Lovely plants! Oh and a very nice new camera....

So my lovely family bought me an awesome new camera, so it's time to test it out and learn how to use it. The first photo is of a lovely chilli plant that a friend gave me the seeds for 2 years ago. The plant has been through a lot, and this is the result of a lot of care and nursing.

And here's how the lovely cumquat is saying hello. Very fragrant!

Gardening with fire, update!

After burning to the ground, the kangaroo paw is on the mend:

Gardening with fire!

So a couple of weeks ago, I had a mini kangaroo paw start to have its leaves turn black. Did a bit of searching and discovered that there is a disease that affects kangaroo paw called "ink disease" or "inkspot disease". It mainly turns up if you water your plants in the evening, and the water settles on the leaves. Unfortuantely though this disease doesn't have many choices for treatment in severe cases. The plant in question was rather badly affected, so it looked like unless it was treated, it would die. Turns out the only effective treatment is to burn the plant to the ground so it can grow again. Who knew? These guys: The Australian Native Plants Society. They have a page all about how to look after your kangaroo paw, and treat many of the issues. I didn't take any photos of mine because they already had rather good photos on their page, and mine seems to be following the same track. After the burning, three weeks later there are already a good number of new shoots.