Gardening with the weather.

Hello all. I am rather new at talking to a screen but never mind, my kids say I never stop anyway. I am interested to hear about how you all garden with the weather.
Having spent over 20 yrs in WA, out from Geraldton and then coming back to Vic. up at Bright, it was a totoally different style of plants.
I am now in west Vic and the area is very dry and windy with little or no rain. I have about 2 acres and have it all now under drip irrigation. I grow anything I can get hold of. I am plant mad, but having lived for so long in areas where you have to watch water usage, I am used to doing it, and use plants accordingly. . My favorites are roses , iris, dahlias and cacti. I have natives and perennials. I water for 2 hours about once a fortnight, except for pots and shade houses which get a little more. I find that people over estimate what water a plant needs., and there are so many plants that people think need copious water that really will do well on a lot less. Admittedly, all plants will be bigger and greener with lots of water, but I find that mine do very well on what they get . I usually always have some color somewhere . There are parts that resemble the Sahara but in winter they grow again. I have lots of trees that I have grown from self sown babies and 2 chestnuts I grew from nuts.
This forum is a great place and I hope to get to know some of you better as we chat. I have put a picture up of part of my garden that was in Gardening Australia magazine 3 yrs ago. The willow in the pic was a 10" cutting planted in 2000 to cover the leach drain. Worked beautifully.

Hi 77sunset,
you have a beautiful garden, looks like paradise!
I moved to Townsville from the blue mountains 5 years ago. We bought a small house on an acre with absolutely nothing but seven established mango trees down the back.
the first thing we did was start planting trees, then I set about digging up garden beds and planting natives (my favourite). There were months of digging and hard work but it was worth it, then our long awaited wet season we were so excited about arrived and washed away my gardens!
Lesson learnt after the wet season I relocated everything that was still alive to newly dug garden beds in an area I knew wouldn't flood!
My new gardens are a great success, I try to plant as many plants native to Townsville or similar areas I can. Our garden guru on local ABC am holds free talks at the greening australia nursery here which is open to the public once a month and a great source of information.
It's challenging learning to garden in such a different climate but rewarding and fun, our vege garden has been a test, but at least we are never short of eggplant, capsicum and chillies!

HI 77sunset and Tropcal3. We have liven in Nelson for over thirty years but three years ago moved from a 10 acre country block into town on a new section. The country block was full of stones and in my home garden I could never get a shovel in more than three inches deep because of the stony ground, one had to grub out he stones before one could plant anything.

It was heaven to work on ordinary soil here in town. Our street is in a new subdivision, set on old orchard paddocks so it is a bit of a mission to get rid of the docks and mallow, thistles and twitch grass but I think they have been conquered.

So nice to see the photos you have posted and read what you have done. Such lush growth 77 and that is a lovely bottle brush Tropical.

I have roses, lilies, peonies, perennials and annuals. As it is a small section with restrictions on the height of trees we can have here, we had to be careful about the trees we could plant. Have three robinia trees - two mop tops and a Lace lady, 2 small growing maples, a Michaelia and one flowering cherry. We have a couple of raised vegetable beds, spuds, tomatoes, watermelon, lettuce, silver and red beet and radishes.

This photo is of our front border, it looks very colourful but I will have to do a bit of changing the position of some of the periennials as I ended up putting taller growing plants in front of smaller ones. Lol

Envious of the drip irrigation already installed, it is on our list of must do's!

Hello tropical3 and ferrymead
I am really happy today as we finally had some rain. On Saturday we had a real downpour and received over 1" of rain. I still like to measure in inches. I know this is not much by more northern parts but here it was wonderful. I could hear the plants slurping it all up.
I sometimes envy the gardeners in other places but we all have our trials in gardening and isn't that half the joy of doing it ?
I am gradually changing the garden to match the weather but still manage to have flowers. I do not put any annuals in as it is a waste of time with the wind, heat and lower water use. I am putting in a lot more iris and dahlias as they thrive here. I do have a lot of natives but they have to compete with gum trees that were put in long before I came. They do alright and are growing slowly. I find Hebes also like it here and I have 10 different ones. They make a nice windbreak for my roses too. Must go as it is time for lunch. Have put up a pic of my dahlia area last year.

Hello All - like tropical3 I am always sure of eggplants and chilis.

This winter (JUne - November) we hadthe most amazing tomato season - it was like living with the siblings of Jack's beanstalk 8-) I have a chest freezer full of Scorpios, cherry tomatoes and one from a local seedling I don't know the name of.

Our eggplants are green and white varieties - again locally propagated and I don't know if they are name varieties. We cut them back on Christmas week, and they are merrily re-sprouting. The green ones have stems about 4cm diameter. I am hoping to be able to find a 'pea eggplant' seedling one day....

All chilis thrive here - one of the older bushes crcked in half down the main stem in September - so we taped it back together with duct tape! Half died, but the other half is going strong 8-)

We also have snake beans, lemon grass, vietnam mint, star fruit, pawpaws, pineapples and bananas.

It's thefirst time I've had any sort of food garden in the tropics - and I'm really enjoying it