There's a weed in my garden

Thankfully the weed in my garden is edible, in fact it's loved my dessert lovers around the world.

Raspberries are just one of the berries growing in my garden, but I never quite expected them to take off as well as they have. I bought a single cane from Bunnings this year, and now it's turned into a monster!

You can't see it in the picture, but I've had to buy some 2.4 metre stakes and put some sort of plastic wire between the two to support those 2 gigantic canes that have sprouted up. Before I tied the canes up, the canes were able to sustain themselves, but the moment there was any rain these things become very heavy and pretty much slumped down to the ground.

Apart from the 2 big canes shown in the above picture, there are another 4 or 5 sprouting in the pot. It's not the canes growing in the pot that I'm worried about, it's these canes that have somehow start shooting up from the ground where the raspberry plant has spread from holes in the pot into the surrounding garden.

This leaves me with a dilemma, do I let them flourish and see how they go, or do I cut them now knowing that these things could invade my garden and take it right over?

Pumpkin vs Butterfly Bush

I only have a single pumpkin plant in the garden, it's very well hidden in the corner where there's minimal sun and I couldn't quite work out where else I could put it.

Of course the plant is in a pot, and despite the lack of sun, I've still managed to get at least one ripe pumpkin that I'm eagerly looking forward to harvest.

But I didn't quite realise how invasive the vines are, and they pretty much just go in whatever direction they want to. After clearing a whole heap of grass that had spread from the neighbour's property, I realised one of the vines has decided to take on the drought resistant butterly bush that's been around since we first bought the house.

The butterfly bush has spread like wildfire at the front of my house, so here's hoping in this David vs Goliath battle that the pumpkin vine manages to take a few of the butterfly bush out of action!

I wonder if anyone would be keen for some Chilli Pumpkin soup in April perhaps?

What happens when you run out of room in the front yard?

This is the view people get when they drive/walk past our house. As you can see, I've even used the edges of the driveway (both sides, the butterfly bush on the left is masking about 25 other plants that you can't see there), but there's only so much space available for growing plants in your front yard.

Just above the garage is a downpipe to goes around the side of the house to the 2 x 5000L water tanks at the side of the house. These tanks are the lifeline of my garden, in times of severe water restrictions, I can still water all my thirsty plants and not feel guilty.

And one day I was staring up at that pipe, and thought I might just be able to utilise some of that space for growing more plants. Have you ever heard of an upside down plant?

If you look really, really closely, you can actually see a small chilli plant hanging upside down on the left hand side of the downpipe. Here's a closer pic anyhoo:

I had originally put a tomato plant in there, but some heavy winds in spring snapped the plant, and it just never recovered. Not to fear, I had plenty of leftover chilli seedlings with no room to plant out, and this thing is doing alright, in fact there's even some pods that have formed.

The upside down grow bag was bought from Woolworths for like $10 or so, and you can use them for Tomatoes, Chillies, Strawberries etc.

So those of you living in apartments or in really small houses with no room to plant anything, just remember where there is a will, there is a way!

Frangipanis ... from Adelaide!

When you ask people what's the first thing that comes to their minds when you mention the flower Frangipanis, it's usually tropical holiday destinations like Fiji and Hawaii. But my aim is to add South Morang to that list!

Ok, so South Morang is not really a tropical destination, in fact the majority of taxi drivers in Melbourne don't even know where it is, but why can't we add a little tropical feel to the garden with the sweet smell of Frangipanis.

My beautiful wife has family in Adelaide, and I recently learnt that Leisa's Nanna has a 40+ year old Frangipani growing in Adelaide. Last holiday period I was able to see first hand the tree for myself, and while it didn't look exactly in the best of health compared to those I've seen on my honeymoon in Fiji, it still had clusters of flowers with plenty more on the way.

So I got onto reading how easy it is to root a Frangipani cutting. In fact it's so easy, that I've read reports of cuttings growing leaves and flowering even when they have been lying around and severely neglected!

The father-in-law had brought over some cuttings at the request of my wife as she wanted me to see if I could grow them, as I'd pretty much been able to grow just about everything else (except for Tomatoes, I suck at those big time). Low and behold, they were real easy to get going after I had stuck them in some coco peat pellets and placed in my germination chamber indoors.

