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.

Heads are forming

The broccoli are progressing!

That one looks like I'd expect. Unfortunately, two out of the three are instead trying to grow as tall as they possibly can. In the last day or two small yellow flowers are forming around the base of the "head". This can't be good - are the top bits still edible and should I just eat them now?

And I have one tiny cauliflower forming a head as well.

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....

It's not rocket science.....

In the past I have sown seeds into compartmentalised trays and let them germinate inside, then transferred the baby seedlings to larger individual pots, then finally popped them outside only the day or so before planting out. I didn't want the delicate things to die! But I sowed some broccoli and cauliflower seeds last week - the tray was taking up space inside so I moved it outside as soon as they germinated. Turns out they grow MUCH faster if you do that. Obviously they are tougher than I thought!