Planting here and there (27 January 2008)

While I was at mum and dad's for christmas, mum gave me some plants to bring back and plant in my garden beds. She gave me a pot of Arum Lillies, Aspidistras and some sort of fast and easy to grow daisy thingy. So this morning I planted them out.
The Arum Lillies and Aspergas are in the back. Some of the leaves are burned (this happened when I brought them home in the car on a 36 degree summer day). But I can see new shoots forming so they will look lush in time. In the front are the little daisies. These seem to grow really fast (they had almost doubled their size in the pot in the last 3 weeks) so I may have to dig them up and redistribute them again later. But that's OK.

By the way - this is my Ficus Pumila (Creeping Fig). I LOVE this plant (some people hate it because it can be too vigorous and too invasive - but I love the shapes it makes as it crawls up walls). I planted this back at the start of December 2007 - so it's making pretty good progress. I actually took some cuttings from this and placed them on the ground about a metre away. It's my first attempt at propagation. Fingers crossed that I have some success.

While I was in the planting mood, I also decided to plant out a Lemon Verbena and Rosemary plant that had both been in pots for way too long. The Lemon Verbena smells divine...but only when I planted it out did I read the label properly and found out that it's deciduous!! Bummer. Mum gave me this Rosemary months ago, but I could never decide where to plant it. I decided just to chuck it in the ground (in the space where I lost a Hebe Buxifolia at Christmas time) and then I will move it later on once I know where I want it.

I also planted out a large pot of Italian Parsley that I bought at Poynton's on Saturday morning. I did have some Parsley but it bolted in the hot weather and went to seed. Hopefully I will have great big bunches of Parsley again soon.

At Bunnings in Highpoint I also bought two small Ficus Pumilas (they were cheap - $2.50 each) and four Chinese Star Jasmines. I haven't planted these out yet - that will have to wait until next weekend.

Making the Porch Garden Bed (27 January 2008)

A New Garden Bed

So our goals in the garden for this weekend were
1) Pull out the Ficus tree
2) Break up the concrete in front of the porch to make a new garden bed.

This is what the porch "garden bed" looked like before yesterday. I pulled up 7 pavers way back in November to see what is underneath them (so we knew how difficult/easy it was going to be to create a garden bed here. Underneath the pavers was an old concrete footpath - making things very difficult for us.

So we went to Kennards Hire and hired a jack hammer for 24 hours. This made the job sooooo much easier - but it still took Carmine a couple of hours to break all the concrete up.

It was hot weather and the jack hammer was heavy

- Carmine did an awesome job!

Once all the concrete was broken up, we had to lift all of it out of the new garden bed (well, it's ALMOST a garden bed)

We're still left with a long pile of rubble. We'll either hire a skip or get someone to come and cart it all away the weekend after next.

East End Garden Bed (28 January 2008)

New Garden Bed in the Courtyard

While we had the jack hammer hired to cut up the concrete ontop of the porch garden bed, we thought we should make the most out of having it. We had one other area that is currently paved that we wanted to make into a garden bed - at the east end of the courtyard.

This is what the area (at the far end of the deck) looked like before we took to it with the jack hammer.

This is it now! Yay! I've still got to pick all the concrete out of the bed, then dig up and loosen the soil - but hey, it's a start.

Once the soil is prepared, I'll plant a tall hedge (Lillypilly probably) to help screen out the clothes line and shed (we'll put a thin utility shed along the back fence soon).

Pulling up the Ficus Tree (27 January 2008)

We pulled out the Ficus tree that was in the ground in the Northside garden. Man, it was much more difficult than I thought. I first dug all round it and then tried to use a crow bar to jimmy it out. But it wasn't gonna budge.

So Minu grabbed the trunk and gave it a good push around - then it started to move! Yay. After about 1 hour of shaking, digging, grunting and cursing, it came out!

The Ficus tree before I pruned it and we pulled it out of the ground.


After the tree had been pulled out.


The hole that was left.


The Ficus tree in it's new home. Hopefully it survives - i'd hate to have potted it up only for it to die on me. I've put it in the back corner of the courtyard so it will only get a small bit of sunshine each day.