Beneficial Plant, Lavender. Good for us and the bees.

My trustee Lavender bushes that keep on giving. Not only they give me their flowers but the stems can be propagated. I just love these plants as they are beneficial for the bees and bugs in the garden and they are beneficial for us as well. 

I collected a few flowers this morning, while leaving some for the bees.

Nurtured Lavender stem cuttings growing over winter:

Lots of roots and ready for transplant:

The Poppy Flowers Are Here and the Pomegranate Tree is Back!!

My mixed coloured Poppy flowers are finally here. I sprinkled the seeds under the Olive tree and they look so perfect together. The Poppy flowers look like floating butterflies in the wind. 

The Pomegranate tree has started growing lots of leaves as well and a few tiny flower buds had popped out. We trimmed this tree last Autumn to maintain a manageable height and width.

We froze some of the pomegranate seeds last summer and use them during winter. I hope we can store more this year so we can get Vitamin C boost throughout next winter.

Finally Some Snow Peas! Spring is Here!

Finally a bowl of snow peas from the garden. The long awaited pods were very welcomed in our household. We've been enjoying the pretty white flowers for a few weeks now and they have finally turned into pods.

Mid Week Fresh Cooking: Broccoli Leaves Pesto Fettucini, Chickpea Garden Salad Sandwich and Lentil Daal.

Our mid week fresh cooking last week was super quick and simple to prepare.

I used the last harvest of broccoli florets and leaves from the front garden and made pesto for a quick vegetarian lunch. 

For the next day, I soaked some dried chickpeas and boiled them before crushing them with a bit of canned chopped tomato, lettuce leaves, parsley and mayo. I paired that with lettuce and kale leaves from the garden for a quick sandwich.

The majority of the canned chopped tomato went into this yummy vegetarian dinner of lentil daal. I used lots of onion and ginger for this to support our immunity during the cold blast in Melbourne during that time.

Early Asahi Tulips and White Californian Poppy.

The first Asahi Tulip had popped up in our garden. Their stems look short this year for some reason. I didn't pull the bulbs out of the garden from last year, so it looks like they grown in a bit of a cluster this year. I'm excited to see how they look, but I think I will pull out the bulbs this year and replant them, spread them around the garden. I absolutely love the colour of this Asahi Tulip. 

My daffodil tete-a-tete had also popped up. They're so tiny and cute this year. I need to to pull up the bulbs as well and spread them around the garden.

Another favourite of mine in the recent years have been these Californian Poppies that I planted under the Olive Tree. I bought them as seeds of mix colour, they're gorgeous but their seed pods spread the seeds all over the garden, haha. So it's really hard to keep them in one spot.

This is the first poppy this year:

There will be more coming up and that section of the front yard is going to burst with colour.

Seedlings Prep for Spring 2020

I finally completed the second and last batch of seedlings prep. This pregnancy surely is different from my previous one. I seem to get tired more easily this time around so I had to stop halfway the seedlings prep a few weeks ago. But, everything's finally done now!! Now I just have to give them lots of TLC. 

These are the seedlings from a few weeks ago, they have sprouted and some have shown true leaves.

Cos Lettuce:

Perpetual Spinach:

Cimmaron Lettuce:

Russian Kale:

Kent Pumpkin and Cucumber:

Zucchini:

The day time weather is warming up slightly in Melbourne. Especially near this large window sill. It's a perfect spot for seedlings.

Garden Bed 1 Update - Snow Peas and Shelling Peas

The pretty pea flowers are finally here. They are looking so gorgeous and they greet me cheerfully every morning. Now the next exciting thing will be when we actually harvest some peas. 

These were planted in April in hope i can harvest some peas in winter. They are taking their time and we haven't got a single pea as yet.

This is how they were looking back on 18th April 2020. The shoots just started to appear:

On 1st July 2020, they grew significantly but still there was no flower:

And today (31st July 2020), we have flowers!!

There are also a few pea pods starting to form. Fingers crossed we'll have some peas soon:

Collecting Broccoli Seeds

The broccoli seedpods are finally ready for harvest and their seeds collected. We're so excited!! This is the first time we collected the broccoli seeds so I hope the seeds are good for planting.

There were quite a few seedpods, so I picked the best looking ones, the chunkiest looking 🙂. As can be seen from the photos, they have the visible bumps which indicate good size seeds.

For the past few weeks I have been peeking inside a few pods to see if the seeds have turned brown in colour, so I'm happy to finally see brown coloured seeds.

There are lots of seedpods, so my 5 year old helped me to peel and collect the seeds. 

We have lots of mature brown seeds. Yay!! Fingers crossed they are good seeds and can grow into awesome Broccoli plants.

Mid Winter Leafy Green Vegetables Harvest

We are absolutely loving the various leafy vegetables in our garden. It's mid winter now in Melbourne and they keep giving us nutritious supply for our meal.

I am so happy with the amount of Cos Lettuce plants that I planted in the garden. I planted about a dozen or so all over the place and they provide continuous supply of the greens.

I also planted around 5-6 Russian Kale and Perpetual Spinach. Their leaves are getting bigger and we picked a few leaves regularly so the younger leaves have some space and sun exposure and they can grow bigger.

GentleSoulGnome July 2020 Garden Update

Our garden grew significantly over the last few months despite the lack of maintenance as I battled the all day pregnancy sickness and gardening aversion. I was so relieved when the pregnancy symptoms finally subsided and I can return to the garden. Since then I had managed to complete a few priority maintenance in smaller quantities and shorter time as tiredness seems to be the major hurdle at the moment.

My first priority was to clean up the weeds growing at the front garden because the Tulips and Daffodils had started to grow new shoots. I wanted to clear the area of weeds to give them lots of growing space and minimal nutrition competitor as possibly can. 

Asahi Tulips

Daffodils Tete-a-tete

The Cos Lettuces and Strawberries that I planted at the front garden seemed to thrive and we had since harvested a few of the lettuce leaves.

I have been waiting for the Broccoli seedpods to mature to collect their seeds, but they're taking so long. So I let them be for the time being and besides they are still sprouting, so we've been harvesting them as well. I left quite a few of the yellow flowers for the bees. They love them, I thought I share a little bit happiness with them.

As for the back garden, the Snow Peas and Shelling Peas had grew so tall and a few flowers had blossomed. So, we're hoping it won't be too much longer until we get some harvest.

The leafy vegetables are taking so long to grow from seedlings. Next year I will try continual planting as growing the plants from seedlings are too slow when the temperature dropped. Some of the Kale are looking promising though, I hope I can harvest some soon.

The root vegetables in the third garden bed seemed to be doing well as well. The White and Purple Garlic are looking good. I never successfully grew garlic before, so fingers crossed they will produce this time.

I also never managed to get a single harvest of radish and these ones are not looking promising either. The leaves are bright green and bushy, but I can't see any bulb growing underneath it.

We moved our Lemon tree from the half wine barrel to the ground a few months ago. They survive the move but only time will tell if they will produce better in the new spot. The new spot has more sun exposure which I hope will be more suitable for the tree.

Some more strawberries plants underneath the Lemon tree. They were also transplanted from half wine barrel and survived the move. Some of the plants are showing flowers, so hopefully we have lots more strawberries this year.

I absolutely love our Bay Tree. It obviously survived the big move from Sydney to Melbourne a couple years ago. The tree has reached new height and growing lots of new branches and good looking leaves.

Lastly, we planted 4 bags of potatoes in grow bags. We keep adding more soil as the plants shoot up. It's very exciting indeed, they seem to be growing taller and taller everyday.