Darrens backyard & hothouse

I had a big tidy up today and thought i would show off my back yard which i landscaped from a dust bowl to what it is now.

Love the Echinocactus in the half wine barrel

Nice little hot house you have there, keep up the good work

That is awesome, I Love it. Now just add a bucket load of cacti

Nahh, lawn's overrated...you could put up some serious glasshouses on that big green patch !!

Seriously though, good work !

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Love the Echinocactus in the half wine barrel

I have 2 more about 1/3rd the size and 2.8 million seedlings

Ill have to post a picture of the front yard... ill take a photo tomorrow

nice collection in the green house.
What's the roof? Glass? Shade?

That's nice work! I don't suppose you have any "before" pics?

unfortunately no before pics

the roof of the hothouse is made of the same stuff which i picked up on the side of the road on hard waste day. all up the hot house cost me $80 & the back yard cost me $2500 and most of that was plants.

and here is the front yard

if you look carefully you can see my neighbours over the brush fence and across the street... they are pretty quiet because they are all dead

had a bobcat around on friday and got the front yard dug up... heavy precipitation on saturday hindered progress slightly but got 4 tonne of rubble delivered. It cleared up saturday with a temp of almost 16 degrees and since i had worked so hard, I rewarded myself with a carton of beer.
Sunday turned out to the the best day in ages at 18.4 but unfortunately i polished off most of the carton of beer. Ill post a Pic tomorrow

Oh and by the way i might be moving to victoria dandenongs does anyone know what its like out there?

great stuff... still too much lawn imo.

2.8 million E. grussonii?

The dandenongs now?.. well lets just say that'd be a very different growing environ to Adelaide!
beautiful place extremely picturesque scenery... awe inspiring Mountain Ash forests (Eucalyptus regnans... the world's tallest tree- well at least it was until they cut down the largest specimens in order to measure them) and lush tree fern gullies.
absolutely freezing in winter, and very wet. maybe snow. actually its pretty much cold all the year.
except mid summer, but then you have bushfires.
perhaps not the best clime for cactus cultivation.. that said t. pachanoi grows there, i saw huge one at a considerable altitude.
great wildlife too.

but if you mean dandenong the suburb... well that's a thriving metropolis, it's like a city in itself and a true multicultural meltingpot.

i will be moving to the monbulk area but i want to also buy a rural block in the barossa valley before i go so i can store all my stuff and start planting gardens for when i return in the future. i wont tell my wife about the cold part or she wont want to go... she hates the cold. not able to have my cacti is going to suck, i will have to put a hot house up over there.

anyway when i get there if anyone in victoria wants pots i will be able to get them cheap because i am moving my career to the monbulk factory of Garden City Plastics.

lol well monbulk is a nice place... still gonna be mighty cold i bet, make sure u don't tell your wife hehe.
there are lots of ornamental and cut flower nurseries up that way. pretty nice n green place on the times i've been there.
some cacti will grow there, i'm sure. just a matter of finding out which ones. but with a greenhouse you will probs be able to grow what you have going now.

oh and yay cheap pots.

Strewth Darren, haven't even met you at GPC Adelaide yet and your going to move on me! You must be 'out the back' because I haven't run into to you yet. (I'm the bloke that dropped off the Lithops...CC would have told you I reckon?)

I thought it was cold here when we moved over from Perth (WA Perth, not Tassy Perth) but I have to agree with lewis....you might need a greenhouse over there!

Hmmmm, just bought another 768 x 63mm pots but might need some more before Christmas!

It will be said to see you go will have to catch up soon.

hey fruitbat i have one of your lithops on my desk at work everyone who got one at work was realy keen on them!!! I manage the print department out the back.

it will be sad to leave adelaide but i will definately be coming back and ill hopefully have a property out the barossa CC so if & when you have excess plants or just want to put some in the ground, ill have heaps of dirt to put them in.

Thanks Darren, it gives you a good feeling to share something you enjoy with others. Which Lithops did you get? I can always change it for another one if you don't like the colour as I've got 957 (on last count) that size at the moment.

The Barrosa is nice, more wine there than around Snowtown! I'm on 32 acres and 23 of that gets planted in cereal crop every year......suppose I could just plant cacti instead?? (I'd probably get a heap more for the crop when it does get harvested than I do for the wheat, barley or oats!)

Must call to see you when we are in Adelaide next.

Hey Fruitbat the plant i have is L. Karasmontana mickburgensis C168

I thought I would post this picture of my very old eucalyptus camaldulensis that I now own. I will post some more photos of the yard as I need to work out a position for my greenhouse. The arborists estimate this tree is between 500 and 700 years old.

By the way... I never ended up moving to monbulk Victoria. My wife's father got cancer so I passed up the oportunity. I did buy a place in the barossa but with 1 acre only. Our 1 acre had 11 significant red gums and it ended up taking us 3 years to get council approval to build. I will share some more photos tomorrow of the rest of the block.

Interesting, welcome back.
Hn