I hate being sick, everything goes out of whack and my routines go down the drain and it takes a while for everything to settle back into a good rhythm.

Anyway, so I neglected the tomato plants a little and now they’re all on their way out. I harvested the tomatoes that I could and this weekend will be tomato dumping time. I’m nibbling on the ripe tomatoes and mmm… mmm… mmm… it’s so tasty. Next time I know to plant only one tomato plant per pot, the plants are very pot-bound at the moment, which I’m sure contributed to their dismay.

Once the plants make it to the trash, the old tomato pots are going to be cleaned sealed (they were terracotta) and something new will be planted in them, not sure what yet, maybe the hollyhock?

Speaking of hollyhock, out of 8 seeds 5 germinated and I already killed 2 from lack of water. I moved the hollyhock and frangipani seedlings outside and kinda forgot about them. The frangipani seedlings are still alive, but 2 of the hollyhock seedlings died. I stuck 5 more seeds in the jiffy pots and gave them all a good water.

I started new seeds this morning. I soaked 10 jiffy pellets, 5 for okra seeds and 5 for tomato seeds. I’m really thinking of getting a mini greenhouse so I can keep the seedlings outside. It’s ridiculous having so many seedlings indoors, it messes up the house.

Which reminds me, I need more charcoal coloured plastic pots! The two house plants I have at home are going to be moved to the office and me, being the somewhat anal retentive type, wants all the pots to match. I still have to re-pot the peace lily and the mother’s in law tongue as it is, now I can add the calathea and cordyline to the list.

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

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”.

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.