It was a long driving day today in the country, I got home after dark and it was raining. But wanted to check in with you all and let you know my plan for looking after the bees and pollinators in my garden. Hoping they’ll approve of my plan and want to stay!
ABOUT US…
Welcome to Reverse Homesteading! We have just moved into our unit in the Temperate Gardening Zone of Melbourne, Australia. We were previously @rockytropixgardening in the Far North of Australia. I still add videos on this first channel.
Melbourne is in the Australian Hardiness Zone 10b, (USA 9a/9b) which considers how tough plants need to be in Winter… Melbourne has 4-5 frosts, each Winter. Usually no colder than minus two or three degrees Celsius. We also have dry, hot Summers, sometimes with hot northerly winds coming in from more desert areas. Often there is a thunderstorm or cool change at the end of a day with extreme heat… Melbourne is officially “a Mediterranean Climate”.
OUR HISTORY…
In June 2020, my husband and I felt called to a small rural area in Far North Queensland… It was at the other end of Australia to where we were, in Melbourne, Victoria.
Exactly three years after our arrival up north in early 2021 – to the day! We felt we were to move back to Melbourne.
All of the above starts this new journey on Reverse Homesteading, from country with lots of space, back to a small garden in a city of 5.2 million people!
See the start of our next garden-making journey, from late January 2025… Now we have finally moved into our small home in the suburbs!
WHERE WE ARE ONLINE…
I’m also on Instagram @ReverseHomesteading
If you would like to see my sister YouTube Channel from our time in the tropics, with wallabies, chickens, frogs, snakes and garden tours, you can see it here:
https://youtube.com/@rockytropixgardening?feature=shared
Also on Instagram @rockytropixgardening
Welcome to my journey!
Hey everyone, welcome to Reverse Homesteading. It is the evening and I got home late about 6:30 at night. It was about half an hour after sunset and it was raining. So, I thought I’d show you what I was going to do next with my garden. I got a bit of inspiration from visiting a family member or more than one. It’s kind of what I’m already doing in the garden. So, I want to give as much bee help as I can. Lots of other pollinators and other creatures love flowers as well. So, we’ll be helping our butterflies and unfortunately our moth population, but I guess they pollinate as well. So, this is what I’m going to plant next. And I’ll just give you a quick rundown. Oh, I was going to get the other sweet pea. Some sweet peas are bred for color and some for fragrance. Got to get my fragrance ones out. Even though these are really pretty, I’ll plant those as well. But I will start at the top. got butterfly peas. This is from a lovely friend. I’ve only got one of hers left. And these are the ones that I got from my own butterfly peas from the original five or six that my friend sent me. And they’re toxic. Sadly, the pea seeds are toxic. And I think the flowers are okay because people have them in tea or they make tea out of butterfly pea flowers. Unfortunately, a medication I have. I can’t drink the tea. Amazing blue color, though. Uh, I do like the flowers, but I might plant those and see how they go. They’ll have to be somewhere away from the grandkids, so the kids don’t eat the peas. I’ll have a think about that. Kolus, lovely bit of color. Sometimes you can’t get colorful plants to grow in a temperate region. Kolus is one of the exceptions. It grew like a weed up in the tropics and we lived up there, but I’m sure it’ll be fine here as well. The packet says it will be. So, basically what I’m going for is a cottage garden kind of look around the edge of my garden. So, around the fence line, kind of where the fruit trees are. So, that will help with pollination for them as well. Especially if I can get these going so that they keep going over winter, spring kind of area where the early flowers are, which is the fruit flowers, the blossoms for my fruit trees. Heartsies. These are like a tiny little pansy. They’re very cute. Sometimes they’re only like that big. I did have some in front of my little rain tank in Queensland. They look so Australian. So cute. Well, I’m not sure if these are actually Australian, but look, very cute. Haven’t been able to get these up in Queensland. Um they’re out of date now, but I’m hoping they will be okay. Poached eggplant. Couple of different kinds of marolds. I have a lot of marold seeds because they’re so prolific and so easy to harvest. But we’ve got French bonita and cracker jackack. Cracker jackack. All right. I don’t like the smell of marolds and up north they used to harbor a lot of baby grasshoppers. So I eventually ripped them all out for that reason because the grasshoppers were just doing damage and I was providing cover for them from the from the cooker and the other birds that would otherwise eat the grasshoppers. So I’ll proceed with caution with the maragolds cuz I don’t want to provide cover for bad creatures. Well, not bad creatures, but creatures that are not great for the garden. I’ll probably end up planting some more nersiums. Oh, I do have them in three or four different places already. But yes, they they’re good because you can eat these leaves as well. So yes, as I said, I’ll get a fragrant sweet pea as well. Haven’t planted a before, but these look so cool. I thought I’m going to have to try those and I’ll have to have a good look at what needs to climb on a trellus and what needs to be higher at the back. Can’t really do that with something like this. So, it’s a bee and butterfly flower mix. So, another cottage garden kind of idea, but it’s got butterfly plant in there and that sort of thing. And they do grow quite tall, so we shall see about that. Uh, echanatia grew well up north, but I think it needed more water than I was giving it, but they do come back the next season, it seems. So, we shall give those another go. Chamomile. I was planting. This is the German chamomile. I think I was planting the Roman chamomile up north till I realized they don’t really have the proper flowers, at least not in that climate. It was more the one that the English people used to use for walking on grass really. Um, so it’s more of a grassy kind of one. But yes, this is the right one. The ones where the middle of the flower pokes out is how I remember. Uh, this is from a hot pink gerbra that popped up in my grassy lands up north in the tropics. I have so many of these flowers are so prolific. Gerberas are really tough plants. They’re from South Africa. So, I also have some seeds for yellow ones. So, I might go a bit nuts with gerbas cuz they’re such a good cut flower to give to people. Billy buttons from someone I know. They’re uh they’re really good Australian native, very hardy flower. So, that’s a quick rundown. And I have so many more flower seeds. Not least of which are my Snapdragon flower seeds. These are from like I don’t know. Let’s see. Says 20 goodness. Okay. 2012. And I think there are other seed potty bits in there. It’s not just not just seeds, but I had a mass planting of snapdragons. Sort of only about 3x 4 m, but ended up with so many seeds. And I keep forgetting to use this thing. This uh brings out small seeds just bit by bit. So, you can see there’s a small opening there. And if you turn this Oh, that’s a terrible noise. It’ll show you how big the biggest seed is that can come out of there. So, it just helps you not bring all your seeds out at once. But I have seeds that are too small to put in this for any particular use. It’s uh I do have one. I just keep forgetting I have one. I wanted it in a um in a game at seed savers actually in the vinyl. Yes. So, I’ll get some tags written up, put them in my book, and uh we’ll get going with these. Once they’re up and happy, we can put them around the edge of the garden. Hope you’re having fun in your garden. Thanks for watching, and see you next time.
1 Comment
Nice! That’s going to be beautiful!😊