I had my wisdom teeth taken out so had the whole of last week off on sick leave, of course people don’t usually stay home during their sick leave judging from my previous experience in retail ^^” So I was able to go to the show on Friday, mind you though it was the first place I went after I recovered :P
I got there about 10:25am, so just made it to Jerry Coleby-Williams 10:30am program on Survival Food Growing. You can find a factsheet on what he talked about here http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2545801.htm . On a sidenote, he mentioned Seed Savers Network a few times during the presentation, so Donna may receive a few emails asking for the plants he mentioned .....
I then spent the rest of the day there exploring exhibitors. It took much longer then I normally would as I’ve brought my mother along this time, and she was also interested in the ornamental stuff as well as edibles. There weren’t many displays this year, no Pete’s patch display.. ... Being at the RNA showground this year, I thought they may have more outdoor displays I can get inspirations from for our garden.
There’s one display garden put together with editable plants, herbs & companion plants though, here’s a few photos I snapped from my mobile.

Those golden yellow, red, and blackish purple/maroon vines are actually sweet potatoes, I believe they called them Margarita, Ace of Spade & Blackie on American websites, but they are sold as “Sun Kisses summer lovin’ sweethearts light green, red and purple” at nurseries here . It says ‘Ipomea batatas’ in small print on the back of the labels, so they are sweet potatoes despite their fancy nursery names. I’ve got the yellow one and purple one growing and I can get a small amount of cuttings if anyone wants them at this week’s Garden Visit/Seed savers meeting. This is the first time I grow them, and they seem to have a much more compact growth habit then the standard sweet potatoes hence there’s only small lengths of vines I can cut... don’t ask me what they taste like though... I don’t know yet..


The site map and the exhibitors’ list were slightly different from the one I saw online. Personally I like the site maps online better than the one they hand out at the entrance of the show.
At the end of the day we ended up with a dwarf black Mulberry tree, a dwarf Wurtz Avocado tree, a neem tree, an Indian guava, a rosemary, and a mushroom growing kit plus some flower bulbs and a number of pots of flowers, succulents and indoor fern ... The neem tree (small) and the Indian guava were only $10 each! The mushroom kit was only $15 ~ wonder how much mushroom I’ll get out of it ~ With trees waiting to be planted, I better get my material list done and order quickly so I can start putting the beds in ~
I tried to find inoculants for my pigeon peas, but no one I asked sells them. Someone suggested produce stores though, so I will check next time when I get my chicken feed.
Also bought the current issue of Gardening Australia which came with a show bag like previous year. Nothing fleshing in there, other then sample chips, sauces etc, I think there’s a bigger then normal sample bag of lawn fertilizer and a bottle of seaweed emulsion kind of thing... can’t be bother checking now. They had a bottle of Charlie Carp in the bag last year, but this year you’ll have to subscribe to the magazine to get it. I remember they had spray on band-aid a few years back when the show bags were free ^^ that was really handy.
That’s it on the expo ~
Before I finish off, there’s a plant I need ID-ing and also I want to say my peach is acting weird, I think I might have prune it too early? It’s growing new leaves and flower buds... isn’t it the wrong season?
Here are photos of this plant my mother brought back from her friend’s garden. Her friend told her it’s a good medicinal plant, but couldn’t tell her what it was. I thought it was tumeric, but now it’s growing taller then what I thought Turmeric grows to, and the root’s bulbing up like red onion... can anyone tell me what this is please?




Here are photos of the peach tree ..


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