Holy Heru!

[changeling]

... Dylan Moran was right. Melbourne is 30cm from the surface of the sun. I went into our back garden to discover that the sage I planted out yesterday (present from Smallest Sister) was still looking wilty. I was concerned.

Not as concerned, however, as when I discovered Mysterious Serrated-Leaved Seedling That I Always Secretly Hoped Was Strawberry, which spontaneously grew from a box of worm castings, was dried to crispy (it was fine this morning!). As in, "I pressed this between filter paper and two Yellow Pages for six months" crispy. Searching the garden bed for the three basil plants I planted out yesterday (also from Smallest Sister) had almost vanished, they were so burnt. There were sad little green stems topped by shrunken brown leaves. WTF?? Two of them only got morning sunlight, and are now in shade. Sure, the control plant I planted on the other side of the garden might be expected to be a little crispy. But all of them?

I have watered the bed, as well as Egbert, our eggplant (SS again. I was treated this Christmas), to within an inch of their lives. I used up the last few litres of rainwater I had saved from the horrific rainstorms we had earlier this week.

Comments

[ohownovel.livejournal.com]

Most of my potplants are looking wilty in this heat :\ And it's not even *that* hot outside! I think it's really hard on new plants that have just been transplanted and are not rooted in the soil enough to retain its moisture on a hot day.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

It is. I hope both your plants and mine last this week! Lots of TLC is due, I think. ;)

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Gosh but your summers are INSANE.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Melbourne summers aren't too bad (usually). You'll have a dozen or so days above 35, but they're usually split up with some lovely cool changes and days in the late twenties. This Wednesday's due to be 25, thank goodness. Our weather this year's been a bit fucked - hello, global warming.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

Anything over 25 is considered insane here. I think our last summer averaged about 14 thanks to the biblical levels of rainfall.

[naewinter.livejournal.com]

New plants will have the hardest time of it, try to find some extra shade for them if it looks like it'll be hot. Some big bits of cardboard propped up or if you can get enough shade cloth from the hardware you could make a bit of a tent for each plant or the whole bed.
If the owner of the house doesn't want to put tanks in you can get collapsable water tank-bag things from hard ware places too.

It took about three seconds for me to get far too toasted this morning at about 8:00. =(

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I know. I expected to baby them through the next couple of weeks. One being toasted in one day shocked me a bit. The remaining basil plants are going to get watered every morning for the next week or two.

Collapsible water tank-bags?? That sounds AWESOME.

[naewinter.livejournal.com]

I lovelovelove having a vegi-patch again.
We have lots of baby tomato plants that we keep finding self sewn from the compost or washing up water, we've transplanted them but they have had to have a little shade-cloth tent over them everyday. The capsicum seedlings just shrug the sun off though. We've got Zucchinis coming out of our ears (baked, salad, in spaghetti sauce), they've fruited so fast were having trouble keeping up (although maybe I put too many in at once) I'd highly recommend them. They haven't had to be shaded at all if they weren't transplanted, we even had one self sewn from a pile of rubble. The pumpkins are trying to TAKE OVER THE WORLD and have self sewn a colony of their own under the apricot tree.

I'm jealous about the basil, only one seedling came up for us, mmm I love basil.

I think Mum saw the bag-tank things in Bunnings or Mitre 10.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Hee! Lucky you. I have a few tomato plants now, but none are self-seeded. I got four little seedlings at CERES in exchange for some of our mint (pre-dates us), and bought the "tomato tower" pots at Bunnings to keep them in. I've since put in a couple of our seeds, so we should have three varieties should they all come up. Very exciting!!

I planted some zucchini seeds but they didn't take. What sort of environment do you have them in (shade, semishade, full sun)?

Our pumpkins have already taken over our larger bed, and are making a move on the small one. Steph hacks them back every so often, but I'm a bit nervous that we won't get any pumpkins as a result!

I have a pot of basil that I grew from seed last year, but it's not giving off many leaves. I'm considering transplanting it into a bigger pot ... maybe after the heat dies down a bit. The little seedlings SS gave me aren't going to give us much for a few months yet! We love basil too.

I'm totally going to give my local Bunnings and Mitre 10 a call (and try the bigger Bunnings further afield if that comes up dry). Do you know how big the tanks are? We have v. little space to spare.

[naewinter.livejournal.com]

I assume from the picture that the tank-bag things were about the size of a sulo bin, I'm not sure though. I've seen really huge tank-bags while looking for them in online catalogues.

The zucchinis went into very composted dirt in raised beds with shade at about 3:00 in the afternoon, every seed we put in came up but then again we had one come up in dry rocky dead rubble. Maybe you need to try punnet raised ones till they get started, last year we did that and they turned out the same.
We just tend to stick seeds in the ground and if they work? Wonderful. If they don't? Stick something else in there.

As long as you get flowers on the pumpkins they should have some.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I might try zucchinis next year. It depends if we'll still be here (it's a rental).

We just tend to stick seeds in the ground and if they work? Wonderful. If they don't? Stick something else in there.
Steph and I have inherited this attitude from Steph's parents, too. I think we've ended up having three rounds of planting this year.

I'm not so sure about that. Based on my observations so far, pumpkins seem to have male and female flowers, and while the male flowers are close to the base of the plant, the female flowers (where the fruit develops) are mostly on the tendrils. Most of the flowers we have are male. I've spotted at least one female flower that we should get fruit from (and one more female flower that's rotting in the shade), but most of the other female flowers I've seen have been hacked off. I'm hoping I'm just missing some of them and there'll be surprise pumpkins come autumn.

[naewinter.livejournal.com]

Ah, I didn't know about the male/female thing. We tend to just turn the tendrils back on each other.

[nys.livejournal.com]

Am very jealous of Egbert.
I thought those came from the parentals?

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

Nope, pretty sure they're from Kara, and the parentals got me/us the Very Large strawberry/herb pots.

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

P.S., maybe there will be an eggplant tree given as a housewarming gift when you move into your new place next year.

[nys.livejournal.com]

guests bearing gifts of egglant trees will always be warmly welcomed in to my house :)

[hespa.livejournal.com]

Uh-oh... I don't get to see how my green babies are doing until I get back from Phillip Island on Tuesday - and tomorrow it's forecast to be 42 degrees...

**bites her nails and worries**

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I hope all your plants are sufficiently well established that they're OK. Have you got someone to give them a water every other day or so?

[daharja.livejournal.com]

Even our weeds are keeling over in this heat.

42 degrees is RIDICULOUS!

I'll be out there in the early morning, taking advantage of their wilty and sickly root systems to whip the buggers out. However, I am pleased to report that our new lawn and the tree ferns are still doing very well and looking great, due to the torrential blizzards rainfall we had a week ago.

BTW, it looks like watersusurrus was right about our dying native bottlebrush we thought had given up the ghost. I think it was in shock. At any rate, it has sprouted new leaves and looks like it is recovering. Yay!

And check out the latest pix at http://cluttercut.blogspot.com/2007/12/our-little-patch-of-earth.html