Town showcases spring florals

Yellow banksia roses are rearing their heads in town, along with wisteria.

By Beatrice Hawkins

Over the years I have grown many things in gardens in many different areas. I do particularly like growing vegetables and find growing food especially satisfying. I enjoy cooking and have made quantities of jams, pickles and preserves over the years.

At present I do not own a preserving kit, but for many years the ’Vacola’ bottles were regularly filled with seasonal produce.

I have lovely memories of preparing copious amounts of fruit with my mother and grandmother even before I started going to school and that’s a really long time ago!

When I married, my wonderful mother in law taught me to make and bottle large quantities of tomato sauce, pickles and relish as, among other things on the farms, they grew acres of tomatoes under contract to IXL for sauce production, so there was always a ready source of produce in season.

At present I am involved with cooking for the Warwick Community Van and from time to time we are given donations of home grown produce to use in preparing the Sunday night meals. This weekend I was given three home grown brown onions.

Now you may think that doesn’t sound like much, however, the total weight of these three onions was 2.5kg! The largest weighed over 1kg! Rarely, if ever, have I seen larger specimens!

I hope the gardener involved has some similar to enter in our Spring Flower Show between 8am and 10am on Wednesday 20 October for public display that afternoon and on Thursday 21 October.

All you keen growers out there, please check out your gardens and bring in some of your produce to make a great display in St. Mary’s Hall.

Flowers, shrubs, pot plants, vegetables – there are categories for everything. Children and schools are well catered for with their own sections and we would especially like to encourage this next generation of gardeners to enter. I will be visiting the schools with entry forms!

The flower arranging section is always a delight and you don’t have to have grown what you use in this section! So put your artistic talents to work and enter.

My entries this year might be restricted to the herb section as they are flourishing at present, although the lavender is flowering beautifully at the moment also… I’ll have to wait and see what is flowering on the day!

Schedules are available as usual from Bryson’s in Palmerin Street, so pick one up, check it out and get ready to enter and help provide a great display of what can be produced in our area and community.

As I commented last week, the gardens around the area are looking wonderful with so many different things flowering. May bushes are a picture of white whether left to be arching sprays or trimmed into neat shapes and hedges.

It always amuses this small brain that ’May’ bushes bloom in August and September in Australia – a carry over from the fact that white settlement came from the northern hemisphere where May is spring.

Wisteria is blooming beautifully over fences and trellises also and the perfume in these gardens must be wonderful. A garden that I see each time I drive down town has the beautiful yellow and white banksia roses climbing up trees along with wisteria and it really is a picture to behold.

I doubt they intended for them to be quite so rampant but I really enjoy the sight.

The common African daisies are providing a great splash of colour whether white or the many shades of mauve, pink and purple. They are a most forgiving plant and come up regularly every year once planted, and fill in spaces nicely.

The range of colours and forms available from the nurseries is intriguing and I will shortly succumb to some of the ’spider’ varieties and find a spot in the garden or a pot.

I have planted three different coloured tomatoes, green and purple climbing beans, peas and rainbow spinach in this last week and am preparing beds for melons, zucchini and cucumbers. Being limited by space and water is one of my regrets about living in town.

Deciding which varieties to grow is always a problem to me as I am intrigued by the selection available. I would really like to grow the shiny ’bowling ball black’ tomatoes that I saw in my niece’s garden in NZ a few years ago but have been unable to find seed available in Australia.

Just think how appetising they would look in a salad with the little bright yellow, green, red, orange and purple ones that are available? Given unlimited space and water, I would grow them all!

Two things I am going to try and find room for this season though, are some of the multi coloured ’Indian’ corn that I’ve seen. Whether used fresh or kept dried for an interesting table arrangement, I would love to grow some.

The other is some of the intriguing coloured sunflowers and these will be started shortly as the ground warms, so I can have a continuing show from about Christmas on. Once again, space and water will be the limiting factor.