Broccoli is indeed purple

Well, sort of....you can now see little purple shoots coming out of the cauliflower-like centre.

Sprouting

The purple sprouting broccoli is finally doing something other than provide food for hungry caterpillars. It looks like it's growing a cauliflower as it's white at the moment, but hopefully in time it will in fact turn out to be purple broccoli....

I also planted out a broccoli seedling this morning, and as soon as I work out where I can put the other four seedlings they can go in the ground as well. In theory I should have been able to fit four broccoli in the patch where the existing plant is but that first one is so big that there's only room for one more that size.

Courgette!

Today I was able to harvest the first courgette of the season! How very festive......

With all the rain over the last couple of days I suspect the garden will get a bit of growth spurt shortly. The tomatoes are doing well, plenty of baby tomatoes on each plant and plenty of bumblebees fertilising the flowers. The coriander has definitely succumbed to the windy patch last week though.

Sage and rosemary

This morning I planted out two of the sage seedlings next to the exceptionally-well-established mature rosemary bush.

Mental note to self: don't leave delicate seedlings out in the sun too long! The just-germinated eggplant and capsicum didn't survive the rough treatment, so on Thursday night I had to sow some new seeds (hopefully it isn't already too late to get these germinated and in the ground), along with some extra herbs and my holy grail of germination, leeks - I just don't seem to have the touch for these.

Baby watermelon

Five baby watermelon

On the morning dash round outside to see how everything is faring (it's been raining and quite windy overnight, the coriander is not happy with the wind), I spotted five baby watermelon! Then it started raining again before I could get a picture.

Beetroot relish

I've harvested 7 of the Detroit beetroot now - one I cooked and ate, five made up the 500g I needed to make relish (ended up with around 500ml worth), and the last one was definitely the runt of the litter - only around half an inch across, even though it had been growing as long as the others. I fear the one in the photo below is the runt of the second litter!

Welcome to the jungle

The two courgette plants have been flowering for a couple of weeks now.

Meanwhile, right next door the scallopini appears to be doing well. I think I actually managed to get the raised mounds right this year for the scallopini and the courgettes so they are proving easy to water.

And most of the tomato plants now have little tomatoes on them. It's interesting to see the different shapes this year, here's pear-shaped baby Roma:

Weekend update

Yesterday I gave the tomatoes some fertilizer, spotted the first tomato! (Russian Red, beating San Marzano by a day), spotted the first flower on the watermelon vine, sowed another half a dozen each of dark beetroot and albino beetroot, sowed another half a dozen spring onions, ate lots (comparatively - ie more than half a strawberry each) of strawberries, mulched with compost the burpee pepper (plenty of flowers there now) and the spot the eggplant will be going into once they're a bit bigger, transplanted the scallopini and the parsley into the ground, and moved the four pots of sage into the greenhouse.

This morning I transplanted into their interim pots seven basil seedlings, four parsley, three eggplant, two capsicum (jingle belles), and one white sage. I've popped them outside for a little bit to warm up.

Harvesting beetroot

Beetroot can be harvested once the roots are 1 inch to 3 inches diameter, depending on what you want them for. They will start trying to evict themselves from the ground so you can see quite easily how big they are getting (how convenient!). Loosen the soil round then gently pull them out of the ground, being careful not to damage the skin as the colour will bleed - you also want to keep the skin on while you cook them for the same reason.

They store well in a cool dark place, provided you cut off the leaves a couple of cms above the root. The leaves can then go into salad. Any beetroot juice can be used for dye, preferably deliberately :) so if you're like me you may want to plant albino beetroot.

Today's harvest:

Mesclun

The mixed mesclun's been going well. We've been eating our way through the outer leaves and it just keeps going. There's also a few plants from the second sowing coming through (although not of the varieties that we like), and I did a third sowing this week - although I've had to water it several times to keep that patch of earth from turning into a dustbowl.

Catnip

Since the catnip went into the ground a few weeks ago, it had virtually disappeared. I think this was partly kitty-related and partly because I wasn't watering it enough. Anyway, it turns out it's not dead after all as there's several new leaves on it today.

Tomato laterals

Laterals are the secondary stems on tomato plants that will (if you let them) grow up almost as sturdily as the main stem and go on to produce fruit. However this generally isn't a good idea as the plant has to work too hard to support everything, so the tomatoes end up smaller, not-so-good quality, and the chances of losing everything to disease or damage increases (last year some full-sized fruiting laterals split off altogether so I lost those tomatoes).

"A" on the photo is the leaf stem branching off. Immediately above the leaf stem, growing diagonally upwards, is the lateral, marked "B". There's a second pair of leaf and lateral to the right just above the marked pair. If the lateral is left in there, the leaf stem will be forced downwards to the ground as the lateral grows.

What to do:
* snap the laterals off when they are small like they are in the photo - so the wound is small and heals quickly
* dry windy day - again, so the wound dries out quickly
* have clean hands - so you don't inadvertently transmit a disease from other plants or soil
* I'm sure I've read somewhere that the lateral immediately below the first set of flowers is the strongest and can be left in, so you end up with two stems producing fruit
* check and repeat every two weeks

Last year I never really got a handle on what laterals were as I couldn't find any good photos or illustrations to show me what to remove, and things did get pretty chaotic - the resulting bushes were very difficult to support. I think I've got it mostly sussed now though - so today I did a initial cleanup, removing laterals, removing the leaf stems that were already too low and virtually sitting on the ground, tying the plants to their stakes, removing the odd weed, and watering the root area with Tom-A-Rite organic tomato fertiliser. As the plants are just starting to produce flowers, the fertiliser will need to go on every week from now.

