So I made yet another trip to Bunnings. I gotta stop going there, I’m always finding stuff I want to buy and try to do.

Anyway, so I went there to get some jiffy pellets in preparation to plant some seeds. I had received the okra and dwarf hollyhock seeds from an Oztion auction (still no signs of the Garden Express order!) and wanted to start the hollyhock since it can take up to 4 weeks to germinate. I’ll probably start the tomato and okra seeds in a couple of week’s time.

As always, I took a walk through the plants section and found some pretty succulents I’d like to plant into a couple of tin cans. I’m getting crafty here and making my own pots out of recycled containers. I’m also going to paint a couple of terracotta pots to match my collection of dark coloured pots, but that’s another story.

The succulents I chose were:

• Echeveria pulvinata
• Echeveria runyonii “Topsy Turvy”
• Echeveria Blue Curl
• Some unnamed succulent

Now I need to find some gravel and coarse sand to increase the drainage before I plant the succulents in their new pots.

It’s been 12 days and still no sign of my Garden Express goodies. This is the worst part about ordering stuff online, sometimes it just takes so damn long to receive stuff.

I also ordered some okra and dwarf hollyhock seeds from Oztion. Looking forward to growing them too, especially the okra (or lady’s fingers). I’m going to grow an extra couple of plants for my dad in exchange for a fish curry recipe that includes okra.

The first truss of cherry tomatoes have ripened. I got a picture in the cherry tomato 2007 gallery. I’m going to wait a few more days before harvesting and feasting on them.

I got a few jobs to do for August:

• Plant the momoko tomato seeds
• Re-pot the office plants
• Fertilise everything

My dad came over today to borrow some sanding stuff. I couldn’t resist showing him how large the tomato plants have gotten since he had a small hand raising them while I was away for a month. We ended up picking 2 of the ripest tomatoes and eating them. Yum, so sweet and they weren’t even *fully* ripe yet.

I told him about the Momoko tomatoes I’m going to start next month and he asked for a couple of plants when they’re big enough. My pleasure to do so, of course. Any excuse to grow more plants!

I finally found some pot sealer for the terracotta pots that I should have sealed before putting the tomatoes in them. Once this crop is finished, I’m going to throw out the existing tomato plants, clean the pots and seal them. I might even paint them so I have all matching black pots on the balcony.

It looks like the sunny weather is coming to an end soon, Thursday look to be the start of rain again. Saturday’s going to be windy, I hope the tomatoes will survive!

I’ve decided to give up my Asiatic lilies. Yup, that’s right, the Enchantment variety is going to be donated to someone, but I just don’t know who yet!

In it’s place, I’m going to have the America variety, it’s the darkest maroon Asiatic lily on the market. I’ve placed an order with Garden Express to get 3 America Asiatic lilies as well as 3 Hot Chocolate Calla lilies. This way, I will have a lovely border of dark green and white gardenias and pots of dark purple and maroon bulbs of lilies, callas and tulips. Oh yeah, and a dark red frangipani, if it ever grows!

I also got another light, pH and water meter from Garden Express, and some pot holders to lift the bulb pots off the ground.

I spent last night making the tomato stake lattice. It’s looking ok, a little strange with bright red string, but it’s working as I hoped it would. Here’s what the north wall looks like:

Nice and neat. I’m going to have to find a way of securing down the lattice before there are any significant winds. I also should design a way to protect the tomatoes from strong winds should it come up again.

I got mystery plants! When my grandmother passed away and we had her funeral, part of the ceremony involved her offspring receiving little packets of rice and beans that we were to scatter in our garden. Since I don’t really have a garden, I scattered them in my indoors and outdoor pots and the beans from the indoor pots have sprouted into some sort of plant. I have no idea what it is, but I potted them up into their own pot and fetched one more seed from another pot so I’d have 3 of these mystery plants.

Another beautiful sunny winter’s day. I managed to spend an hour or so outside on the balcony finishing up some of the jobs I desperately wanted to do.

I went back to the store to get another 2 glazed pots in the same style and colour of the one I bought yesterday. As they say, everything looks better in uneven numbers.

So with the new glazed pots, I potted up the tulip bulbs and the lilium bulbs. Finally! They really should have been done a couple of months ago, but oh well, everything rarely goes according to plan with me.