The "crown" of the Frangipani plant is where the cluster of flowers form, and some of the cuttings I have already had a crown formed, so it didn't take long for these to start flowering:

From what I can tell, these are your standard Plumeria Rubra variety that are probably the most easiest to grow, even in Melbourne. Even though we normally have low humidity here, apparently there is less likelihood of disease, so there's absolutely no reason why anyone can grow them around here.

I have also some purchased Frangipanis that are probably nowhere near close to flowering, but they are all growing well. Leisa read online yesterday that Frangipanis generally only grow about 20cms a year, so you have to have a fair bit of patience when growing these before you'll actually see the rewards of looking after them for so long.

The problem I have now is that every time I travel to Sydney and Brisbane and spot a Frangipani tree in someone's front yard, I try to think of a way where I can cut a branch off and sneak it into my bag to take home!

Anyone for a cup of coffee?

Ok, so I'm not quite ready to producing my first cup of coffee made from home grown, freshly roasted coffee beans, not even close! But I at least wanted to show you how well the coffee plants I have are doing, and some tips about how you too can maybe one day make Nescafe look like the poor mans coffee that it really is.

Coffea Arabica is the plant where your every day cup of coffee comes from. The process of producing roasted coffee beans from the berries that the plants produce is actually not as straight forward as I was hoping, but where would the fun be if it was meant to be easy!

There is a big debate happening in the coffee growing community about sun versus shade grown coffee. The best coffees in the world are grown in the rainforests high above sea level within 20 degrees of the equator, as the berry that contains the coffee beans ripens slower which develops the intense flavours and aromas that we have come to enjoy. Due to commercialisation and the need for greater profits, farmers soon realised you could grow coffee in direct sun, but the quality of the coffee bean is greatly diminished.

So the dilemma for me was, how do I provide shade to my coffee plants, but also keep it warm enough in winter to keep it alive? Our house is made from brick, and as mentioned previously our house faces 10 degrees north, so the theory is that the bricks will retain some heat in winter and help radiate some of that at night time to the surrounding plants.

So I now have 3 coffee plants, 2 x Coffea Arabica and 1 x Dwarf Catui, all hiding amongst other plants against the front walls of the house. I have a metre tall Flax plant right in front of the house which I've managed to use to provide shade for two of the coffee plants, and here's an example of one:

So let's hope in the next year or so I can finally drink my first cup of home grown roasted coffee!

Avocados

Another fruit tree you won't normally see in someone's back yard, or in my case front yard, is the Avocado tree.

Apparently Avocados are one of the most nutritious foods on the planet, so I thought what the heck, sounds like something worth growing. But did you know how easy it is to sprout an Avocado from a store bought fruit?

There are ample videos on the net that describe the process, but it's as simple as poking some toothpicks into the cleaned Avocado pit and then letting approximately 1/3 sit in water until the pit cracks and a root pokes through.

Here's a pic of one that I put together today:

There's actually very good grow instructions on the Australian Avocado website that also recommends to cut the plant back while it's young to encourage new shoots, so it's something that I'll definitely be trying.

One thing that I read up about is that while Avocados can self pollinate, they do a lot better if you have more than one plant from the two different pollination groups, which are known as the "A" and "B" group.

So knowing that I had a Hass Avocado pit to grow and this was in the "A" group, I set about finding something in the "B" group. I've been popping into my local Bunnings for about the last 2 months and always head to the nursery looking for an Avocado plant but to always leave bitterly disappointed, so I decided to check out my local Aumanns store and low and behold, they had a Bacon Avocado. Not only is this a plant from the "B" group, it's also known as the most cold tolerant Avocado and can stand temperatures down to -5C!

And here's a pic of the recently purchased Bacon Avocado.

Doesn't look real good at the moment, but you can't expect a garden nursery to treat your plants with the same love and respect that I will :)

Garden beds made from recycled printer cartridges

Last year I grew solely in pots. Two problems with that, moving the pots to mow the lawn, and the moisture retention of the soil in the pot just didn't really last. If any sort of hot weather came about, plants needed to be watered once a day.

Now I took a new job in July last year (by the way, it's a fan-bloody-tastic job, Hi Chris!) that involves a significant amount of travel. I didn't want my dear wife to have the burden of watering all the plants for a few hours and also have to look after the devil kids that also co-exist in our house, so I took about looking at different ways to build garden beds.

