read more...]
Treating Fungal Growth on Fruit Trees
Recently I shared a list of the July gardening jobs that I plan to tackle this month. And while I have made a start on this list I have realised that I forgot to mention one job. It is not something that I have been doing for years but treating fungal growth on fruit trees is now one of my winter jobs! Over the last couple of years we began noticing orange fungus growing on some of our fruit trees. It didn’t seem to be affecting the health of the trees but we were a bit worried anyway. It was … [Read more...]
July Gardening Plus What’s Going on in My Garden!
Wow, where have the last six months gone? It seems like only yesterday that we were celebrating the New Year and now I am writing about my July gardening jobs! It is so hard to believe that we are almost into the middle of winter already. The best thing about July is the feeling that spring is not far away. During June the afternoons are so short because it is getting dark by 5pm. By July we are well past the shortest day and slowly but surely the days are getting longer. Another reason why I … [Read more...]
June Gardening Plus What’s Going on in My Garden!
Well June is here and the days are definitely getting shorter. I am really missing the longer days of summer! In the summer we could leave going out into the garden until 4 o’clock and still have hours of daylight to work. Now the sun goes down a little after 5 o’clock so we have to start much earlier! We might have to start scheduling our June gardening jobs for the morning so that we have more time to get everything done! It is amazing how the focus in the garden changes as we head into … [Read more...]
Harvesting and Storing Pumpkins
This is the first time in years that we have grown a crop of pumpkins. Last spring we got six pumpkin plants growing from seeds that we had saved from a store bought piece of butternut pumpkin. We actually thought that we would only need about three or four plants but we put in six because often some seeds don’t germinate. They all did and we ended up with six very strong plants! They soon got going and quickly took over a large section of the vegetable patch. For a long while we only ever … [Read more...]
Frost Protection for Plants
Over the last few months we have planted a few new plants that are labelled as ‘frost tolerant once established’ - meaning they require frost protection in their early years. Some of these plants are leucadendrons which we have experience with. They seem to cope with the frosts that we get in our region just fine without any protection. One plant that we are a bit worried about however is a waratah (Shady Lady Red) which was planted out in the garden during spring last year. We have never … [Read more...]
Hi, I'm Kaylene, and I'm a keen gardener,budding baker and wannabe DIYer!