The rest of the plants and their soil have also been treated with pyrethrum, so I hope this will bring down the numbers of fungus gnats quite drastically. I had also bought a big plastic tub to store all the spare soil, mulch and fertilisers as a quarantine method. This is really a temporary solution as I’m still looking to purchase a mini-shed or storage locker to properly store these things. Eventually, I’d like to control the fungus gnat population with some of those parasitic nematodes, so I better start looking for them soon.

The last of the capsules of the frangipani seedlings have been removed. Out of 20 seeds, 12 have germinated. How many will ultimately survive is anyone’s guess at the moment. The biggest downer is that I only have one Firestorm seedling, so I’m going to baby that one. The other varieties (Brittany, Lurline and some mystery frangis) have 3-4 seedlings so you could say I have “spares”.

Yay, managed to get a bit of gardening done in today’s gorgeous winter sunshine.

I bought some more potting mix, a couple of indoor plastic pots, a glazed pot for the tulips, some longer garden stakes for the tomatoes and some pyrethrum concentrate. Yup, decided I couldn’t wait any longer while trying to find more organic means of controlling those pesky fungus gnats.

I managed to treat the indoor plants and seedlings with the pyrethrum, but spent a little too much time at work (yes, I work on the weekends too, such is life) so didn’t get a chance to do the outdoor plants as well.

I plan to make a lattice out of the bamboo stakes I bought today and have it up against the north facing wall on the balcony for the current and future tomato plants.

I started the process of planting the tulip bulbs I received recently. I managed to get the soil mixed and into the pot then decided to treat the soil with pyrethrum before planting the bulbs in it. Tomorrow’s going to be a lovely, sunny day again, so I’m going to spend a bit more time on the balcony finishing these jobs.

I’ve been told the little wormy things eating my frangipani seeds are fungus gnats, and my have they done some damage! I’m going to need to treat pretty much all of my plants and the soils their in.

I was advised to use pyrethrum to drench the soil. It sounds safe enough to use since it’s low toxic to humans and pets and is inactivated by sunlight. I would still prefer to use more organic control methods so I did a little bit of research and found that fungus gnats can be controlled by a predatory nematode called Steinernema feltiae and a mite called Hypoaspis miles. Now I just need to find out where I can get a hold of these creepy crawlies in Western Australia!

Otherwise, the frangipani seedlings seem to be doing well. I can see growth of new leaves between the cotyledons on many of the seedlings.

Some of the cherry tomatoes are starting to change colour too! There’s a distinct reddish tinge to many of the fruits. Make sure to see the cherry tomato gallery for the pictures!

The germination rate of the frangipani seeds were about 50% after almost a month in the soil. Some of the seedlings look very healthy and growing happily, the others look ok and only one looks a little strange with the capsule opening up but no root system or stem has developed.

I pulled out a couple of seeds from the soil to see if there’s any roots growing. Only one had roots growing, a few I couldn’t quite pull out, so I’m assuming they’ve rooted and about 3 or 4 of the frangipani seeds, have some suspicious looking worm-like looking things on them. I could’ve sworn they looked as if they burrowed into the seeds!

Needless to say I’m not very happy. I’m not even sure what they are, I thought they were nematodes, but I thought nematodes were microscopic.

Anyway, so I think I’ll try to seek out advice, but I suspect I’m going to have to destroy the seeds that haven’t germinated.

A couple of nights ago, I spent some time with the seedlings and decided to help the frangipanis out of their capsule. Armed with a 10 mL syringe that I use to water the seedlings (I find there’s less disturbance to the soil and seedling when I water this way) and a couple of toothpicks, I carefully removed the capsules of those seedlings where I could see a bit of stem.

Pictures are in the frangipani gallery.

We’ve had some crazy wet weather in Perth this past week, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up any time soon. We definitely need the rain here, but the wind has whipped up a mess and almost completely decimated my tomatos. The tomatos are over a metre tall and even though they were staked, the wind was so strong it bent a couple of stalks and all the tomato leaves look shaken up.

I took them indoors and re-staked them, within half a day they looked happier. I know it’s my own fault for planting the seeds in the wrong season.

I kept the tomato plants indoors for a couple of days, but its going to need to go back out in full sunlight soon. Hope the weather eases up soon.

Strangely, the gardenias still look happy as can be even though they where attacked by the wind the most.