Love seeing the beautiful flowers on this cold, wintry day! Thanks for sharing!

A couple of Dalhias, varieties unnamed from the local B store picked up yesterday and put into larger pots.
A couple of shots of the purple one, but phone camera does not do colour justice

Yesterdays warm north westerly wind knocked the late Gladiola about a bit. Have seen the bees on them too

@Whwoz when are we going to see some Tomatoes, both here, and viewtopic.php?t=5948?

The Gotch

@Cornelius_Gotchberg , the reason why I haven't taken many tomato photos is best shown
As a result of nursemaiding the Mrs after her ankle surgery (which has gone extremely well) and popping a bakers cyst in my right knee, which I am still struggling to kneel on for an extended period, the tomatoes and peppers were overgrown in 6 weeks. Soe of that grass is over 6 feet tall. What fruit are there are predominantly overripe and I will be putting the flail across them shortly, before adding compost, chopping it all up with the rotary hoe, covering with cardboard and sugar cane mulch. Should then be ready for next year with luck.

Found two Mulla Mulla's the other day and have been able to get them in the garden, the bees both honey and native Blue Banded love them. Have seen bees moving between the two so hoping for seed
Garlic cloves are also popular with the pollinators at the moment
Thinking about planting a big line of this for the bees next year

Blue Salvia is also popular
And yes @MissS the Petunia Night Sky is still going fabulously

Oh @Whwoz I forgot to tell you. Last year I found your Mulla Mulla at Walmart of all places. It's the first time that I ever saw it. I really enjoyed it and it brought me a smile knowing that you grow this one.

It did not like being in full sun here. I had to pot it up and move it to a more shaded location.

Whwoz wrote: ↑Thu Mar 13, 2025 3:25 am @Cornelius_Gotchberg , the reason why I haven't taken many tomato photos is best shown

IMG_20250313_181151_767.jpg

As a result of nursemaiding the Mrs after her ankle surgery (which has gone extremely well) and popping a bakers cyst in my right knee, which I am still struggling to kneel on for an extended period, the tomatoes and peppers were overgrown in 6 weeks. Soe of that grass is over 6 feet tall. What fruit are there are predominantly overripe and I will be putting the flail across them shortly, before adding compost, chopping it all up with the rotary hoe, covering with cardboard and sugar cane mulch. Should then be ready for next year with luck.

All I could do for a couple months after my foot surgery was watch my garden turn into a weedy mess. Drove me crazy.

Let's hope you and the Mrs are back on your feet running around soon.

@Wildcat82 I have been wondering how things are for you after your surgery. All is well I hope.

Sorry for hijacking the thread...

MissS wrote: ↑Thu Mar 13, 2025 10:48 pm @Wildcat82 I have been wondering how things are for you after your surgery. All is well I hope.

Sorry for hijacking the thread...

I'm pretty much back to normal. Worked 2 hours in the backyard this evening.

Wildcat82 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 13, 2025 9:55 pm

Whwoz wrote: ↑Thu Mar 13, 2025 3:25 am @Cornelius_Gotchberg , the reason why I haven't taken many tomato photos is best shown

IMG_20250313_181151_767.jpg

As a result of nursemaiding the Mrs after her ankle surgery (which has gone extremely well) and popping a bakers cyst in my right knee, which I am still struggling to kneel on for an extended period, the tomatoes and peppers were overgrown in 6 weeks. Soe of that grass is over 6 feet tall. What fruit are there are predominantly overripe and I will be putting the flail across them shortly, before adding compost, chopping it all up with the rotary hoe, covering with cardboard and sugar cane mulch. Should then be ready for next year with luck.

All I could do for a couple months after my foot surgery was watch my garden turn into a weedy mess. Drove me crazy.

Let's hope you and the Mrs are back on your feet running around soon.

We are both back on our feet and moving well enough thank you @Wildcat82. As you know, been very frustrating watching all that grow and knowing that you can't do anything about it. Found out yesterday at First aid training that I still can't spend a lot of time on bended knee, it just won't let me. Would much prefer to do a grip and rip on all that grass, but not going to happen.

@MissS hijack accepted, sometimes it's just better to ask there and then than try to move a discussion to another thread

Sometimes when my knees/back are hurting, I lie down on my side for weeding. It's not as convenient as kneeling but I can get the job done, one bit at a time. The biggest challenge is finding a spot within the bed to lie on that doesn't impact the plants I'm trying to grow.

