Hello dear rose friends … hope you all enjoyed Australia Day as much as my friend who emailed this:
“Australia Day was good – I wore my T shirt made in China, my thongs made in Brazil, drank an Aussie beer owned by the Japs, gave the missus a South Australian wine owned by the French, cooked a steak on my BBQ made in Thailand, listened to some music on my radio made in Korea, and then got real patriotic and proudly flew the Aussie flag made in China. Then we went for a drive in our car made in Germany. How Aussie is that!!
Have a good day and I will report back in a fortnight….Thanks P.P”
Graham and I went to lunch with our friends – a German, a Greek, a Scot, a Pom and I’m Dutch – eight of us laughed till we cried whilst learning to do the Zorba which was safer than playing cricket on the back lawn … is cricket our NATIONAL DANCE???
One thing is for sure, we live in the most magnificently lucky, multi-cultural country!
GRA’S GARBLE …
I’ve been doing experiments with ‘bio-char’ which I created from a very slow burning, very hot bonfire several months ago.
To provide a steady feed on my rose garden, I put fine lumps of charcoal into a solution of seaweed and liquid fish emulsion, left it to soak for 3-4 weeks then placed it around the base of my plants. Once a week, I poured seaweed solution and my weed-tea over the bio-char to keep it actively releasing microbes which are stored in the charcoal.
The results have been amazing – as I’ve been reading: “Bio-char is proving to be the greatest, most significant beneficial revolution in organic growing techniques for years”.
To replicate this ‘brew’ you could buy a bag of pure charcoal (not heat beads which are impregnated with kerosene!), soak it in water, seaweed, fish emulsion, add some weeds, raw chook poo (or other animal manure) and after a few weeks, place the soaked charcoal around your roses. Use the remaining liquid by adding about 1 litre ‘brew’ to 10 litres water and pour over all plants – stand back and watch them grow!
Q. Why do you feed cocoa to tadpoles? A. To make chocolate frogs.
If you do nothing much to your roses during summer, please pour some seaweed solution over them at least fortnightly – we use and recommendECO-SEAWEED POWDER because:
- It has 60 vital nutrients which all plants love
- Includes 16% potassium to strengthen plants
- Is 100% pure soluble seaweed – no clogging of spray head
- Super concentrated – 1 teaspoon per 9 litre watering can
- Certified organic – no nasty chemicals!
Q. What goes through a grasshopper’s mind when he hits the windscreen of a car driving at 100km per hour? A. His legs!
Hope you’re enjoying your summer rose garden as much as we are here at Clonbinane – it’s a sight to behold… Gra
MAGGIE
Gorgeous modern shrub rose at the best of times but she ‘shone supreme’ during the extreme weather – highly, highly recommended rose if you love to pick bunches of flowers for a vase or simply love a rose which produces clusters of creamy-white blooms continually on a very disease-resistant, neatly rounded shrub to around 1.5 metres –
We had lots of emails about LORRAINE LEE which was featured last week –
“Lorraine Lee is one of my childhood favourite roses. My mother planted a climbing one on a trellis that separated the back yard flower garden from the vegie patch and orchard in our suburban Melbourne home in 1950’s
I could see it from my bedroom window so when we needed to design a garden in 2002 for our Kensington B&B I chose four of the bush variety for their long flowering and fragrance. Passers-by shot to inhale the fragrance and there is hardly a month when there is not one blooming.
I now have a climbing one on the tennis court front fence at our NE Victorian farm.
We are also delighted with this stunner
DUET from which you would pick bunches and bunches of flowers to fill vases in your home:
We wish all the kids a happy time as they move up a grade and back to school now that the summer holidays are over – enjoy the moments!
~ Graham, Diana and Mooi at Clonbinane
