Cleaning the slate for my Macedon garden

The heat of Summer is definitely over and Autumn is bringing the cold weather back to my garden in Macedon. Luckily I'm on top of the gardening at home for a change so hopefully this year I will have a nice Winter garden. I've cleared the annual flowers and I bought some mushroom compost and dug it through the garden beds. One major job I'm glad to have completed is the planting of last years garlic crop. In total I've got over 150 cloves planted in 2 beds so that should equate to roughly 120 - 130 bulbs when harvested taking into account a few failures (rotten bulbs). I've got the new annuals growing in pots and some are ready to plant out. The new annuals are cornflowers, larkspurs, poppys, stocks, asters, pansies and snapdragons. The annuals are all growing under perspex coldframes which are ex display cases that I rescued from the rubbish tip. Also I've got 20 Haworthia succulents and several Aeoniums growing in small pots protected from the frost. I know it's not much to look at now but I've essentially wiped the slate clean and in a couple of months the beds will be full with colour.

The empty beds waiting to be planted out



Several Nasturtium plants that my daughters and I started from seed.

This one snapdragon from last year is still going strong the others were finished so I removed them.

An out of focus Rudbeckia. This plant was given to me by Mick from the local Macedon nursery near the general store. I had to do an assignment for TAFE which involved questioning him and photographing plant tags in his nursery. The fact that he gave me a plant after taking up all his time and messing around with his plants says lots about his character. I recommend you visit his nursery if you are in town he is a great guy.

The colframes steaming away on a cold Macedon day.

Several of the Haworthias in their pots. Such great little plants, they remind me of octopuses.

One crimson broad bean plant that self seeded from last years crop. I love it when plants self seed, its such a nice surprise (unless they are weeds self seeding).