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Sunday, May 6, 2012

The poor neglected garden....

Luckily in March and April here this year, we've had regular rainfall. This has resulted in a flurry of flowering as well as a welter of weeds. Last week I dug up a small area in the sweet potato (kumara) patch. They were delicious! There should be lots more to dig up over the next month or so. The soil in that bed has remained easy to dig into unlike last year when it compacted from the  months of  heavy rains.

Just like last year, the sweet potato vines are now flowering; it such a delicate pink/mauve  colour.


Now, I had high hopes that this year I would get at least one pumpkin from the vine that came up by itself in the sweet potato patch.

A baby pumpkin


My neighbour Tom, has large pumpkins which are almost ready to pick...but as you can see, it just isn't going to 'happen' for me.


A baby pumpkin which is not going to grow into a large pumpkin ;-(

A few weeks ago I saw that the passionfruit vine had more flowers and they have now developed into fruit so that's a 'win'. I never ceased to be amazed by this vine as it came up by itself and according to a local gardening expert, such vines rarely do well, let alone produce fruit in the first year. It's now into its third year and according to the experts it probably will die off soon. But they have been wrong before...lol



My alamanda vine (Cherry Ripe) is covered in flowers this year. It's an untidy looking plant but I just love the colour of those blooms. Hopefully after flowering I can work on getting it 'into shape'.



My next project in the garden is to tidy up under the new front stairs. It's just a mass of weeds at the moment; it's amazing the variety of weeds and they have grown there as if by magic. No photos...it's just too terrible :-)

2 comments:

kaiteM said...

It's fun tidying up in the garden when there is time, much better than tidying up in the house. The cherry ripe is a lovely colour.

Lynn said...

Hi Maria,

We had trouble with our pumpkins at first also dying off the same as yours. We decided to hand pollinate the little pumpkins thinking that they must be the female of the vine (just like a zucchini vine) with one of the flowers without the 'little pumpkin' and it worked a treat! We have now have lots of pumpkins to last for winter.