I have never seen pussy tail plants before. Gorgeous! I see that your native Aussie plant has made it's way across the Big Pond and that Baker Creek has seed. I might have to get some next year.

Noticed the first of the Red Banana Shallots was up today with a couple of other varieties of the multiplier onions also starting to show top.

Have had three seed orders turn up in the past fortnight, mainly bee fodder in the form of Salvias, Delphinums, Marigolds, Cosmos, Cornflowers Sweet William, Phlox, Larkspurs, Asters Canterbury Bells and some of the Sunflowers that we saw at Tesselaars. Would much prefer natives over these exotics but we do not have equivalents within the native annual flora. Starting to build up a collection of native perennials, added 3 Rose of the West mallee's, Eucalyptus rhodantha and two Fringed Lillies, Thysanotus tuberosus today, along with 10 different pansies. Seemed to be Pansy season in at the B store today, lots of them about.

Also getting some fresh seed of peas, beans, a couple of watermelons, a couple of white fruited bell peppers a few more tomatoes - need to look up Petrusha Ogorodnik and Mushroom Basket tomatoes. One of the Beans is White half runner, be interesting to see how tall these get.

I see that you have been doing your homework on the plants that the bees will use. The bees are not native here either so we to have to import varieties to keep them happy. They do seem to like many of our native trees and shrubs though. Plants evolve so that their blossoms are appealing to the local pollinators for survival. If you introduce a new pollinator then you need to bring in some food sources for them too.

Chives:

About a week ago I had to cut back the chives due to the black aphids that were on them. They are recovery well

The onion bed as it stands at the moment, with the walking onions at the back about 18 inches/450mm tall and the shallots and potato onions in front of them
The Red banana shallot that is the most advanced and yes I have a sprinkler set up so that they get watered every third or fourth day.

Strawberry Guava
Have not grown or tasted these before. 2 plants were obtained about 13 months ago and one has two crops on it, new fruit about 1/4 inch across (top photo) and the larger fruit about an inch across in the bottom photo. they must be getting close to starting to ripen, looking forward to it.

Self sown pansy seedlings , one of several patches where all that is small and green is pansy. hoping that they are not too cold sensitive, most years we get down to -3/27F with our occasional frost. the lowest we have been down to was -7C/19F

The latest additions to the pansy patch, with a couple still to flower

Gorgeous pansy colors, Whwoz.

You probably wouldn't get a hard freeze of the soil at -3C, eh? Unless it bottomed out there for days.
The large flowered pansies don't overwinter here, but this is when they have flowered their heart out in the first summer.
WRT seedlings, I would suspect the ones that haven't flowered yet, would survive winter better than those that bloomed.

@bower, the lows are generally associated with frost only, no freezing of the soil here. Frosts are generally followed by beautiful weather with temps getting up around 15C/55F and hardly a could in the sky. Sub zero for only a couple of hours most nights. We may grumble a bit about the cold (for us, all relative) but enjoy the days after.

WRT pansies, some very nice colours about at the moment, may get some more in next couple of days.

Went for a quick walk around the garden this morning, looking for room too plant some more pansies and found these instead, some Aster seedlings.
Those bees really appreciated our bee fodder effort, looking like they have taken care of spring if we don't have too many frosts

Pansy's, these are sold here as potted colour, one larger plant per pot, no varieties named

Some in punnets or 4 or 6 pack's
Neptune Plentifall Trailing Fire 2 X Solar Flare China Blue 2 x Petite Mix Tiger Eye

We went into Warragul on Saturday to have the 13 yo daughter's ears pierced and had a bit of time to kill in between getting there and confirming that she did indeed want them pierced, selecting suitable studs and time at which lady was actually able to do it. So headed to nursery where Mrs Woz picked out the above pansies and daughter found 2 fuschias to go with them
Hopefully these will go some way towards keeping the 2 plus 70,000 females on the place happy over winter

My English mother-in-law used to call fuchsias 'Lady's Ear Drops'. An appropriate buy for the day!

The orange pansies and some of the other single coloured ones have a lovely scent. Cold doesn't bother them here and many winter over.

Checked out the onlon patch, most of the new multipliers have shot, with about 10 of them having roots only at this stage. Only one has yet to shoot roots. I have also planted a dozen shallots purchased from a local supermarket, none of these have started to shoot at all yet. Don't know if they apply a shoot inhibitor to them or not.
The walking onions are doing great on the left

Whwoz wrote: ↑Sun Apr 27, 2025 6:22 pm Went for a quick walk around the garden this morning, looking for room too plant some more pansies and found these instead, some Aster seedlings.

IMG_20250428_084511_243.jpg

Those bees really appreciated our bee fodder effort, looking like they have taken care of spring if we don't have too many frosts

had a look in the garden today and it looks like there are native daisy seedlings coming up as well. Might have to move the strawberries out of hat bed for the bee fodder coming up.

Petunia Night Sky is a part of the Headliner range out of Ball seed. There are about 26 different Petunias in the range but only this one has made it Down Under that I am aware of. Very popular with the youngest member of the family so thought I would try to set some cuttings to see what happens. The cuttings received either IBA or IAA/NAA hormone powder. Online indicate that Petunias strike from leaf cuttings so tried a few of them plus stem cuttings
They have been covered by clear yoghurt tubs and placed in the cold frame for now.

The frost that we had a couple of days ago must have been a bit harder than what I initially thought. The watermelon vines were burnt a fair bit
There were 7 fruit still on the vines so I grabbed one that went 3.1 kg/6.8 lb and cut it
A little bit under ripe but definitely edible so the other 6 we picked and put into the big fridge
Will be interesting to see how the smaller ones shape up on the table

Finally managed to find a couple of hours to get the Turban Garlics planted today,

32 cloves of each of Georgian Stride, Mexican Early Purple, Shandong, Spanish Early violet, Monaro Purple and an unnamed white skinned turban. With a bit of help from the daughter they have been mulched with sugar cane mulch as well.