A smorgasbord of seedlings

Quick seedling roundup:

Mon 22nd October - planted out a dozen broccoli, half a dozen cauliflower, and a lone red cabbage. Some of these were looking a bit iffy but perked up once planted. Since then, someone's been a-nibbling some of the leaves (in particular the cauliflowers seem to be a favourite). They are all out of sight down the end of the garden (which is all of 10 metres away).

Sunday 28th October - planted out six brandywine, three green zebra and three gardener's delight tomato seedlings. I've put these in the same area as last year as it works so well for watering, but next year I'm going to have to rotate them back into less convenient spots.

Sunday 4th November - I should have sown these a month ago but today I've finally set up seed trays for:
Tomatillo - green and purple varieties
Chilli - Caribbean and Ancho varieties
Capsicum - Marconi Red and Jimmy Nardello
Bergamot
Jamaica
Basil
Cape Gooseberry
Jicama (the first batch of these I did earlier didn't do so well, only one germinated and it died off).

In other gardening news, something has been attacking the strawberry leaves (an insect? There are all these small holes in the middle of the leaves), the coriander has bolted and been removed and the chamomile did the same - we did have several weeks there of a gently waving forest of green topped with white flowers. Still weeding through the rest of the herb garden and tidying things up ready for the planting out of the rest of the herb seedlings, I have Mexican mint, feverfew and anise ready to go in.

Oh, and three hearty courgette seedlings still to plant out!

Maybe I haven't been as slack on the gardening front as I thought.

Hidden treasure

While wandering past the herb garden today, musing to myself for the hundredth time that I really should weed it a bit (or should I? Could just call it ground cover for the winter?) I spied some unexpected varieties amongst the various weed species. The joys of self-sowing have meant that there are plenty of new coriander seedlings, a couple of dill seedlings, and plenty of chamomile - even in the segments of the herb garden furthest from where the chamomile originally was. I've weeded out the actual weeds now to give all these new seedlings a bit more of the winter light. Time to start planning what other herbs should join them in spring!

From small things......

The garlic harvest back in summer was pretty disappointing. Each head seemed really small compared to previous years, and several I just tossed out as they were too small to do anything with. Now garlic planting time has rolled around again, and I have been keeping an eye out at the organic shop waiting for some decent-sized garlic to pop up to restart my stocks. Interestingly, it seems it wasn't just me that had problems this year - their garlic is just as small as mine was, in fact one of the (partially eaten) heads I have in the pantry is noticeably larger than the biggest-cloved specimens I was able to buy! So that one has been rescued from imminent eatery and four of its remaining cloves have been planted out today, along with three each from two I purchased. Fingers crossed for better growing conditions this year and a better result come January!

Carrots - endings and beginnings

This is for all you edible gardeners out there that actually dig up and eat your carrots. You're missing out on the seed-making magic!

The same flower head two weeks ago

Scenes from the dill forest

Summer update - what summer?

It's been a somewhat challenging season so far. While I did really well getting the seeds off and running early and then transplanted out relatively promptly, it's all fallen apart since then. Most of this has been due to factors outside my control. First I was away for 3 weeks from mid-November - just when I need to be vigilant as far as removing tomato laterals, weeding, playing my favourite game of eradicate-the-whitefly, and making sure everything is establishing itself properly. Then, since I returned in mid-December, the weather has been pretty wet.

Strawberries - too wet to get many of any decent quality. I did collect around 500 grams of unnibbled berries when I first arrived back, enough to make a batch of strawberry ice-cream, but since then I'm only getting the two or three I pop on my cereal each morning.

Tomatoes - I'm still waiting for any tomatoes to ripen up. I had to do some major pruning on the plants as they had become quite overgrown, and I don't think the bees had been able to get in to pollinate! The tomatoes on the plants seem much smaller, and fewer in number than in the past. I've now also done some serious removal of the lower leaves in an attempt to make sure any sun that does make an appearance can get in to the actual tomatoes.

The various chillies and capsicums are coming along - no sign of any fruit as yet though.

And a trip down the end of the garden in between the showers today revealed the scent of garlic in the air. I suspect these are ready to harvest, but in order to do that we need a good week of dry weather, and there's no sign of that any time soon. Hopefully they are not starting to rot underground.