Lettuces in blossom

My lettuce patch has been full of surprises. Due to the hotter weather and the drier season the lettuces were shooting up and started to flower. I was amazed to explore the variety and similarities in flowers these plants are producing.

Whether they actually go to seed is still to be seen. I am not sure how many are hairloom varieties and which ones are hyprids.

We had planty of salads to eat and the new lettuce seedlings are planted.

Here are some pictures to share:

My herb garden

In the past years I had herbs growing next to the grape wine in front of a fence in poor soil. I grew majoran, thyme, mince and parsley. Alas, the plants did not survive and it was time to find a place for my new herb garden. I new it was the right time when I heard about the University of Western Australia having another plant sale on the 30 November. I came home with some lemon and anise basil, black cummin, spearmint, dill, Vietnamese mint and a plant called mushroom plant, I never heard of before.

The right spot was quickly found just outside the back door and close to the water tank in full sun most of the day with a bit of shade in teh arvo from a wattle tree. I removed the grass cover and weeds and gadded compost in the planting spots. Before I set the herbs I laid eight bricks flat to make a small garden path for easiert access. I split some of the plants in half with the aim to increase their survival rate. the other halves I put into one of the garden beds where I had already seeded lots of parsley and coriander a few weeks ago with healthy plants developing.

I am pleased with my new herb garden. I also included a parsley plant which I transplanted from another spot. The patch is flanked by a pot of mince and a pot of coriander. There is ample room for more herbs and yesterday a new gardening friend gave me some majoran and thyme that I will add to the patch. He also has promised me a blood orange tree that I will be picking up in a few days. Although it's the wrong time to tranplant trees, I am hopeful and will give it a shot. More about this another day.

Not sure what this iris is called?!

September hail

What a surprise a few days ago when around 8am a storm struck and our suburb was showered in hail. Here is the evidence:

The storm reminded me of the huge hailstorm that caused havoc in Perth last year in March. But the size of the hail this time did by far not reach the proportions of that day.

All looked well. A nice ball of ice collected with the water sweeping down from the roof at the outlet of the downpipe. I was tempted to put a snowball into the freezer for later thorough inspection, but left it as it was. the hail stones were perfectly round.

All looked fine, apart from the leaves of the nasturtions that got a few holes; but a few days later upon closer inspection of the palm leaves I noticed that the leaves are covered with yellow spots caused by the impact of the hail on the plants.

I am pleased that it was not my own head which had to bear the brunt of the hail and I am sure the plants will recover. Interesting weather and another story to tell!

Almond and lemon cheese cake

Sometimes tidying up the fridge brings friendly surprises. Today I found some ricotta cheese in my fridge. It had already passed its use by date and nobody in this house was keen on cannelloni for dinner tonight, so making a cheese cake became the task at hand.

How to bake an almond and lemon cheese cake:

Ingredients:

• 500g ricotta
• 250 g castor sugar
• 4 eggs

Cream until very smooth, about 5 minutes with a mixer or a food processer, then add

• 200g butter - salted (melted in microwave)
• 3 lemons - rind and juice

Mix thoroughly for another minute or so, and then transfer the mixture into a bigger bowl before you add and fold under carefully:

• 400g self raising flour - put through sift first
• 110g almond meal (one small paket)

The lot goes into a spring form lined with baking paper.
Bake for about 45min at 160degrees celsius.

The cake turned out to be a beautiful big and tasty cake. We ate it after a short cooling down period with some vanilla ice cream. Here is the proof:

Spring is here

The rainfall for this September is already above the long-term average, with more rain predicted for later tonight and the coming week. We had 42mm in the last seven days!

The garden is looking fresh and green. Over the weekend I planted two artichokes and about 10 lettuce plants that I received from my friend Gay.

I set the artichokes between left over capsicum plants from last year which looked like they were sprouting and showed some new leaves. I am not sure whether artichokes and capsicums are companion plants. A bit of research found that artichokes grow well with sunflower and tarragon. The plants don't dislike each other so all should be right, although it might be a bit late in the year for artichokes in our climate anyway , but  that can't be changed now.