Flowering

The first flowers have today appeared on the tomatoes (in particular the Russian Red and the Roma above, which means they have flowered just over 3 weeks from transplantation) and one of the courgettes (a month from transplanting), and the watermelon vine has tripled in size over the last couple of days and actually looks more like a vine now. The beetroot patch is coming along nicely too, the leaves may not look so pretty any more (this evening I sprayed liquid copper on the surrounding soil of the beetroot, broccoli and mesclun to keep the nibblers away) but the roots are starting to heave themselves up out of the ground.

Rain damage

There's been a lot of rain over the last day. I checked on the beetroot this morning, and some of the leaves have actually snapped over in half and split across the leaf from the weight of it. And to make things worse, something's been a-nibbling!

Capsicum

Capsicum Jingle Belles – capsicum annuum

Last year 90% of the Burpee red peppers ended up in red onion and capsicum relish (mmmm – still one jar left under guard), so I thought it would be fun to plant some more capsicum just for general use. Jingle Belles are mini capsicum in a mix of colours - but I assume this isn't all on the same plant? I can probably fit two plants in the small corner bed I've earmarked for them.

Capsicum need higher soil temperatures to germinate and stay happy. I should see some action shortly as they take 8 to 20 days to germinate (last year they took around 15) and they've already have six (so perhaps I'm too impatient then). They should be planted around 50cm apart in a warm sunny spot, well mulched to keep the soil temperature up, and will grow a metre high. Jingle Belles need staking as they are allegedly very prolific, and should be watered extra well (including with liquid fertilizer) as the fruit forms. Capsicum apparently particularly like seaweed or fish emulsion fertilizers, so the Nitrosol Organic (which I haven't seen on shelves for a while, everyone's got the ordinary Nitrosol but not the organic) should do nicely.

Last year I sowed in September, transplanted into the ground 25 November, had baby peppers by 7 Jan (was away over Christmas so not sure exactly when they appeared) and the first one was fully red by 13 February which is 12 weeks from transplanting. This year I have sown later as I already had one plant from last year, and will transplant any new seedlings much quicker, so it will be interesting to see if they catch up.

Scallopini

Scallopini Green Bennings – cucurbita pepo

To add a little variety to the courgettes, I'm also planting scallopini or summer squash – the organic Green Bennings from Koanga. These are apparently spaceship shaped and can be eaten whole or stuffed. Sounds like fun!

Summer squash generally take 7 to 14 days to germinate and are ready to eat 50 to 60 days from sowing. Like standard courgettes, I imagine these will be prone to powdery mildew. I'm not sure exactly where I'll put these – I'd like two, so one can go next to the two courgette plants opposite the front door (which will at least make it convenient for watering with the hose in the mornings), and the second can sit next to the watermelon (thereby filling up that bed).

More new seedlings

Last Sunday, 16th Nov, I sowed

6 x purple sprouting broccoli into an old eggcarton (4 germinated so far)
6 x borage into an old eggcarton (2 germinated so far)
2 x scallopini into individual pots

and into the seed tray:
8 x basil sweet genovese (5 germinated so far)
4 x eggplant long purple
4 x oregano
4 x parsley Italian flat leaf
4 x white sage (2 germinated so far)
4 x capsicum Jingle Belles (last year's capsicum is vigorously producing leaves now, so I may not need these new ones - however the more fun colours the better!)

Not the right tools

Finally making headway re the whitefly on the citrus - numbers are dramatically down. However I've learned that you shouldn't buy a cheap sprayer. It took at least half an hour to get the new sprayer (with wand) working the first day, and the next time I also had awful problems. I then had to tip the Neem mix into the little 1 litre hand sprayer, which promptly broke when I tried to pump air into it. We now have a shiny new McGregor's one, which does look suspiciously like the old cheap one except the wand is brass - hopefully it will prove to be more effective and robust.

The right tools

Having the right tools makes a huge difference! I bought a 5-litre sprayer, which is enough to spray the whole edible garden at once, with wand thingy so I can reach high and low with ease. This is much more efficient and effective - who knew?

Before I sprayed yesterday I also pruned the citrus trees, to get rid of the new low growth, the somewhat dead bits, and generally thin things out a bit.

Today I did some transplanting - borage and catnip into the ground (the catnip was sampled within about 15 minutes of it going in), and four sage, four catnip and an English Winter Thyme from the seedling trays into pots.

Twice as nice

The strawberry planters have a layer of pea straw pellets on the surface which has done a good job so far of keeping the soil moist, I hadn't had to water them at all. However it hasn't rained all week and a couple of the plants were looking a little droopy - after a quick water last night it's all good though.

I found my earlier notes about what was planted where, so there's two Camarosa in the square planter (which has given me my bountiful harvest of about 4 strawberries so far - you do appreciate them more when dessert consists of half a strawberry instead of a bowl) and four Pajaro in the long planter. And as you can see below, things are now starting to happen in that planter....

