WoW! My fellow gardeners in the UK are really suffering with the snow. I hope your gardens are okay and there are not too many plant casualties.
My Six on Saturday this week is once again restricted… Determined not to miss a week this roving reporter did manage to hobble round on her crutches (not that I want any sympathy) with my camera slung around my neck to take some photographs.
1. Weather
While we’ve not had snow we’ve had some heavy rain and gusts of winds 70km plus. Living right by the ocean, we do enjoy the full force of nature’s wrath and as I write this comment the rain is lashing down driven by the wind, so it is almost horizontal.
Regardless of where we live us Brits do love to talk about the weather so my curiosity led me to discover a new website so I am delighted to find a semi-accurate weather site www.ventusky.com. It certainly predicted the onset of rain within 30 minutes today, which was a win-win as far as getting washing dried.
We also had a minor earthquake in the Algarve on Thursday. The IPMA site recorded the epicentre was located in Silves. The tremor, with a magnitude of 3.3, was the highest in Portugal for several months.
2. Recycling Rainwater for Dry Days
One of my many passions is saving water. We have a couple of waterbutts to collect the rain water for dry spells. Yes, we have several, even during the winter.
3.Mosaic Bird Bath
I recently completed this mosaic project. I’m just glad OH bolted it to a paving slab to stop it blowing away!
4. Pregnant Onion (Albuca Bracteata)
It’s babies grow on the outside of the bulb.
I’ve been waiting for this to flower for months.
and finally
*
5. Tray of Hope
I now have an abundance of seeds still waiting to be planted. I gave up on planting my own seeds a few years ago so you Sixers have done well to persuade me to try again.
6. Sprouting Garlic
As these cloves of garlic were sprouting and was not much use for culinary purposes I decided to plant in a pot to see what happens. I will go in search of some seed garlic heads at some point, but for now these will have to suffice. OH said it won’t grow. What do you think?
That’s it for this week. Now I’m off to check out some other gardens.
Piglet in Portugal 
Love the bird bath, you are so clever! The only problem I can see with the garlic, apart from the point that The Prop mentioned, is I believe they need a cold spell to form into separate cloves, you might get just one big one. Which could be fun. Always great to see your garden, it warms me on a cold winters day. 🙂
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Ah, so judging by all the comments about the birdbath I could sell more 🙂 the garlic we have here is in separate cloves. If you peel the skin back from the head of garlic all the cloves are separate.
While I miss England I don’t miss the grey skies. 😦
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I think you definitely could sell them! Soon be spring!
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Those Agaves are lovely next to your bird bath which also looks lovely. Do you live on the west coast then? I hear it is windier and stormier there than the Algarve. I’d love a Mediterranean garden, but can’t persuade the OH to move to Portugal though I keep dropping BIG hints. Oh, well, I shall just have to admire yours! Does the Pregnant Onion die off now that it has flowered?
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Yes, we live on the West Coast about half a kg from the sea. When the wind blows it certainly blows, but on the otherhand it has other advantages of not being so built up and you have the space to breath. Take a look at this video for some idea
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I like the look of your bird bath – fancy! I reckon your garlic will grow ok. The only issue with growing supermarket garlic is you don’t know where it’s from, what conditions it prefers, and it won’t be guaranteed disease free like seed cloves. But worth a bash, why not.
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As looking for seed garlic here is going to be like hunting for hens’ teeth I’ll think I’ll take a risk with some suprmarket garlic. I’ve only seed seed garlic once and you had to buy 10kg! It was all strung together so they would not let me negotiate
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The birdbath looks lovely PiP. It was my intention to do the same to mine with the help of an experienced friend, but I haven’t got around to it yet. I have planted supermarket garlic in the past and it has grown for me. The bulbs I bought from a nursery last year grew disappointingly small heads, so it seems there’s no guarantee there either.
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So it seems like potluck with the garlic 🙂 did you allow them to spout first before planting?
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I didn’t. They all grew, it’s just that the cloves were very tiny. I was expecting big fat juicy ones as I’d gone to the trouble of buying especially good stock.
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I hope that sweet Portuguese sun is helping you heal. Your birdbath is beautiful. May you have many garden visitors stopping in to use it! Starting plants from seed is definitely addicting.
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😉 I’m still not sure about starting plants from seeds. As for the Birdbath, I’ve not seen any visitors yet. Most of the birds are round the front of the house…
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Hi Carole, I love this – such great photos! The pregnant onion was fascinating. I didn’t know that the babies grow on the outside of the plant. And, congratulations for completing your mosaic project. The bird bath is beautiful.
Sending you lots of healing, and a big smile from NY. (I’m here on business and also including a trip to the UN!)
Blessings,
Debbie
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Hi Debbie, I am also fascinated by the pregnant onion. It was a gift from a gardening friend. We will see if the birds like the bird bath. Your business trip sounds intriguing!
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So many vegetables and flowering annuals just do best by seed, and are actually difficult to transplant as seedlings. Peas have such short seasons here (spring and autumn but not summer in between) that they do not have time to recover from transplant as seedlings. We just put out the seed early and let them do what they will. I would not want to spend money on expensive seedlings anyway. I actually get annoyed seeing certain seedlings in the nurseries. They just exploit those who do not know better, but are less productive than seed. Goodness, it is getting late to add to the nasturtiums! I just collect seed from under old plants and put them where needed.
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I don’t normally have problems with the seedling plugs i buy (thank God) but they tend to be quite basic hardy varieties. The problem is i only buy 15 lettuce at a time and they are a mixed variety and then I may another 15 two months later. Tomatoes and cucumbers I buy 3 plants at a time and stagger through the summer.
I need to get OH to dig over my veg plot and add some compost etc before I plant anything.
Do you eat your nasturtium flowers?
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I do not eat the flowers often just because there are plenty of other things to eat. My favorite nasturtiums are in my downtown planter box, where I do not want to pick them. I feel like I am taking them away from the public that they are there for. Besides, dogs pee on them, and drunk people barf in them.
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We’ve planted supermarket garlic before and until last year it had always done okay. Worth a go! I upped our number of waterbutts from 1 to 3 last year. You can never have too many!
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Yes, I feel inspired to try growing garlic. Do yours grow in sun or shade?
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Fairly sunny.
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Bird bath looks good. I’m having to get out each day to smash the ice but still well used.
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I feel sorry for the poor birds in the harsh weather.
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Yes, having a hard time of it at the moment but means I get to enjoy seeing large swarms at the moment while the leaves are off.
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I still love both your agaves and with the new bird bath, the whole is beautiful. I had never heard of albuca until last week, when I bought a new one: albuca spiralis. Yours is also very pretty and the spike of flowers too. Thank you for sharing.
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For some reason those particular agaves grow like weeds in my garden. When they flower they are amazing! There is one up the road to us and the flower spike is massive. i must ask OH to take a picture for me.
I looked up the albuca spiralis and it is amazing!
https://worldofsucculents.com/albuca-spiralis-frizzle-sizzle/
haha… I want one!
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Love your bird bath, looks so beautiful Carole. Never seen that Pregnant onion plant before. Did you feel the earthquake at all?
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I didn’t feel any tremors on this occasion but I have in the past. But that was a 5+ and the whole house shook
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Thanks for the heads up on the Ventusky site PiP. What a wealth of information that gives.
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I’ve tracked the weather on there for a few days now, and I’ve found it to be fairly accurate. I also love all the webcams which is useful when we are driving south and on a different coastline.
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