2008 Sydney to Gong - 2 November 2008

The day before the ride I was at Tafe getting my chemical application licence. I got home late and fixed a flat tire on my road bike at 10pm (which I only discovered when I got home) I knew I was too tired to do this ride and deal with the normal problems, flats, bad riding and hills. After fixing a flat after only 5km I gave up and went home. My pump destroyed the valve so I couldn't pump the tire up. So no spares, no working pump I wouldn't ride do a ride of half the distance without being able to look after myself.

Try next year but I have to admit that I'm looking for other challenges, three Sydney to Gongs might be enough.

Stop press

Both tubes were Bontrager which are produced for Trek. I couldn't find a hole in the orginal tube, probably bad valve. Crappy quality for a premium price tag $12 (Clarence St Cycles, Sydney). When I got home I replaced the bent valve, pumped up the tire. It went flat again over night! I pulled out the tube and found that that it had folded over itself by 10cm, which explains why it was difficult to pump up. I expect the bent valve was due to the soft nature of the brass used.

I always use a basic Chinese brand which sell for about $9.00 and with one exception never had a problem.

2008/2009 Tomatoes Leaf Spot

I have Early blight which is a fungus disease on my Red Russian and Beefsteak tomatoes. It's left pin holes in the leaves and caused flowers to drop

I hope that a remedy from Gardening Australia will work, http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1484689.htm.

In 2 litres of water add a drop of vegetable oil, a drop of detergent, 4 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda. It's perfect for tomatoes.

There is another recipe among Gardening Australia's factsheets which is a bit different, it includes Pestoil, however this recipe should work well. Sydney Botanic Gardens use a similar solution.

2008/2009 Tomatoes

For the last two years we have grown our own tomatoes in pots and I couldn't wait to get them started this year. Last year's crop was a bit disappointing, the cherry tomatoes were good but the Beefsteak and Green Zebra just didn't produce anything. The fruit was very slow to mature and was attacked by pests before they had time to mature. Fruit set was small, they dropped lots of flowers. I think the main problem was lack of potassium, phosphorous and water which led to a fungus or nematode attack.

This year I am growing cherry tomatoes again, two plants appeared in near my roses bushes and when we got home from Japan I put them in separate pots. I am also growing Red Russians and Beefsteak, seedlings from a local nursery. The cherries should almost look after themselves but my basic plan this year is to water in some seaweed extract to provide potassium and worm wee alternatively each weekend. Water everyday in hot weather, my Yates gardening book suggested watering to field capacity which seems a bit too much.

Pruning is important for all tomatoes especially as bushes can get very leafy at the expense of fruit. I'm going to prune the Red Russian to two dominant leaders and Beefsteak back to one. Last weekend I added dolomite for calcium to the pots however it will raise pH (Gypsum is a good source also without changing pH).

There is fruit forming on the cherry tomato, so looks like for the first time I'll have tomatoes for Christmas.

Europe and Japan Tour

Left, Prado courtyard, Madrid

In mid September myself, Brett and his friend Greg left Australia for five weeks to visit Spain, Romania and Japan. A friend in Romania announced he was going to get married in early October this year, Brett also wanted to catch up with friends in Japan and we wanted to also see another part of Europe. We left Greg in Romania as he wanted to check out the birds of the Danube delta, he had an extra two weeks in Romania before leaving to work in the UK. As a horticulture student I wanted to see the gardens. Within Spain we went to Madrid, Granada and Barcelona.

Madrid is a very livable, beautiful and dynamic city. Plenty of buses and good train system and easy to cycle. Madrid Botanic Gardens looked a bit tired but had some fabulous hedges
Left El Retiro, Monument to Alfonso XII
Left 'Cloud' pruning, Plaza del Parterre
The Jardines del Buen Retiro is a very special garden which we visited late in the afternoon. We didn't have nearly enough time to properly see this garden, we started at the main entrance near the Plaza de le Independencia and followed Av de Mejico to the lake and monument to Alfonso XII turned right at Paseo del Paraguay past the Plaza del Parterre.
El Retiro, fountain detail

Grevillea juniperina ‘Pink Lady’

This grevillea is still flowering and looking great. I've been removing the spent flowers and it is starting to thicken up.

Kennedia

My Kennedia rubicunda is currently in flower and growing in a hanging pot, it would prefer a trellis or pergola with more space to spread out. Another native from the South East coast of Australia and a member of the Fabaceae family.

Kennedia is a vigorous twining climber so it needs something to hang on to, also drought tolerant and easy to propagate from soft wood cuttings and seed.

I’ve not found any helpful cultivation notes as it is not very well known by Australian gardeners. Some leaves have been skeletonised in small sections but no culprit found. I'm not too worried it grows so well that these leaves are quickly replaced.

