Hobbies and Crafts

I'm about to annoy some of you...........

It's the end of winter in Oz. The weather for the last few weeks has been beautiful, more like spring :-D

I went outside this morning and found half of the orchids in bloom! They look wonderful. Some have large purple & white flowers, others have tiny pink flowers........ can hardly wait for the rest of them.

:-D

Sounds wonderful and lovely to hear of them.

We had a warm summer and the rudbeckias are wonderful at the moment, the sweet peas are still in full flower and we are nearly ready to start picking the sweet corn.

Autumn is my next favourite season to spring and at least the grass doesn't grow so quickly :-D

The Moth Orchid has a teeny little shoot.

I'll be watching it closely over the next few days. It has to be trained to sit nicely lol :-)

Ok thinking about doing a revised flower bed in October. Buddleia and lavender. What else is good for bees and butterflies? Suggestions please :-)

you need some nettles nearby on which they can lay their eggs

Sedum is good Ann ( ice plant (Sedum spectabile - dark red cultivars are less attractive) Hebes, the bumble bees love Borage. Michaelmas daisies! we used ot get lots of butterflies on those :-D

Bees love our cosmos, single dahlias, foxgloves, valerian and the single cone flowers, but they adore the blue comfery which is rather a thug and small alliums (allium sphaerocephalon I think) which they visit for weeks

Apart for plants already mentioned the plants we found most attractive to butterflies are in the hay meadow and include knapweed.

I bought a Daphne Odora plant earlier in the year and it looks very sorry for itself now

The once bright green leaves are mostly pale and some are falling off. I have this is in a tub because I was unsure where to plant it out and initially it seemed healthy enough but not any more???

I have no idea what is happening but I hope my TLC and gentle whispers will revive this sad looking species.

Thanks for the butterfly suggestions, we do have Michaelmas daisies in the bed so will leave those and add some of the ones you suggest. :-) but not the knapweed :-D

Oh Ann - Not grow knapweed :-D I don't either in the garden, but the cultivated version of the plant Centaurea montana blue is quite successful as well with butterflies.

On holiday at the moment in Kent and going to the garden at Great Dixter today which I have always wanted to see. I hope I don't fry in the heat :-D

Gardeners who like wild life are not too tidy.
Help your favorite butterflies by making room for a nettle patch.

http://www.nettles.org.uk/nettles/wildlife/butterflies.asp

Keep decking and paving to a minimum.

Hedgehogs - which are voracious eaters of slugs - need a winter hideout and small holes allowing them to slip through fences.

We used to have hedgehogs but they like to come and go. They used to do this via holes at the end of fences near our she'd. Sadly we have. Neighbour who insists on blocking all holes with chicken wire, we think he thinks it keeps cats out. :-D

A tomato question please -- Have 3 tom. plants and had a lovely supply on one which has small red ones and still loads that are green also the other 2 plants are yellow and have had only one tomato so far that has ripened though the two plants are laden question how long do we leave the tomatoes on the plants before we have to take them in and put on window sill to ripen saw tonight that temp was going down to 2o ? Thanks

We'd probably leave ours out til October but we are in Gloucester. If it looks like a frost I would take them in.

Thanks Ann kept thinking the good weather would last but 2o not very encouraging to leave toms out. Will give it a think tomorrow

Nolls when you do pick your tomatoes put a banana very near to them the potassium from the bananas helps them ripen quicker.

Now is a good time to buy tulip bulbs if your garden centre, like ours is selling them half price. They will still come up in the spring. Just bought some lovely yellow ones. We don't have a lot of room for tulips or we would have bought more, some of them are so beautiful. :-)

Love tulips. Planted some Parrot tulips again this year in big pots. Last year, due to the cold weather they lasted for ages.

Favourite daff is Tete a Tete which blooms earlier and because it's small you don't get the later problem with the leaves after the flowers have gone

Anybody have any advice on keeping my sweet pea seedlings through the winter.
They have done so well I would hate to lose them.
Currently they are in an unheated greenhouse.
Take care
Von

We recently moved from a house with half an acre garden that we had spent 27 years getting into shape to one with a pocket handkerchief bit of grass and not much else.

We had tried to make our old garden good for all seasons but I always thought it was at its best in Spring so I am really going to miss it this year. The snowdrops we planted were really beginning to expand under the trees, then we had lots of Chiondoxa (not sure if that's spelt right), followed by hundreds of daffodils and then tulips.

I did bring lots of big plants in pots with me when we moved so next week we are having a narrow strip down the side of the house paved and I'm going to put my 9 pots of hostas there. I've also planted some lilies in pots to give a bit of colour by the front door.

Any other ideas for a bit of colour and shape in a tiny garden?