Trimming Back and Ripping Out in the Shadehouse Garden - My Downunder Dry Tropics Garden Journal - Week 1, 2011.

Today's Date:   January 5th                        

Season:   mid-Summer
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Gardening Zone:  'Dry Tropics' area located within Tropical Zone/Australia  (comparable to U.S. Zone 11)

Weather:

 

30°C / 86°F     Currently: Partly Cloudy    Wind: NE at 19 km/hr    Humidity: 70%   Feels like:  33°C

Today actually began with sunshine ... so rare this Summer!  Finally, that bright golden orb made a welcome appearance and not only that, the sky was blue ... and filled with lovely puffy white clouds.   The Garden and I were so sick of pale dull grey!   OK ... there were a few dark clouds looming, but upon spotting those golden rays, I was determined to get out into the garden this morning.

I headed out to start the clean-up in my Greenhouse/Shadehouse Garden.  It's been weeks since I've been able to get out there ... weeks of endles dreary grey skies, drizzling and sometimes driving drenching rain, as well as thunderstorms and lightning. The Greenhouse/Shadehouse Garden was a veritable jungle! You needed a compass and a survival pack to make it back to the house if you ventured out into it!


The almost constant rainfall all throughout our Spring and early Summer has resulted in the Giant Sword Fern becoming almost gargantuan and not just giant! Each fern frond can reach two metres in length during the Summer 'wet' season and the other plants get swallowed up!

So, out I went this morning and spent quite a while trimming back that overgrown jungle.   I actually enjoyed it! 

Well I began by trimming back all the Dragon Wing Begonias in hanging baskets, as well as the Barleria, the white Begonia semperflorens and the ivy Pelargoniums. The hanging baskets were so saturated that when they were moved slightly, water would drip from the bottom of the lining.  All the plants got a 'short back and sides' trim ... it's rather severe but so necessary.

Next I began to mercilessly hack at loads of Nephrolepis biserrata (Giant Sword Fern) and Neomarica longifolia (Yellow Walking Iris).   This is the pile about halfway through the clean-up.

At last, after all the trimming back I could now use the pathway again ... and I could now access the potted plants that were scattered in amongst all the foliage of the ferns and irises.  I trimmed back the Inky Fingers Coleus, New Guinea Impatiens, Dragon Wing Begonias, the various other Coleus and Hypoestes.

Now I can move about the Greenhouse/Shadehouse once more without getting lost in amongst all the Neomarica and Nephrolepis.  Aren't they fabulous words!!!

My final job was to move all the pots of newly propagated plants into patches of sunlight ... Stictocardia, Hoya, Streptocarpus, Shrimp Plant, 'Frosty Pink' Brugmansia, Gloriosa Lily, Begonias and Bromeliads. 

I swear I heard whoops of joy from them all!!!  They have been craving decent sunlight for a while now.  I think I also heard cries of ecstasy from all the plants released from their ferny prison ... they could once again feel the sunshine on their leaves.

Alpinia vittata, Cordyline 'Red Wings' and Calathea ornata.

Stromanthe 'Triostar'.

Calathea medallion.

Alpinia zerumbet.

Dracaena marginata 'Tricolour', Schefflera arboricola and flowering Neomarica longifolia.

Globba winitii.


As I write this blog it's now afternoon and the clouds have covered the sun once more.  There's a forecast for thunderstorms and rain again this evening, but I'm felling so good after getting down and dirty at last, that even that can't wipe the satisfied grin off my face!

TO DO:
Must trim back Giant Sword Fern growing around the hanging pots of Impatiens walleriana.

Fertilise all potted plants.