Acacias

Acacias are another favourite fast growing tree and I love those cute yellow flowers and very different forms. Sadly in Sydney they tend to be short lived.

I have two Acacias at the moment, Acacia longifolia/Sydney Golden Wattle and Acacia terminalis or Sunshine Wattle (below). Both are very young and have not flowered. A. terminalis is still very small and should flower from February to October. A. longifolia should have flowered between June and October.

I love these guys so much I would like to propagate some from seed when I have space, apparently cuttings are not very successful. Soak the seed in boiling water overnight or rub with a piece of sandpaper before placing in seed raising trays.

They do not like phosphorous, use a special native fertilizer.

Grevilleas

Grevilleas are very widespread in Eastern Australia and are found growing in open forest areas from South-East Queensland to Central West New South Wales and ACT.

I think they are one of the most varied native species which are well adapted to different soil types with varying leaf types with the most amazing brightly coloured flowers.

Most grevilleas prefer full sun and moist well drained acid soils (so a pH less than 7). I use only native specific fertilisers with with no or very low phosphorus content. These guys have special fibres on their roots which make them super efficient when it comes to taking up phosphorus and other nutrients from the soil. Overloading the plant will kill these special roots and the plant.

I'm very cautious when adding other organic materials such as chook poo, Dynamic Lifter as this may be too much. Grevilleas are highly adapted to low nutrient soils. Spoiling them will just result in their demise.

Once established (over a year in the same spot) grevilleas should not need anything but pruning, so cut off all spent flowers and prune back flowering wood by about a third. My Robyn Gordon sometimes suffers from iron deficiency which I fix with iron sulphate.

The three I have in my garden, G juniperina prostrate 'Pink Lady' (below), G 'Robyn Gordon' and G 'Red Clusters' are all doing well in pots.

Grevillea juniperina ‘Pink Lady’ grows to about 30-60 cm tall and as it matures can spread up to 2-3 metres. G. juniperina prefers full sun but tolerates the shade in my backyard, only receiving morning light, it prefers moist well drained soil and will tolerate moderate frosts.

This grevillea is currently covered in lots of fine, soft pink flowers (July to August) and I expect it will spot flower throughout the year.

Need help with your garden?

For expert weeding, pruning and lawn care, send me an email deb.amy@gmail.com. Looking after gardens in Alexander, Dulwich Hill, Enmore, Erskinville, Marrickville, Newtown, Petersham and Stanmore. Anywhere I can ride my bike with trailer safely within the inner Sydney metropolitan area.

My bike is back on the road

After a lot of debate and a pile of ridiculous quotes my bike is back on the road. I decided to do whatever I could rather than buy a new or top secondhand bike. An amazing collection of websites such as Parktools exist and my book, Zinn's Art of Road Bike Maintenance was helpful.

The older the bike the more fiddly as some cranks had been re-speced during the last 8 years. But parts for these bikes are still available and most only need a new chain and cassette, $80, to get them running again. I had a non standard Tracer crank which meant that standard Sora crank set was not going to work despite having Sora derailleurs etc. The local bike shop found an Ultegra set that fitted perfectly, although I did have to get a new wider bottom bracket.

I got a new set of wheels, crank set, chain and cassette. Wheels were easy and not much work, Velocity's Fuson were good enough and Australian made. Changing cranks requires a bit of muscle and a good crank puller (and right size), the job was complete in about 30 minutes.

Overall the whole project felt difficult and stressful at the time because I had keep stopping to study and research as I moved onto different jobs. But it's really easy and now I can't believe that that I didn't know how to even break a chain! Something as necessary as being able to fix a flat.

I'm going to checkout the Nunnery in Newtown, a sort of drop in centre/bike workshop when I do anything like this again. Just saves money by not having to buy specialised tools, maybe some advice from other riders etc. I got help from my local bikeshop who were quite excited to help a girl fix her bike, which that said was a rare sight.

My first ride was amazing this morning and ICentennial Park was as beautiful as usual.

Sydney Spring Cycle: 21 October 2007

Another great ride this year and I think the other riders around me were better behaved which made the ride more enjoyable. I was not trying to race this year as I my achilles is still not good and basically felt quite guilty for even doing the ride. It took about 3.5 hours this year with lots of stops and the compulsory sausage sandwich which I had promised myself I would not eat.

This year the course was a bit safer with some changes around Olympic Park and the start which I couldn't begin to explain as the course winds around a lot and I really didn't know where I was sometimes. The start at St Leonards Park, North Sydney was packed with riders and from there it is almost straight down the hill onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge. For a map of the course click here.