My orchids

In an attempt to try growing (phalaenopsis) orchids for the very first time, I eventually found a place for my first 2 orchids. It took me about a month to figure out what to do with them. Within days of buying them I'd taken them out of their pots and left their roots exposed to the air, inside. Then I placed them outside in the same condition but after taking a few days to get them used to the additional sunlight. A few days later they started getting at least 6 hours of full sunlight.

In the beginning, every time I moved the orchids they'd drop a flower. They didn't like me moving them about when they were always inside. Then I learnt (online) that orchids needed sunlight and I learnt further my 2 orchids' leaves were too dark in colour. So I started adapting them to direct sunlight and they haven't dropped a flower since. The only exception to this was when I tried pollinating one of the flowers by hand. I was too rough with the pollinating and snapped one of the flowers off at the stem.

My orchids after being exposed to more sunlight and before mounting them.

My orchids did start toughening up after being exposed to the elements. So on the 27th August 2015 I spontaneously came up with an idea and mounted my orchids on what I had laying around and could find. Out in the back yard was a solitary piece of wood and it was heavy. I picked it up and took it through my apartment to the front yard and began mounting the orchids to it. Finally they had a new home by my front door.

Then this morning, thinking to myself, I wonder how my orchids are going today and I discover something terrible has happened to them. See pictures below:

Not only were most of the flowers partially bruised and faded in colour but it looked liked they had been attacked by something bigger than a fly. Lots of the flowers had their pollen caps ripped off but also have the whole pollen area removed altogether. This makes no sense to me. In the last picture it looks like something did try to pollinate that flower as the pollen cap (the bit at the bottom) is partially uncovered. Something gutted the pollen area of some of the flowers; bruised the flowers; left marks on them; and made me really unhappy.

The day before yesterday I bought a pink orchid but I will not put it outside. I will let nature take it's course and hopefully the orchids outside will come up with their own line of defense against it's attacker/s. If that was indeed the case.

Here is my new orchid. Isn't it lovely?

New plants added to my garden

A few days ago I began further work on a small section of my front garden as seen in the images above. I added 1x Kennedia coccinea (Coral Creeper) native to Western Australia only because indigenous vines are rare to find for my area; 1x Grevillea Loopy Lou; and soon to add 3x Dianella caerulea (Blue Flax Lily) and 3x Brachyscome 'Pacific island'. The Blue Flax Lillies are indigenous to my area.

Finding plants indigenous to my area is difficult to say the least but finding and obtaining just one plant species is better than none at all. With 3 Blue Flax Lilly seedlings I hope to grow more of them once the seedlings have grown and producing seeds. But they are just tiny little plants right now so it will be a long while before that can happen.

The risks of growing plants of any substantial size in my garden is the property owners can easily come along and rip everything out of the garden. Should that happen my only option is to dig everything up and put them in pots. It has happened in the past and it probably will happen again in the future.

Can't exactly remember when but....

Can't exactly remember when but after completing the construction of this garden bed, I added some recently bought plants. All of which were mostly grevilleas. The problem was an invasion of ants at my brother's letter box and surrounding foot path. There was an ant nest nearby and the ants needed controlling and redirected back into the garden.

The ants were already eating the nectar from the largest grevillea in this garden bed, which my brother bought and transplanted to it's current location prior to any garden bed existing there. The grevillea started growing and became established, it seems with minimal watering and TLC.

I bought 3 larger plants, 2 grevilleas and one other species, and over time I also added some dwarf lavender flowers and a few other seedlings of other grevilleas. The smaller (2) grevilleas and lavender flowers I added at a later date ended up dieing. They weren't large enough to survive the heavy frosts and several days of icy cold winds and 2cm of snow back in July.

The non-grevillea plant in the middle of the garden bed.

I also began adding organic matter to the garden bed, including a small tree stump which had broken in half from rotting. I weeded the garden bed and with the 2 additional but smaller grevillea plants being added which were in flower already, the ants seemed to be happy. The ants rarely ventured away from the garden bed. 

Despite the lack of a lot of leaf litter and bark chips in the garden bed, the largest grevillea drops it's spent flowers into the garden bed creating a thin carpet of red flowers. The ants seem to enjoy walking over the tree stump and generally have found new paths to get to the grevillea flowers. They even relocated their nest because I disturbed it when adding the back sleeper to complete the garden bed. Unfortunately I also dug up a frog in that process which was not hurt.

So, initially in the beginning, this was the first garden bed I successfully created and planted out.

The relocated garden bed

Private renting sucks when it comes to gardening. The last time I began making a garden everything was going well. I'll admit it was a jumbled mess and the trees were too close to the flats, but I planted wattles at a safe distance from the flats. The place was sold and then the demolition of the garden happened and I've been forced to start all over again from nothing. Everything from flowers, bushes to trees got ripped out in less than 12 hours. My heart just sank. It took me years to get over it, to get over the anger, and to question whether even if it was worth doing it all over again. I am still reluctant because every 3-7 years the garden gets demolished on a massive scale.

All what remained was the grass. They moved all the rocks to the perimeter and any grevilleas I had were transplanted but soon died. What did survive are still growing. They're mostly grevilleas though. Then a fence was erected which isn't even straight.

Here's some pics of the front garden after the demolition.

Starting from scratch

Gardening is my passion. Growing plants in the ground is even a bigger passion of mine. Keeping the plants alive is not a problem at all. I think I was born in a rainforest (not an actual fact!!!!!) as the way I garden matches that of being in a rainforest. I have this inate ability to water plants a lot, put on too much leaf litter (anything I can find really within a 1km radius of where I live) and am more worried about keeping the soil cool than fertilizing using unnatural products. My fertilizer is whatever I can find, from fallen leaves, bark, to vegetable scraps, all just thrown on top of the soil to rot down by itself.

As I privately rent the place I'm in I am trying to do something with the recently relocated garden. I must admit it does get a lot more sunlight than the old one did but I'm kind of stuck at the moment for not so much ideas rather how to get things going.

You see I've discovered I am hopeless at getting cuttings to take root. I've tried every method known to man, sometimes it works, most times it doesn't. I can get seeds to germinate as long as the sun is shining. But that's where I mess things up in all my excitement. The seeds I get germinated inside, in winter, just end up by rotting the moment I move them into pots placed near a window. It's so bad that the end result is the bark chips end up developing roots in the bottom of the pots. What the heck?

So, I've decided to do one thing different - WORK WITH NATURE NOT AGAINST IT. If potted up seedlings just rot in the pot but anything like wood chips developes roots in the same pot in a matter of just 7 days, then shouldn't I be putting cuttings at the bottom of the pot (or somewhere deep in the pot) instead? I think so, if that's what working.

I need to rethink everything about my gardening skills. The only successful thing I can get to grow is moss, bark chips; and can easily maintain a cool, wet soil condition with minimal maintenance and very little water. In Summer our garden has it's own tropical, humid ecosystem; perfect for tropical plants I might add. But with no shade established for the garden plants yet and only a few plants growing that are not even into their first growth season it seems like an endless task waiting for Spring to come along so the plants will grow.

I live in a subtropical highlands area where establishing anything subtropical should not be a problem. I think I am the problem as I'm not doing it right and not working with nature and the climate. Its time I changed and start getting it right else there will be nothing much else growing in my garden except for what is already there.