A doily a day keeps the birdies away
Safely tucked under the doily is a double berry - so that's one each for dessert this evening!

Dead seedlings

Several of the new seedlings are somewhat less than perky. In fact, I think it's time to call time of death......farewell broccoli, thyme and white sage! Keep hanging in there, borage! They were going along fine, then half way up their length they weakened, keeled over, and that was that. The ordinary sage, and one thyme seedling, are still looking okay and have their standard leaves coming through, so I'll transplant those into larger pots over the next day or two.

ETAs

Courgettes - 12 weeks from sowing. The first plant was sown 21 September, so I will hopefully have something edible the week before Christmas. The second plant was sown 16 October, so that one should be producing by mid January.

Beetroot - 55 days (I suspect that's after germination, rather than after sowing?). I'll take the first sowing as having germinated around 10 October on average, and the second sowing as around 1 November. So the first batch should be ready the first week of December, and the second batch around Christmas.

Tomato - were transplanted a week ago, and should be ready 70 to 80 days from transplanting which would make harvest time from mid January.

Garlic - coming along nicely on schedule for the end of December, but as with the beetroot I'm too scared to have a poke around underground to see exactly what's happening. The second batch by the BBQ seems prone to black aphids - well purple really based on the end result when you squish them! I've been spraying them with Neem from time to time when I remember, which is helping but clearly I need to remember more frequently!


Eeek!

The healthier batch

Whitefly

I seem to have quite the invasion of whitefly - it's not something I remember from last year, certainly not on the courgettes, but this year they are trying to make a home on the broccoli and courgettes. And sadly they are firmly established on all four citrus trees. I've been spraying (more like drenching both sides of all the leaves!) Neem oil every three days (they've just had their third cycle of that regime), which seems to be working on the broccoli and courgetes as there's nothing on them today and no sign of any eggs. I think I might still have a battle on my hands over the citrus though.

Fertiliser

Two weeks ago I gave the soil around the beetroot seedlings a good drenching with a weak solution of Yates Nitrosol Organic - a certified organic "oceanic blood and bone liquid fertiliser". They seemed to enjoy it as they are coming along well, so today I gave them another dose. I'm hopeful that there might actually be something developing down there since what's above the ground is looking more like it presumably should - too scared to jinx it by doing an experimental dig around though.



Apparently the Nitrosol smells really interesting!

I also transplanted a second courgette plant this afternoon. The first is looking a bit stressed out, not sure if that's from the whitefly (which seems to be gone today), or if it's just it look different to the variety I planted last year.

Tomato transplantation

Phew! I've just transplanted 11 tomato plants and the watermelon into the ground. I had to have a rethink on exactly where all the tomatoes could go, as I had forgotten that one of the beds hadn't had any prep work. The tomatoes aren't as close as they appear here, I had the telephoto lens on the camera so it's compressed them together.

New seedlings

Of the sowings into trays I made on Monday, 3 broccoli, 2 thyme , 1 white sage and 1 borage have germinated so far.

Dinner

Mmmm, strawberry! One single solitary 90% ripe strawberry.

(and also a second lot of mesclun - I must investigate what each leaf is, some are quite spicy!)

Other sowings

The last two seeds that I sowed on Monday were both herbs, but ones that are primarily for other uses beyond culinary or medicinal.

Borage – borago officinalis from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 18-25°, takes 7 to 14 days to germinate and are a direct-sown (30cm apart) annual - I've actually sown these into eggcartons so I can keep an eye on them initially then pop the whole thing in the ground once I'm sure there's some action. I'm growing this as it's a good bee plant - the blue flowers are also pretty, and edible! I want to put some of these around by the front path, so the bees come round that side of the house to check out the courgettes and citrus – might as well see if they grow okay in the shade, as well as the sun.

Catnip – nepeta cataria from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 18-25°, takes 7 to 10 days to germinate, and grow perfectly well in pots (my plant from last summer is disturbingly healthy) but otherwise can be planted out 30cm apart as a 30cm high perennial. I've been pruning and drying as each stem got a bit big, but it's going to take a lot of foliage to make a cat toy! And Bugsy seems pretty fond of the leaves au natural, fresh off (or on) the plant. Highly recommended!

Herbs

Here's a roundup on the herbs that were sown on Monday:

Thyme - English Winter, thymus vulgaris from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 18-25°, takes 14 to 21 days to germinate and will grow around 30cm high once transplanted outside spaced 15cm apart. It's a perennial but a smaller one than my mighty rosemary! I have no real idea where I might put these at the moment. Conventional wisdom says to have the herbs close at hand, but those spots are already taken (mostly by the aforementioned rosemary, but also by my beetroot and mesclun as those are the primo spots in the garden), and the spot I'd really like to put them currently has garlic in it (the edge of the BBQ garden). The best solution might be to have them in largish pots through till after I get the garlic out and give the ground a rest for a couple of months.