I don't know what I was searching for on Google that lead me to find this link, but I was immediately inspired to do the same. Thankfully the company that produces the eWood, which is made from recycled printer cartridges, is only a couple of suburbs away. With the help of my both my dad and father-in-law (god bless them), we built 6 in total.

The above photo was taken on October 26th, after I had started planting some of the numerous chilli seedlings that had been growing indoors since July.

There's absolutely stuff all soil in those garden beds. I had read up on something called the "no-dig garden" technique, which is where you rely on the breaking down of organic material to produce a lovely humus for the plants to thrive on. All 3 beds had both layers of lucerne hay and chicken manure, but there are some subtle differences in all of them with some additional contents. All garden beds only had 3 bags of garden soil from different nurseries in the local area, and topped off with sugar cane mulch.

If we now look at some photos over the last few months:

12th December

15th January

17th February

As you can see, these garden beds are going absolutely gung-ho. I fertilise them once a week, with either a guano (bird or bat droppings) based fertiliser, or compost tea brewed from worm castings. Pretty much every single one of the chilli plants has fruit on it, as you can see below:

So I can't recommend enough the use of the no-dig garden technique. You hardly have to water the plants because the moisture retention is great, but there's plenty of air gaps that the roots of the plants so dearly crave.

Bananas in Melbourne, say what?

I have to admit something, I actually don't even eat bananas. Unless they are blended into a milkshake, you couldn't get me to eat one. But you know what, if i can get some bananas to fruit in Melbourne, I'll eat one.

Late last year, I wondered if it was possible to grow bananas in Melbourne. There are some inedible fruit bananas called Musa Basjoo that are very frost tolerant, but they are more used as an ornamental plant with the massive leaves used to create a tropical feel to your home garden.

But I needed the real thing. After sending out a forum post on the Daleys Fruit forum, I was put onto a banana tissue culture business in Tully, Queensland. Sue from Blue Sky Backyard Bananas was extremely friendly, and I ended up purchasing a Blue Java and Dwarf Ducasse banana plant. 

I received the delivery on 3rd of September last year, having absolutely no idea what to expect, how big they'd be, what I was going to pot them in, and how quickly they were going to grow. One thing I did know was the Melbourne winter had prolonged into September, and there was no way they'd be going outside. Thankfully I had some grow tents in the garage (no, I'm not growing weed, and no, I don't want seeds or plants to grow in them!) with adequate lighting, so these will at least be able to keep them alive and in good condition for their planting outside once it warms up.

Fast forward to Feb 17, and look at how big they are now! I'm not sure if I expect any fruit this season, but these things are getting between 1 - 2 new leaves each week, and they are loving the humidity we are getting in Melbourne this year.

Banana plants flower once, fruit, then die, but they put out some baby banana plants called "pups". I'm hoping to separate some of the pups, and grow some more, and maybe even sell some to others if anyone is interested.

Welcome to my blog!

For those that already know a little (or even a lot) about me, I've been a pretty keen chilli hobbyist for a few years now. But this year, I decided to see if I could push the boundaries a little and see what else I could grow in Melbourne.

I regularly look around peoples gardens in Melbourne when driving, and wonder why people bother with lawn in their front yard. Your average suburban block in Melbourne is getting smaller and smaller, and backyards are dwindling, yet you still see up to a 1/4 of the block decorated with lawn in the front yard. 

Our house faces 10 degrees north, according to my former iPhone anyway. This means that plants at the front of my house can get up to 12 hours of sunlight a day in summer until the shade of the nearby houses comes into play. So it got me thinking, why can't you grow your typical vegetable garden in your front yard?

So I've converted my front yard to consist of garden beds and a large amount of potted fruits, vegetables and flowers. Some of these are well suited to our climate, others require a sub-tropical to tropical environment to really flourish.

Take for example the Banana plants I currently have in the 67L pots in my front yard. When I talk to people about what I'm growing, once you mention Bananas, the response you get is "You can't grow that in Melbourne!".

Says who! This is what has inspired me to start a blog, to detail all the plants I'm growing and how they cope with our varying weather patterns in Melbourne.