Autumn colour

| Chris Riley

The Chinese Tallow

You may remember on 13 March, only 27 days ago, I posted a few photos of changes we’re making in the garden. We’d just planted a Chinese Tallow Tree. The Tallow is a reasonably small back yard tree with gorgeous autumn colour. Autumn colour is rare in Western Australia.

The tree, in only 27 days has changed from summer green (the photo on the left) to a little display of autumn red (the photo on the right). We look forward to the tree maturing in yearsto come, and providing a more significant reminder that winter’s on the way. It’ll be nice to see it burst into renewed life come spring too.

The greens are growing too

We hadn’t even finished erecting our three raised vegetable gardens on 13th March.

one raised garden bed partially filled with soil and manure – two to go yet. By the week-end we should be ready to start planting.

A few days later we’d finished the three garden beds and planted some seedlings. When we returned from our four day break away, some of the greens looked to have grown with the speed of Jack’s Beanstalk. We’ve been picking baby leaves of mixed lettuce for our lunch almost daily now, and have had a few small meals of nice, young silver beet.

Mixed lettuce and silver beet only about three weeks since it was planted.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had our own vege garden. We’ve planted strawberries, brocolli, mixed lettuce, silver beet, celery, parsley, leeks , garlic, turnips and rhubarb. So far we’re only eating the lettuce, silverbeet and parsley. I wonder if we’ll get any strawberries before winter sets in. They have flowers, so fingers crossed. In the meantime though, what a pleasure it is to be adding freshly picked, young greens to our plate.

23 thoughts on “Autumn colour”

  2. That tree is amazing. It will be so nice to see some autumn colour. Your veges are doing well but I was a bit mystified with the black tubes in the raised bed. Is it a watering system. BTW, the new theme looks great. Great choice 🙂

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    1. Yes, the tubes are a watering system. We used to always have them in ground, but were constantly digging through them. Now we lay them on top where they can be repositioned easily as plants get bigger and block the water, or we just pull them out of harms way if we’re digging a bed over. It works well, and as the plants get bigger they’ll barely be visible. Thanks for noticing the new theme Amanda.

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      1. That is a good idea, Chris. I know watering systems often break and that is most likely the reason. Good thinking. Yes the theme is a good one to choose, I think. Some of the others, don’t seem very structured – at least not to my way of thinking of how I want to present information. Have you got some more cruise guiding planned to do in the future?

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      2. The cruise ships have finished their season and won’t be coming into busselton again now until October. I think I probably will do more next season. It was quite good fun.

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    1. They make everything a lot easier. We used some manure, and good top soil. It must have been really good as we started eating the lettuce and silverbeet only two weeks after planting out the seedlings.

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    1. Thanks Lorelle. I can’t believe how quick it was from planting until eating. Literally only two weeks (that was seedlings though, not seeds). Actually, that post was mainly because I wanted to have a play around with the new theme. Once I get used to it, I think it’s going to be quite good to use. Currently a bit of a learning curve for me, but I’ll get there.

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      1. Good on you Chris.
        Yes the warm weather we had here a few weeks ago sprouted all my seeds within a week! I was amazed. Now to repotting them into my vegetable patch. 😉

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      2. I have a few seeds to plant direct yet, and a little bit of space left. We’re going to be away in Perth this week end, so will sow them when we get back. Next year I’ll try seeds for everything.

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