Thanks for joining and for the hardiness zone map for Australia! It was a rather interesting read as well.

I'm still kinda playing around with the zone info on the member list. I'm still not sure if it'll be really useful or not to have up and I'm honestly not quite sure how to handle it. I hope the way I have it looks okay but if anyone has any suggestions let me know and I can try something else.

I'd love to join! My hardiness zone is USDA 7b, I'm an avid collector of Brugmansia (Angel Trumpets), Tropical Hibiscus, Swamp Mallows(Hardy Hibiscus), Agastache(Hummingbird Mint,Korean Mint), Datura(Devil's Trumpet). I also partake in hybridizing, so I can make entirely unique cultivars!

a night time view of my two taller seedlings.

I have lots of garden friends. ^_^

Here's my little corner of the garden:


There's some aloe vera, passionfruit, rhubarb and chillies. With respect to the chillies, they're supposed to be bird's eye but the plant in the middle produces chillies that are far to large to be bird's eye. Need to do some more planting but I'll either need to find winter plants or wait until spring now.


My feijoa trees. The grey dish in the background is usually where my herbs go - its currently empty because they all died while we were on holiday.

Annnnnddd, we had a cute visitor today:


Incidentally, I thought I may as well ask, does anyone know how to dissuade butterflies from your garden? They're lovely but they lay eggs and everything got decimated by caterpillars last year. We tried putting butterfly stickers and such around the garden in hopes they'd think there were already butterflies there but that didn't work. I also had crushed up egg shells recommended (I don't quite know the logic behind) but that didn't work either.

@Wander

Would they happen to be white cabbage butterflies? I read they were introduced to Australia. I found a page that mentions some control methods for them. I read through most of the comments and I saw some other ways people brought up as well. I wonder though that if your plants need pollination that the netting (which seems to be the most reliable method) would be problematic.

Yep, that's what has been causing the problem!

Thanks for the link, there's definitely a few ideas there that I can try :)

I had considered the netting - I'd need to build a structure to cover the entire garden bed - it shouldn't cause problems for the plants / pollination, subject to anything I might put in there between now and next season - I'll definitely have to follow through with the netting if I have the same problem this year.

Hi Wander, I recommend the Decoy option as a chief suggestion. For two years now we have grown some Nasturtium in between our tomato plants. Both years the Nasturtium leaves end up a bit ragged and the tomatoes are left pristine. Nasturtium is very easy to grow, fast growing from seed, it flowers so it looks nice, and it's technically a watercress, so pests often seem more apt to go it than your other plants. White cabbage butterflies are considered the biggest enemies of tomato plants, and we still don't have any issue with a few Nasturtium growing in among them.

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So i've been meaning to post my succulents and my housemate and I's garden here, but things have been busy and now I finally got the chance, while buying my first Aeonium. :)


This is a little Sunburst Aeonium. Next to it is my new Echeveria. It is blue in color though I am not quite sure the cultiver on this one yet. I also decided I wanted to go ahead and use this post to help point out a big difference between Aeoniums and Echeverias, since they can be tricky to tell the difference between at a glance. ^^



These are my two older Echeverias. I have had them a few months (the leaf damage you see is from squirrels chewing on them before I gave up and brought them indoors to sit on a bay window). These two are Peacockii, and Perle Von Nurnberg. If you look at the core of the Perle Von, on the right, you will see that the stem is the same color of the plant, and looks much like the stem of a flower would.

Now let's take a look under that Aeonium:


You can see it is in fact brown, rather than being the color of the plant. Most Aeoniums seem to grow this sort of 'woody' looking stem instead of a 'fleshy' stem like an Echeveria would. I wanted to make this little picture guide for a friend who is trying to get into succulents, and has trouble telling her Aeoniums from her Echeverias, but perhaps it might be helpful to someone here, too. ^^

Hello there Wander! I'm normally against using pesticides; but you could use Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) spray which is a biological pesticide, to combat the caterpillars. It won't kill the beneficial insects, only those munching on the leaves.

I don't have any pictures of my good bugs, but after using organic pesticides such as Azadirachtrin (an extract of Neem Oil) and others, the bad bugs decrease in population, and the good ones, such as Lacewing flies have exploded, and they're a cute green hehe.