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.