Oregano – origanum vulgare from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 18-25°, takes 7 to 14 days to germinate and are transplanted outside spaced 15cm apart. This herb is a spreading perennial, but apparently will reach 45cm high so that's a reasonably high ground cover. I don't want to inadvertently plant it where it might later block out any little seedlings, so a row running out from underneath the lemonade tree might be good as it will catch plenty of sun there and won't interfere with anything else.

Sage – salvia officinalis and salvia apiana from Kings Seeds

These two sages germinate in soil temperatures of 18-25° after 7 to 21 days, and are transplanted out at 30cm apart. The common sage is for eating, and will grow to around 50cm high, while the white sage is an aromatic giant at 150cm high! These will be accompanying the oregano by the lemonade tree – I'll be trying to hack back the bouganvellia at that end of the fence as far as possible so the white sage can sit along that, with the common sage in front.

Labour Weekend part 2

The courgette has been safely transplanted, but I decided to hold off on the tomato seedlings as it was still quite windy - I had some of them sitting out on the ground and one ended up with some exposed roots so I'll wait another weekend. On Monday we had a BBQ complete with a small selection of mesclun leaves, at day 37 and big enough to eat - assuming you prefer baby leaves of course. First harvest of the season!




And here's the strawberry I'm so proud of, looking like it's been dipped in ink (and is subsequently looking like a bird may have had an experimental peck).

Purple Sprouting Broccoli

Purple Sprouting Early (brassica oleracea var italica from Kings Seeds)

It's best to transplant sprouting broccoli Dec/Jan, so I've sown some today, and will try to remember to do successive sowings.

Germinates in soil temperatures of 10-25°, sow 2cm deep, takes 7 to 10 days to germinate, then once they are 10-15cm tall (I'd noted down maybe 6 to 8 weeks, but that sounds pretty slow so perhaps I have that wrong) transplant 50cm apart and water in well. Like all brassicas, they need to be kept away from tomatoes and strawberries (and munching green caterpillars).

With these broccoli, you cut the central head when it appears, to ready the plant for the main action which is the side shoots from late winter through spring. Ordinary broccoli takes around 16 weeks to harvest point, but as you harvest that central head before it gets too big it should be a bit quicker than that.

I've had one of these heirloom broccolis by the letterbox since the end of May (yes, it originally had three friends but they didn't thrive), and maybe once a week I have to find and exterminate a tiny green caterpillar! The existing plant was originally sown in late March, took a couple of days to germinate, then sat around for far too long before transplanting. I'll be aiming to fill in the row so I have half a dozen at different stages.

Labour Weekend part 1

Finally, a long weekend! Sadly it's the traditional rubbish weather - and so far has been too wet and far too windy to get anything done in the garden. I have a courgette and several tomatoes ready to transplant, and I'm also planning to move the catnip plant (from last summer) outside as it's taking over the kitchen bench.

All that I've actually done so far this weekend though is sow a dozen or so more mesclun seeds. The existing plants have some leaves big enough to tuck into now, but I'm saving them for our BBQ lunch tomorrow.

Everything is currently outdoors in the mini greenhouse except two pots of flat leaf parsley seedlings, still too little to move from inside, and a new courgette seedling to replace the one that didn't make it. The only other update this week is a couple of Detroit beetroot seedlings sown a week ago that I spotted today.

All in a row

Yesterday was awfully chilly but today it was toasty warm outside, so I got a bit of cleanup work done, trying to keep the weeds down before everything goes in the ground. I also planted out the three rocket seedlings into the ground next to the mesclun, at around 15cm apart. They're still pretty small considering they're a month old now, so perhaps they will take off now they're transplanted.

In the beetroot rows, 6 out of 12 Detroit and 4 out of 12 Albino are well and truly at seedling stage now, three weeks after they were sown. I don't need to thin these out as only every second one germinated - spooky! Today I have extended the row with another 6 sown of each, and also mulched in between the rows with some of the Tui pea straw pellets. These handfuls were pinched from the strawberry planters as there's far too much on those now the pellets have expanded. Not too keen on the associated flies though.

Next to the beetroot, the spring onions have also decided to make a move and I now have 5 out of 6 up, spindly and insubstantial as they are. They also now have 6 potential new friends that were sown today.

And round the corner, there's at least a dozen onion seedlings. I think it would more helpful if lemons didn't keep dropping on them though, and ironically it's the ones at the end nearest the lemon tree which have germinated while the other end doesn't seem quite so good - I imagine this will be because the lemon tree has had a couple of loads of compost round it over the past year while the other end missed out.

Farewell Black Beauty

The first casualty of the season succumbed today. Let's see if the next courgette seed germinates quicker than 10 days!

The broccoli seems to have doubled in size this week - although I did catch a wee green caterpillar munching on it this evening (the second casualty of the season, hehe).

Strawberry blush

In the mini greenhouse, one of the courgettes has some stem damage. They're in large pots growing another set of leaves before I can plant them out (which I'll do this weekend) but one has keeled over a bit and rubbed its stem against the side of the pot in the process. From memory last year this doesn't actually kill them off, but we'll see.

