04 July 2010

New year, new plantings

I have been very neglectful of the garden lately - but in my defence it is winter! There's some broccoli and cauliflower slowly coming along (no sign of any heads forming as yet), four leeks down the end of the garden that appear to be thriving (comparatively speaking of course, my previous efforts being very dismal) a single lettuce to eat, and lemons ripening up. We're eating carrots and parsnips from time to time but it's fair to say they are definitely on the petite side! And the rhubarb has sadly passed away.

Looking forward to the new season, last week the garlic went in. This year I started fresh with new NZ-grown organic garlic from Ceres - one of these looked like it might be elephant garlic rather than ordinary (either that or I've just planted a very strange mutant), and I planted a total of 8 ordinary-looking cloves and 2 mutant ones. Time will tell!

I also visited the garden centre to check out seed potatoes. They had several different varieties, all first earlies, but no Jersey Bennes which I was hoping for. Instead I purchased a bag of Rocket variety and they are now chitting away. These seed potatoes are enormous compared to the Heather variety I had last year....