Glad to hear you're both on the mend. Grandpa said to never get old because I wouldn't like it. He was right. LOL

The walking/Egyptian onions that I planted last year did really well and were lifted at the same time as the Elephant garlic and have been drying down in the shed over summer. Cleaned them up about 2 weeks ago, planted 11 two bulb divisions and put the rest in the for use drawer.

Cooked sausages, onion and sliced mushrooms for lunch happens here about every three weeks and the last time was with the Walking onions. Kids prefered them to regular brown onions, so the rest were pulled out of the for use drawer and planted. 42 divisions, nominally of two bulbs but upto four if small were planted out in total, plus 4 lots of topsets as well. All this occurred when the soil was very dry, hydrophobic to some extent, so it was water heavily every other day, then cover with a good layer of sugar cane mulch. Today's rain will have soaked the lot beautifully.
The original 11 have shoots upto 10cm/4 inches long and roots anchoring them firmly in the ground.

Just need to build up a couple of spots, then add some of my compost and the rest of the area will be ready for garlic/potato onions/shallots or anything else along those lines that I can get my hands on.

Where do you get your sugar cane mulch? Does it come bagged, or do you have it delivered or truck it home yourself?

@Whwoz do you cut the topsets on these, when planted in a row to get onions? How quickly do they bulb? When my friend farmed them here, they were harvesting green onions not bulbs, so I wondered how you do.
I'm just in the process of redeploying our Egyptian onions here - which inadvertently I became the custodian of, since both friends lost theirs, my own patch grown over, and Mom's patch overrun with goutweed. She used to pull onions all summer from that patch and never have to buy any. Mine didn't seem to bulb that readily but it wasn't well tended or rich to begin with.
Anyway I have some potted from last year including small bulbs that I need to split up, and a couple pots with wee ones coming from topsets.

ddsack wrote: ↑Sun Mar 16, 2025 10:15 am Where do you get your sugar cane mulch? Does it come bagged, or do you have it delivered or truck it home yourself?

It is readily available commercially here prebagged as a compressed bale @ddsack. There are a number of different brands available across the range of garden supply shops here, although I generally aim to stock up when it is available at Aldi, as cheapest per area covered.

bower wrote: ↑Sun Mar 16, 2025 12:13 pm @Whwoz do you cut the topsets on these, when planted in a row to get onions? How quickly do they bulb? When my friend farmed them here, they were harvesting green onions not bulbs, so I wondered how you do.
I'm just in the process of redeploying our Egyptian onions here - which inadvertently I became the custodian of, since both friends lost theirs, my own patch grown over, and Mom's patch overrun with goutweed. She used to pull onions all summer from that patch and never have to buy any. Mine didn't seem to bulb that readily but it wasn't well tended or rich to begin with.
Anyway I have some potted from last year including small bulbs that I need to split up, and a couple pots with wee ones coming from topsets.

@bower, some good questions there that I can't exactly answer as I have not paid that close attention to them while they are growing. Topsets are generally formed in spring here.

One thing I can confirm is that they do like better/deeper soil. Where I had them a couple of years ago, at the south side of the veggie bed is about 200 mm sand over silt and while they multiplied well, the bulbs were small and I used them more as spring onions, last year they were in 500-600 mm sand over silt and bulb up much better as usable onions

The only bulb that didn't get planted, broke off from the root plate so would only rot.

Pansy's

In spring I picked up a punnet of 6 pansy's
The Mrs decided that she liked them and diligently set about collecting 200-250 seeds off each plant, thinking that we would have them for several years. She forgot about the bees.
This one started flowering about a week ago, it's a seedling from some of the above. When she saw it, it was a bit like "but, but,but........ does that mean that they have crossed".

What do you expect with seven bee hives on site doh!
: . I quitely had a good laugh then she decided that she would have to plant all of them to see what she had collected. That many seeds ain't gonna happen, some yes, all noway.

The natural mix of pansy shades is quite lovely. We have wild ones here that look a lot like your wife's seedling, and the tiny yellow flowered one, which tends to grow tall among field grasses. The 'Johnny Jump Up's' at my mothers place appeared quite suddenly one year after Dad had opened up a new bit of ground, and have sown themselves around the place ever since. So I think they can form a long lasting seed bank when turned under or overgrown.

Busy, but not too strenuous a day here, started off with moving enough compost to finish covering where the garlic will go with a 2 to 3 inch deep layer, before turning this in with the rotary hoe, then off to do a bit of bee work, before mulching some of that overgrown area in the veggie patch.
After rotary hoeing in the compost but before mulching
After mulching, a good start considering time lost to bees and having work tonight, I try not to push too hard before a 12 hour nightshift.