Capsicum

Last year I had a couple of Burpee Pepper plants grown from Koanga Gardens seed (gorgeous shade of red, and very tasty!). One was in the ground, one was in the pot (the latter didn't do very well at all), and although they are apparently best grown as annuals they can survive more than one year if they don't get any frost, which we don't. I had therefore left it where it was on the offchance it would survive, which it evidently has done as today while photographing some mushrooms at its base I spotted new growth! Now that I know it survived and can see exactly where the new growth comes from (just below where the individual fruits grew from last summer), I have removed all the dodgy old nibbled and storm-damaged leaves and decaying baby capsicums that came too late to grow properly, and pruned it back a bit ready for the new season.

Bedraggled before the pruning:

After the pruning:

Closeup of new growth popping out from under last year's stalk:

The same plant back in mid-February - I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for this season

Phacelia

There were a few clumps of phacelia that grew too close to the bricked border so didn't get turned over in September. They began to flower this week! I will probably leave them alone as they are good at attracting bees and the like. I'm also thinking of planting them in a small shaded bed running along our house up to the front door, as apparently phacelia can handle shade and getting more bees in that section of the garden would be handy.

Mesclun day 21

Today in the garden I also put down some Tui pelletised pea straw as mulch around the garlic and strawberries (and I see that there are strawberry flowers on three of the four strawberry plants in the second planter now, hurray!), and sprayed a circle of Wally's Liquid Copper on the soil around the broccoli - this is supposed to keep slugs and snails away.

Insects

I have noticed a few more pests around this week. As well as the snails that have been snacking on my lone broccoli (not that I've ever managed to catch any at it), there was a teeny weeny green caterpillar that I squashed yesterday. Checking around today, I've also spotted what might be black aphids on some of my garlic (well, they might be black aphids, I really need to track down a good book about NZ pests with really good photos in it!), and a tiny red spider thingy on the flowering strawberry plant which I'm assuming is a red spider mite. So everything got a good drenching with Neem Oil this evening.

I've just been to inspect the onion patch for any sign of life - there's a whole three seedlings there now, of the two dozen or so seeds I sowed. Doesn't bode well really. I've also got one spring onion out of the six sown, and still only a couple of Detroit beetroot and a couple of Albino beetroot out of the 12 of each sown. On the bright side, there's quite a few mesclun plants now that are recognisably seedlings rather than weeds.

I definitely have more luck with transplantable seeds rather than direct sown ones, so I'm off to pot up some of those seedlings into their intermediate pots.

Beetroot

I popped out to water the rows of potential beetroot and spring onion seedlings, and lo there is one tiny Detroit beetroot seedling poking up through the ground.

I'm a bit worried about the strawberries though, one plant is going great guns but none of the others have any flowers on yet, although they all look healthy and keep producing new leaves.

First berry

Possibly a little soon to be counting my chickens? It's still exciting for someone who's never grown any berries before.

Portrait of a seedling

Into the heart of a courgette

Today a watermelon broke through the soil and up into the light

Tomato seedlings (there's a couple of parsley seedlings at the back too which popped up yesterday, so that's at least one of everything now up in that tray

Courgettes

The courgettes have germinated. These were sown into pots indoors, and I was a little worried as they are normally very quick and easy to germinate. I gave the pots a bit more water on Sunday, and on Monday there they were. That makes 9 days.

Still no sign of the watermelons though, also sown into pots. I've also added a bit of water to these, and covered them up to raise the soil temperature a bit.

Weekly roundup

It's been a week since I did the first big sowing indoors and out.

Out in the garden some mesclun seedlings have popped up (at least I think they're mesclun, they could always turn out to be weeds or grass but it looks good at this stage). The rocket sown indoors in a seed tray is also up.

In the tomato tray, I have three Green Zebra, four Roma, four San Marzano and two Watermouth up. No sign of the Russian Reds as yet though.....

And in the same seed tray, there's now two coriander, but alas no parsley.

I used those compartmentalised propagation trays - one seed per compartment, that way when/if the seedlings are ready to move out of the tray (either out into the garden or into an intermediate-stage pot) I can just lift the contents of each compartment out on a teaspoon and into its new home without any disturbance.

And not a peep out of the two courgette and two watermelon sitting in their own pots. I think I'll add a bit more water and cover them up to see if that gets them going.

Spring Onion

Allium fistolosum - "Ishikura" from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 10-25°, direct sow around 5 to 10cm apart and 1cm deep, takes 7 to 14 days to germinate, then 10 weeks to harvesting.

Last year I did this all wrong – transplanted them into a terracotta planter in the mini greenhouse. They were edible after 8 weeks but the stalks were only 10cm high then, and they should get to 45cm according to the Kings catalogue. After 12 weeks the bulb had gotten larger but the stems hadn't progressed upwards at all. Tasty though!

This year I've earmarked the spring onions to go in the area that had cover crops in. Successive sowings will be called for – maybe 3 or 4 each fortnight? I decided to start with half a dozen sown this morning.

We have more germination

Two of the Roma tomato and two of the San Marzano tomatoes are peeping up today, so that's five days from sowing.

In less welcome news, the snails keep hitting my purple sprouting broccoli. There's nary a snail to see by day, and even by night when I sneak out with a torch, but I'm quite keen to get my hands on them.

Beetroot

Detroit Dark Red (organic) and Albino, both beta vulgaris var crassa from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 15-25°. Most of my books claim that beetroot transplants badly, but Kings have all their (non-organic) beetroot as transplant rather than direct sow, so who knows? I think I'll run with direct sow though. Soak the seeds in water overnight (which I'm doing tonight), then sow 2cm deep and 15cm apart with germination after 10 to 15 days. Harvest due at 55 days.

