Pineapple Sage

This pic (with the ultra fashionable gardener wearing her GreenHip trousers) was taken just a few weeks ago and shows my pineapple sage Salvia elegans also known as Salvia rutilans in my red garden. Last year it grew waist height as it has every year I have grown it and both the New Holland honeyeater and eastern spinebill love its flowers and are either constantly flitting about the bush or hanging upside down to feed. This year with all the rain we had it has grown to prodigious heights soaring over my head and being smothered in blooms.



However this plant (from the same division and only 3m away) which spent most of spring and into summer with wet feet is not nearly so tall. I thought it was going to die it looked so sick but eventually it got going and is now also in full bloom albeit on shorter stems.



Pineapple sage gets knocked around quite a lot during the winter frosts here but bounces back in spring. The smell of the crushed foliage is unmistakably that of pineapple and is reputed to be good for adding to a bowl of punch (does anyone make punch anymore?!)

This salvia comes from Mexico and is one of the last salvias to bloom before winter. It is vying with Salvia 'Anthony Parker' (a vigorous blue flowering sage) for attention although Salvia 'Hot Lips' (red and white flowers) is still going strong too.

Replanting

I spent some time replanting in the vegetable garden today. I find that usually I get to late March and realise that all the summer vegetables are fading and there is nothing to take me through to winter! So today I pulled out the spent sweet corn and replanted the area with brown onion seedlings. I read somewhere you should follow fruiting or leafy vegetables with root vegetables (because the former drag all the nitrogen from the soil which root crops don't need a lot of) so this is what I've done. I harvested the entire crop of chioggia on Saturday and sold them at the local Farmers Market! We tried it at home and although it looks very pretty (its a pink and white striped beetroot) its a bit sweet for us - probably because its related to sugar beets. In this area I replanted with mini cauliflower and where the mizuna ( a type of lettuce) was, I've replanted with leeks. I've still got carrot seed to go in and whatever looks good at the nursery. I find that working in a nursery means I am faced with vegetable seedlings all the time and can't fail to notice what should be going in.
Then I moved on to the front garden and pulled out a few weeds, deadheaded a few roses and cut back spent flowers on the phygelius, penstemon, salvia and echeveria. The soil is drying out again - the last decent fall of rain was a few weeks ago now.

I tried some of the new chia enriched bread the other day. I bet you didn't know that chia is Salvia hispanica and is apparently rich in Omega-3. The bread was nice with a slight tiny crunch as the seeds are so small. This new crop (for Australia) is being grown in the Ord River region of Western Australia near the town of Kununura. The Ord River was dammed decades ago to create a horticultural heaven for growing warm weather crops. But the planners forgot that it was such a long way from the markets and the scheme was widely regarded as a bit of a white elephant. For many years its claim to fame was producing curcurbits year round (pumpkins, cucumbers, melons, zucchinis etc) Its great to see that this new crop is ideally suited to the area and may prove to be its salvation.