Autumn planting

It's been many weeks since anything new went into the garden. The potted cuttings from friends and other plants picked up here and there, have all been accumulating in the shade of the verandah or under the eves, waiting for cooler weather or even, heaven forbid, a shower of rain.   Saturday was a little overcast and had a mellow feel.  Time to clear some plants from the wings and get them into the garden's centre-stage.

First the two small babacos.  Jenny Allen waxes lyrical about these in Paradise In Your Garden.  With the reputation for being even nicer than a pawpaw, '... tasting of sherbet, melon and diluted pineapple, laced with a tinge of strawberry or even rose...', that was good enough for me!  We had bought these from the nursery as one plant, but some weeks after planting, it had rotted off at ground level.  We followed our instinct and chopped the still-live stem into two, and buried them in sand until they took root.  Presto, two healthy plants.

Next we put in a yellow mangosteen.  Promising exotic golden fruit on an attractive tree - it fitted the criteria we had set for our long term orchard. 

Then came a clump of turmeric ( curcuma domestica) that had grown from a piece of stem we had purchased at last year's Herb Fair in Brisbane.  The turmeric went in beside its ginger family relative, galangal, and near the similar looking clump of cardamom - all happily grouped in a semi-shaded spot.

              cardamom clump

Each was tucked in with some buckets of home-made compost, with blood-and-bone and other organic additives.  Last of all came a huge dousing of water and a little drip line to irrigate them from now on.  By Sunday they were all postively beaming as they stretched out their roots into the softened soil and it seemed they had each grown by a foot overnight.

Lovely autumn!  We don't have the coloured leaves or the bare branches of the cooler climes, so we don't always know when it has come.  It's more about the sun losing its sting and the shadows stretching further - and being able to venture out in the midday sun.

Comments

[Ronni Bennett]

I know intellectually that Australia's seasons are opposite those in North America. Still, it's jarring sometimes to hear about autumn when spring flowers here are in full bloom...:-)

[Tjilpi]

So that is what cardamom looks like! I've only seen the pods.

On the subject of seasons I guess we are in Next Autumn as far as the Northern Hemisphere goes...somebody told me that Snoopy's Charles Schulz once said something like: Don't think that tomorrow will never come, because it is already tomorrow in Australia.