As they take a while, and you can't eat them all at once (although I'm eyeing them up to bottle as relish which will go nicely on burgers), I have to remember successive sowings every fortnight. However they do keep for several weeks out of the fridge or much longer in the fridge, so that's helpful.

Last year I wasn't very successful with the beetroot – I suddenly took a fancy to growing some in late Feb so did some direct sowing, and they did germinate but evidently weren't happy (not enough sun? not enough water? dodgy soil?) as they stayed in a perpetual seedling state with nothing going on under the ground. This year they'll be going in the primo spot in the garden in the hope they like that a bit better - this is the same bed as the spring onions, and the first sowings of both veges should be ready about the same time.

We have germination!

Rocket's up :)

So 2 days from sowing (indoors) to germination then.

Parsley and Coriander

A couple of herbs were sown yesterday:

* Parsley - "Italian Plain Leaf" Petroselinum hortense from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 15-25°, takes 14 to 21 days to germinate and will grow around 50cm high once transplanted outside spaced 30cm apart. It's an biennual so I'll have to think carefully about where to put it. I planted some of these on Sunday.

* Coriander - "Indian Summer" Coriandrum sativum from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 15-25°, direct sow 5cm apart, takes 7 to 10 days to germinate and will grow around 30cm high. It's an annual, but will proliferate all by itself next year if you let it go to seed.

I did grow one of these indoors last year. We don't use that much coriander, but I'm keen to have one indoors and one outdoors just to see the difference. I also sowed these on Sunday – completely forgetting to sow either in their final pots or in eggcarton compartments (which can be transferred straight into the ground outside), so I guess I'll be transplanting and seeing how they go.

Watermelon

Souters from Koanga

I haven't got much of a clue about watermelon, so this will be a bit of an experiment. These ones are similar to sugar baby, only need soil temperatures of around 15° and should be planted out around 50cm apart according to Koanga. Yesterday I sowed these straight into pots rather than seedraising trays, and will transfer them into the ground once they are established. Watermelon generally take 5 to 12 days to germinate, then 10 to 12 weeks to mature, need at least a metre's space, and I assume you only end up with a few watermelon per vine?

I don't have that much space available, so I'll be trying two vines, one in the slightly shady corner, and another in the sun near the lemon tree.

Courgette

Black Beauty – curcubita pepo from Kings Seeds, organic

Germinates in soil temperatures of 20-25°. They're big seeds, so sow 2cm deep and they take 5 to 12 days to germinate. Last year I found they grew really quickly, so I've put the seeds straight into pots rather than in a seedraising tray, and will try and get them transplanted from there into the ground as soon as possible. The plants will snake along the ground, and need to be given around a metre's room to move. I had my first courgette a month from transplanting last year, but they were actually sown 7 weeks (!) earlier which brings to the total time up to around the more usual 12 weeks from sowing.

I'll be sowing a couple of plants now, then maybe another couple in December. If this summer's conditions are as suitable as last year this will probably still supply far too many!

Once planted, keeping the powdery mildew to a minimum proved tricky last year given Auckland's humidity. Now I know to be very careful to water in the mornings and make sure the leaves stay as dry as possible.

Photocall - spring growth

The first strawberry flower was open this morning. There's a close-up below:


You can now tell that the lone broccoli plant will indeed be purple, even if it's not apparent yet that it is actually broccoli:


And lastly, the garlic is halfway through its six-month growing cycle and appears to be doing well, from up above the ground anyway!

Tomato

I only plant heirloom varieties of tomatoes, organic if possible. This year I'm planting:
* Watermouth - an organic meaty salad tomato from Koanga
* Roma - organic for saucing from Kings Seeds
* San Marzano - also an organic variety from Kings Seeds, good for eating or paste/puree)
* Green Zebra - organic preservation pack from Koanga. Just because it's stripey (I also wanted Tigerella so I had both green and red but everyone seemed to be out of stock when I did my ordering – will have to check again)
* Russian Red – one from Koanga that I also planted last year and were a tasty all-purpose tomato.

Tomatoes all need to be started indoors, taking up to 14 days to germinate, then transplanted outside once the seedlings look sturdy. The Watermouth can be transplanted when soil temperatures reach 15°, which is a little ahead of the others which prefer 20° or more (I should really buy a thermometer). They will all need staking (last year I grew a cherry variety that supposedly didn't, but that got a little chaotic), and need to be around 50cm apart. The second I see the first fruit starting to turn the nets will be flung over to keep the birds off – I was so proud last year when my very first tomato ever starting turning, and for the next couple of days it got redder and redder and I got prouder and prouder and then mere hours before the designated harvest moment it ended up as bird food. I nearly cried.

Good companion plants for tomatoes are basil, chives and parsley (I should have all these dotted about), also onion and asparagus. Broccoli, cabbage and potatoes should stay away.

Watermouth is a wait and see.

Roma is determinate, 70 days, and 100cm high – I guess it's more efficient to plant, harvest and sauce all at once, although I may well do a backup sowing too!

