The garden in January : Changing Seasons

Su Leslie “”Zimmerbitch” has taken on the running of the monthly “changing seasons”  challenge. As I am now a, mostly, stay at home blogger I would like to let you know how my garden changes each month. So new year, new challenge. This is the first and it is mid summer. Supposed to be our wet season but so far it has been very dry.

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January has been about growth, lack of rain and watering every day.

Back in November/December Jack and I developed a passion for growing things from seed. I think I created a bit of a monster. I bought seed packets of petunia, paper daisies, alyssum, sun flowers, marigolds and pansies and had them all sown in recycled strawberry punnets. As they grew I moved them into individual small pots. Then into bigger pots. I checked them daily, sometimes twice a day. The weather got hotter, the temperatures crept into the 30’s, my poor babies suffered. I moved them into shade, but they got leggy, so I moved them where they would get morning sun. Then the winds came, I gave the taller paper daisies individual small skewers to stop them being flattened. But plants are resilient little things, they survived. Finally I planted them into large display pots and garden beds and look at them now…

Paper daisies in a pot just starting to flower

These paper daisies are the same age as the ones in the pot, but they had more of a struggle so not as advanced, no flowers yet. In front of them are newly planted pansy seedlings. The straggly looking shrub behind them is the native wattle. I staked it as it was having a hard time in the winds. I’ve also tip pruned it to try to make it bush up, will have to wait and see. I’m hoping it fills all this space eventually…These petunias, in a pot, look good. I like this group of plants in front of the fish ponds.These hanging baskets of petunias and alyssum are also looking good, but I have to water them twice, sometimes three times a day as they get full afternoon sun and in a very windy area. At one time I took them down when we had gale force winds a few weeks ago. Can you just spot the sunflowers behind the petunia basket?

Well they do not look very happy at the moment…Do sun flowers hang their heads like this? This is the before a few weeks ago…Remember I had a problem with my dwarf lemon in a pot a few weeks ago?

Well I pruned off all the leaf miner effected leaves and sprayed with white oil about every 10 days and it is powering ahead now.

But the marigolds do not look very well. Look at their leaves, all sort of silvery. Any one out there no what is wrong?Meanwhile Jack’s babies are doing very well. Remember the post about the Desert Rose seeds he bought on Ebay? (check it here) Well they are still in the cradle he made for them but look how their trunks are swelling up.

Now he has bought some more seeds because the name intrigued him. Buddha’s belly  (Jatropha Podagrica) is a rare  succulent plant. He planted the 10 seeds about 2 weeks ago and had almost given up on them as the Desert Rose seeds germinated in about 5-7 days. But oh the excitement this morning when he checked them. Look…Yes that strange-looking “thing”  is the seedling all sort of twisted around itself.

Finally an up-date on the pumpkins in their palisade/prison.

They are racing away, finding their way through the slats and are getting quite a few flowers, but they all seem to be females. Except for one…Look a baby pumpkin…

A few years back, just before we started travelling I got rid of all my plants in pots. Putting them into garden beds, giving away or composting. I vowed I would NEVER have pots again….

Does anyone else out there make rash promises to themselves…

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