The lettuces were put into one of the two new garden beds that so far had only been filled with jarrah saw dust and woodchips. Lifting the soil I found that the winter rains had helpted turn this into some decent looking earth already. However, below each plant I ensured there was plenty of compost to give them a good start. The predicted rain will hopefulla assist as well, as the first sunny day already already give them a bit of a hard time. But it should be right.

Compost is ready for more planting after the new moon this Tuesday. I emptied one of the three bins and put the compost into an unusued small rubbish bin that I found behind the house, no longer being the right size for the council service. It comes with a lid and has wheels as well, so just the right thing to keep the compost until it's needed and to easily wheel it to the garden bed for the new plants.

I want to return the borrowed green tumbler and cleaned and scrubbed it to regain the state it was in when I got it three years ago. I consider myself as very lucky to have friends that let me borrow their compost tumbler. Lots of spring flowers are out and make a much better sight than the newly planted artichokes and the new lettuces!

Winter rain and new seeds

Winter has come back and dumped a lot of rain down on Perth. It is very windy and quite cold around 15 degrees celsius only. Both watertanks have filled up and the earth is moist and in good shape. The lettuces thrive and the tomatoes needed to be tied better onto their stakes to withstand the wild weather. It's real winter in Perth, but it compares well to similar days in April in Europe.

But as is has not been raining all the time, I could pick a sunny time during the afternoon to seed some zucchinis, cucumber, capsicums, eggplants, basil and a few sunflowers to attracts birds and insects.

I used three plastic seeding trays, filled them with compost and inserted one or two seeds into each segment. The idea is to see how the plants go and eventually cut the weaker one to have just one plant out, survive and start off strong strong. I seeded four to eight seeds in one or two rows, with the intention to repeat this process in about two weeks time after the next new moon.

Last year I marked each row off with the initials of the seeds but to no avail, as I did not give them the intention the seeds deserve. This year I left it, feeling comfortable that I remember what I seeded when the seedlings grow.

Both rainwater tanks have filled again after I started watering last week during temperatures around 23-24degrees. The rainfall record this year is looking better than last year although we have so far not reached average rainfall in any of the 2011 months:

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
2011	30.2	0.4	0	19.4	85	171.4	161	115.2	65.2				647.8
2010	0	0.2	40.4	25	88.6	51.4	142	63	43.6	20.6	11.6	17.4	503.8
Average	9.5	12.7	19.5	44.1	117.5	175.7	169.7	133.6	80.6	52.2	22.1	12.8	850

More details available here: http://www.watercorporation.com.au/R/rainfall.cfm

Propagating bougainvilleas

Several times before I tried to have bougainvillea cut-offs grow roots simply by putting them into water. Only once it appeared to work but in the end nothing came out of it. This time I should be more clever.

The cuttings are from plants in my front garden on the side of the driveway that were growing in the wrong direction and intruding too far into the space reserved for the car, making it difficult to get in and out of the car without scratches from the thorns of the plants. I cut them off generously, knowing that at the start of spring they were about to rebound in no time.

I reduced the cuttings to about 15-20cm, making them small enough to fit into the pots prepared with good compost. I removed most of the leaves and selected branches that were already showing some growth to the side. I usually discarded the very tips and rather selected semi-hardwood instead of softwood.

Two different varieties of seedlings were available and I spread them across six pots. Straight before planting I dipped them into roots hormone gel, just because I had some. A friend said honey would work just the same. The wikipedia site on cuttings mentions it.

I was happy with the outcome of the work and watered in well the new plants. Again I embarked on this adventure without research on the internet, but today found a good article about propagating bougainvilleas again from Gardening Australia on the ABC website.

Cuttings is a new way of propagating plants for me. I enjoy the learning and believe that I picked a good day for this activity in the moon calendar, just a day before the full moon!

I decided to post the progress of the propagated plants into the same blogpost, easier to keep track:

18 September - leaves are wilting