San Marzano is indeterminate 80 days and 200cm high

Green Zebra is indeterminate 75 days and 200cm high (according to Kings, and I imagine the Koanga version should be much the same)

Russian Red is determinate and took around 80 days last year (I mucked around and didn't transplant them until the beginning of November). These definitely did better if you can save them from the birds until they are red, rather than picking early and leaving to ripen. They got around 100cm high.

San Marzano and Green Zebra are both taller, so the Green Zebra can go along the back fence and the San Marzano in the bed opposite near the lemonade tree. The Roma can go in front of the Green Zebra, and if it works out right I could whip out those plants once harvested and have time to put a second batch in – and both these varieties should be ready slightly before the others, all things being equal. The Watermouth and the Russian Red can go in the opposite bed curving past the lemon tree round into the "sticky-out bit". None of these areas were planted at all last year, but had compost dug in in autumn and the "sticky-out bit" also had phacelia, now dug in, over winter.

I'm aiming for 3 plants of the Green Zebra and the Roma, and 2 each of the San Marzano, Watermouth and Russian Red, and the seeds were sown this morning.

Signs of life

Today I spotted the first sign of some flowers on the strawberry plants in one of the planters - little white petals peeking through the green.

I also sowed the onion seed (straightforward) and mesclun seed which wasn't quite so orderly - staring at the pile of seed, staring at the bed, abandoning any pretence of sowing neatly at 5cm apart, scattering over the approximate area, then waving the hoe through it all to hopefully bury the seeds a bit!

Mesclun

This one's an organic mix from Kings Seeds.

Germinates in soil temperatures of 12-20°, direct sow 5cm apart (and i'm guessing quite shallow), takes 6 to 8 days to germinate. From there, I guess we see what happens! I imagine it's pretty variable depending on exact mix and exact conditions.

I'll be popping these in the BBQ patch, as it's convenient to pop out and harvest from there.

Onion

Allium cepa, Stuttgart Long Keeper from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 10-25°, direct sow 15cm apart and 2cm deep, takes 10 to 14 days to germinate, then 26 weeks to harvesting – so I must get these in the ground ASAP by the end of September, and it's too late now to do two sowings which would otherwise have been a nice idea. Apparently they want a long cool spring period to maximise the top growth before the bulbs start to swell in summer.

Onions need a well-composted sunny spot with good air circulation as they are prone to fungal diseases in damp conditions. On the companion planting front, they are good with strawberries and lettuce (and beneficial for carrots), but bad with peas and beans.

At harvest time the leaves should yellow and die down, after which the bulbs can be carefully lifted out with a fork (important to avoid bruising) in a dry breezy period and left to dry on a wire rack in the sun for a couple of days. The necks have to thoroughly dry out (up to two weeks) before storing.

While I grew some spring onions last year, onions themselves will be a new experiment this year. The Stuttgart Long Keeper is an heirloom variety, and I intend to plant a long row in the long triangular stretch (maybe 3 metres long) leading up to the lemon tree shown in my post of 31 August. I did compost this spot in autumn, so hopefully it'll prove to be suitable soil (nothing's ever been grown in it except weeds).

Rocket

Eruca Sativa, organic from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 7-25°, sow 1cm deep, takes 7 to 10 days to germinate, transplant allowing 5cm between each plant (although I have found another reference which says 15cm – I'll go with Kings version though). Matures “quickly” - however long that will turn out to be!

General rules for salad leaves will apply, so rocket will like things cool (yet sunny according to Organic Gardening for New Zealand Gardeners), will bolt easily if it's too hot or dry, and should be kept weed-free. Companion plants for lettuce should also be applicable I would think, which would mean carrots, radish, cucumber and strawberries. The latter is the only thing I'm growing, so maybe I will try some rocket in the unoccupied half of the strawberry planter, and the main spot in the garden I had tentatively flagged for rocket is the same bed as the leftover strawberry plants so that's convenient.

Last year I tried to direct sow two rows under the orange tree in early January – over the height of summer this area gets dappled sunlight so is cooler than the rest of the garden. Obviously this wasn't entirely successful, a few did germinate but Bugsy dug it up! Then at the end of January I sowed a tray of it indoors, which germinated in two days but never got thinned out or transplanted. Not a good result for rocket, all in all, do you think actually being able to eat some rocket is an attainable goal this year?

Rocket is a good one for me to try and remember successive sowings, a concept that escaped me entirely last year! So I'll go for a row running alongside the strawberries, planted front to back (since the back will probably still be completely shaded by the time the first few plants go in), a few plants each month. I will have to pop out and measure, but it's probably a 75cm stretch.

Spring planting

No, I haven't done any yet.

Yes, I sat down with the seed catalogues from Kings Seeds and Koanga Gardens and ordered everything at the beginning of August. And I even sat down and made a list of all the seeds I then had, grouping them by how soon I can plant them - so I know exactly what's good to go now that it's "early spring". Is that a little too organised?

But I keep putting off actually committing and putting the seed into the seed raising mix, on the grounds that it doesn't seem quite warm enough yet, and I don't have a hot water cupboard to start them off all nice and toasty. Also I was going to be away for the next few days at a conference, so I didn't want to plant anything right before then and risk missing the germination action. Those excuses seem a little lame now though.

