Kings Park in Spring

My dear mother-in-law had a fall earlier this year.  After a stint in hospital she's now in transitional care until she can go back home.   We visit her there regularly. It's a small place and there aren't many areas for visitors.  So, we snuck J out and took her up to Kings Park to see the spectacular spring bloom.  

Every time I go to Kings Park I'm impressed with its beauty. The park (which officially opened on the 10th of August 1895) has more than 3000 Western Australian plants on display. Who knew!!  So imagine what it's like in Spring when everything is in flower and the team at the park have added to the display with a mass planting of blooms.  It's amazing.  

Here are some pics (with the usual caveat about my less than average photography skills):

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

The photos really don't do the park justice. They just give a wee snapshot.  When you first arrive though you see the whole planting spread out before you with the city of Perth in the background. It's truly breathtaking.

J really enjoyed the visit. Although I'm not sure which part she enjoyed the most, the spectacular flowers or the cuppa and cake.  I suspect the latter because she's not allowed any cake in transitional care. They're not quite sure what to do with her FODMAP diet. So they've just cut out everything that might be a problem.  But we know she can have dairy and gluten free so a large piece of gluten free cheese cake was the order of the day.  I don't think I've ever seen a piece of cake disappear quite as fast as J made that one vanish.  Clearly she's been missing her sweets 

                                                    

Overall it was a lovely afternoon hour with J which has created a lovely memory for us to treasure. 

The Great Potato Experiment

Most years we plant potatoes.  We love eating potatoes and they're such an easy crop to grow. A win win really.  This year we bought three lots of seed potatoes because we just couldn't decide which variety to grow.  We had four free garden beds so we thought we'd experiment with some different planting methods.   We tried all three varieties of potatoes with the different methods.  We were interested to see which, if any, of the methods produced the best results.

For the first method, we mixed together lupin mulch, compost we made and some mixed manures (cow, sheep and chicken).  We put a layer of that on the bottom of the container, placed the potatoes on it and then added another layer of the mulch mix.  Each time the green leaves poked through we covered them with another layer of the mulch mix.   We kept doing this until the container was full.  For the second method we mixed some of the mulch mix with garden soil and used the same layering method.  For the third method we dug out a garden bed until there was about 15 cm of soil.  Then we put the potatoes on top and filled the container up with garden soil.  Those potatoes were well buried. 

All of the garden beds got the same amount of water and no supplementary feeding.  We weren't at home much after the spuds were planted though so we didn't keep on top of the pests.  I'm not sure what pest attacked the plants but three containers got well and truly feasted on before we got to them with some pyrethrum.  These are the plants when we left.

Three days later, this is what we found!! 

Pesky pests!!   On the plus side, even though the plants got hoed into by some ravenous bugs, they still produced lots of spuds.  Almost 21 kilos.  I'm not sure if that is a good yield from 3 kilos of seed potatoes or not, but it's enough to keep us happy.  We've gifted quite a lot to family and friends and still have enough in the pantry to keep us going for a good wee while.  In terms of the experiment, all of the methods yielded potatoes. Even the last one, where the potatoes were buried nice and deep. We really didn't expect the plants to make it through all that soil but they did.  The plants that got really badly eaten produced big quantities of spuds but they were very small.  Which isn't surprising really. They were both the pots planted entirely with the mulch mix.  Had those potatoes grown to full size they'd have definitely been the most productive plants.  That said, the other two beds were not far behind.  The potatoes planted in just soil were the only ones that didn't get eaten. They produced the biggest spuds.

The biggest spud weighed in at 700 gms.  The smallest one, well it was too tiny to weigh in at all. 

        

                                                        

This is some of the bounty.  

Now what can we do with all those spuds.  Steamed with butter (obviously), maybe mashed, rosti, soup, hash browns, gnocchi, gratin, chips, baked......the possibilities are endless.  Just don't tell my good doctor how many spuds we're eating. 

Spring Has Sprung

We moved into our lovely part of the world back in April 2020, right in the middle of the first covid lock down.  The first year was (it's fair to say) somewhat challenging.  There were lots of boring things that needed to be sorted before we could start enjoying ourselves.  Like installing gutters, fixing fences and steps and sorting out the irrigation so we could water stuff without switching on multiple valves. Once those things were out of the way though, we set about planting a new native garden in the raised bank that runs alongside the garage.  It was previously full of potatoes (inherited from the previous owners), a bit of veg that we'd put in ourselves and lots and lots of weeds.  If only our plants grew as well as the weeds, we'd be immensely happy.    When the potatoes and weeds died off, it was pretty much a blank space.  And we've busily filled that space with over a hundred native plants.  

Those plants have really settled in now and burst out into glorious blossom.  I feel just a little bit pleased with us every time we walk down the side of the house and see the birds and the bees enjoying the fruits of our labour.  I thought I'd show off our achievements with some pics.  If only I was as good a photographer as we are gardeners, albeit accidental ones. We don't actually know what we're doing.  We do know where to get advice though and some of that must have stuck based on how well the garden is doing at the moment. 

These pics hopefully show how full of plants the garden bed is now.  This patch of ground had three fruit trees (which are still there) and not much apart from the previously mentioned veg and weeds.   Now it's crammed with a range of native plants. And weeds (grrrr!!). 

The remaining photos are attempts to show off the individual plants.  They look pretty spectacular in real life. I don't think we've quite captured that in our pics.  Should probably use a proper camera instead of our phones.

This is a coconut ice which is prolific through the Crooked Brook Forest.  You'll see loads of it if you do the 10 k walking loop. 

This is an eremophila or emu bush. We grew a couple of these at our former home in the Perth Hills.  We nurtured them for ten years and they refused to grow taller than a centimetre.  Until our last year there where they'd decided they'd burst forth with growth and flowers.  

This is a leptospermum pink cascade. It's really struggled here so we were really pleased to see it flower for the first time this year. 

This is a sandpaper wattled.  We've created a gap through to other large bushes so you get a glimpse of yellow as you walk past.  

Pretty impressive flowers.

This is the first bottle brush we've managed to grow.  It will hopefully weave its way through the garden.  The picture on the left shows a new flower next to last years. The one on the right is the more developed flower. 

This hakea is stunning.  The flowers start out cream and go through yellow before finally ending up at red.  They're very large and last for ages.  This might be my new favourite tree.  For now at least.

The purple plant in the foreground is a Thomasia.  We're pretty pleased with this plant which we only planted last year.  Thomasia's are native to the Perth Hills.  We planted plenty in our garden, when we lived in the Perth Hills, and never managed to get one to grow.  But this one has just taken off down here in the south.  Go figure!! 

This is a prostrate grevillea which we planted in April.  We're trying to put in as many groundcovers as we can in the hope that they'll keep the weeds down.  Fingers absolutely crossed.

All of those native plants have attracted this native beauty (along with a range of other insects include blue banded bees). This one is a meadow argus butterfly.  Looks more orange in real life.  

Oh, please ignore the weeds in the pics.  We've not been at home long enough to tackle them this year.  Ah well, there's always next year.