But I did want to summarise the key info on each crop I was planting, so I could refer to it as things progressed. You may have noticed I haven't done that yet, but I'm going to make a start this evening, honest!

Digging in

Yesterday the phacelia was all dug into the ground. This was hard work - at least, it looked like hard work from where I was sitting, admiring it being done! We decided that next year I should do a better job of keeping it away from the edges of the beds - the brick edging is concreted in, and it slopes into the beds themselves, which makes it imposssible to dig close to the edges.

I did contribute as well, hoeing a few of the other beds and ripping out a lot of the weeds that were thriving in the greenhouse (the mini propagating house from Edenlite that is plonked down the end of the garden, and much loved by Bugsy as a good spot to watch birds from - she'll need it now that her phacelia forest is gone).

Litter box

What's wrong with this picture? (Apart from the fact there were originally four strawberry plants in there and the two in the foreground have already died)


Apparently, square planter boxes look too much like kitty litter boxes, even if they are 20 cm high and painted dark green! I don't fancy the chances of the poor plant on the right that's been pretty much buried, even if it has now been well fertilized. I guess I should have gotten around to mulching sooner, maybe that would have stopped whichever cat it was (not Bugsy, she never learned how to bury the evidence with a nice neat pile but she did decide to be in the photo for some reason).

Weeding

It was a beautiful sunny day today, hurray! By late morning it had warmed up so we were able to get some weeding and trimming done. The rosemary clump (which is enormous) had its first trim, although I would like to get it down to an even more respectable size - I might just give up and see if I can get cuttings to grow then start again with some smaller plants. After trimming, it's still around 3 feet high, and more than six feet across.



Last Sunday I also managed to get some citrus food down - it was raining heavily anyway so I didn't have to water it in well myself! This is the first time our three lemon trees, lemonade tree and orange tree have had any attention in the almost seven years we've been here. They have cropped quite happily despite the neglect, so I'm expecting big things of them now they have been fed!

And STILL more rain

This week there was supposed to be several days in a row with no rain, including this weekend. But no, of course it rained today.

It's clear the weather is warming up though - and warm damp soil means the phacelia seems to have doubled in height this week! It REALLY needs to get dug in, but I guess it'll have to wait another week until it dries out.

STILL raining

Everyone else out there is completely over it too, right? On the bright side, it's inching closer to seed sowing time.

Jungle cat

There's a patch of soil in the garden that was very dry and tired so I didn't plant anything there last spring. In autumn it got a healthy dose of compost then had the cover crop Phacelia planted in it. As soon as it stops raining and the ground drains a bit it'll be time to dig it in, but until then Bugsy is enjoying her jungle - it's a great spot for birdwatching.

Guilt

Here's a new trick to make yourself do weeding - post photos on your blog and feel really bad that everyone can see your shame.....the current layer of fallen camellia flowers, oak leaves and weeds have now been removed from the garlic garden.

Winter Solstice - the beginning of the harvest year

Last year was my first time growing food (or indeed anything from seed). I started small, trying courgettes, capsicum, two types of tomatoes, and plenty of basil. It's now time to plan the new season's planting so I thought I'd track this year's harvest progress online. I kept an offline gardening diary last year, but blogging has the advantage of being able to add photos and categories to blog posts, so at the end of the season I can search out a complete set of illustrated posts related to a particular crop.

My harvest year begins at the winter solstice. Not much else is going on mid-winter, but this is when garlic traditionally goes in the ground to begin its six-month growing stint until harvest time at the summer solstice (ie late December). We use a reasonable amount of garlic (and it goes well with the bounty of tomatoes we will hopefully get this year!) so this year we're growing our own. All you do is grab a single fat garlic clove and pop it in the ground, 5cm down and pointy end up.

I've planted garlic in two spots. Six cloves of organic garlic (imported from California) went in by our letterbox on 14 June - this spot has good soil, hasn't had anything growing in it before except weeds, and does get sun although not so much in winter. These took no more than a couple of weeks to sprout - I wasn't expecting this to happen so quickly so I hadn't been checking them, but they were a reasonable size by the time I noticed them.

I also purchased some Printador garlic cloves from Kings Plant Barn and planted 15 or so of these out by our barbecue on 28 June (a couple of leftover cloves ended up in the letterbox row). This area has clay soil and again gets a reasonable amount of sun but not in winter. These took three weeks to just start peeping through the ground.

Unfortunately there's been a lot of heavy rain since they went in, so hopefully they aren't busy rotting away underground. Here's the letterbox row today (and yes, I really should clean up the dropped camellia flowers):



We also impulse-purchased some strawberry plants at Kings Plant Barn, half a dozen Pajaro and half a dozen Camarosa, and Kere has kindly constructed some planters for them. The plants were starting to look a bit sad by the time I actually got them into the planters on Saturday (in between the showers) - and the next 24 hours brought heavy rail and hail onto them! So we're keeping our fingers crossed they survive.

The only other things growing in the garden are the citrus trees (two lemons, one orange, one lemonade, all relatively neglected), and a sole surviving purple broccoli seedling. This has managed to survive the two months of storms since it was planted by the letterbox but no sign of anything other than leaves yet.