Delight or disappointment?

Feeling slightly neglectful of both the garden and the blog at the moment. In my defence, there's been a few disappoinments on the gardening front, so here's a roundup of delights vs disappointments for everything that's currently in the ground, in an entirely random order.

Strawberries - delight! The odd single strawberry last year has given way to a veritable bounty this year, I'm having a couple of strawberries each day on my cereal and there's plenty left for snacks and desserts. The garden bed where the one plant became dozens via the miracle of runners seems to be the right spot, and I'm getting better quantities and better sizes from the ones in the ground versus the ones in containers.

Leeks - delight! Well, sort of. The one in the ground has sprouted up and developed what must be a flower or seed head - the whole thing looks very elegant and swan-like but the leek itself has stopped fattening up. I think I'm just going to eat it. I also have four germinated leek seedlings.

Rosemary - disappointment. I think my enormous rosemary bush is on its last legs, it has dying spots all over the place

Tomatoes - delight! These seem to have gone from small seedlings to fully grown plants in no time and there's baby tomatoes on there now.

Cherry tomatoes - disappointment. I only have one successful seedling of the Mexican Midget cherry tomatoes, and one might-make-it-or-might-not seedling of the Henry's Dwarf tomatoes, and both have only been planted out today which is pretty late. Fingers crossed they'll perk up and give me a good late season crop though.

Potatoes - delight! The plant tops are horridly raggedy, with the plants in containers practically dying off. I thought this was a bad sign and there was something wrong with them, but perhaps not because there are actually potatoes under there! I've dug up half a dozen small and medium sized potatoes from under the mostly-all-dead plant and will be having them for dinner.

Catnip - delight! Assuming I needed commercial quantities of catnip, of course, which I don't. However I have successfully made a catnip toy for the cat which went down very well, and there's plenty more where that came from. It's trying to smother the lemon tree!

Capsicum - disappointment and delight. My Jingle Belles plant I'd had inside over winter didn't like the conditions outside and has died, I didn't have much luck germinating either more of these or any of the wonderful Burpees from two years ago, but I do have one Alma Paprika that's doing well and was planted out today.

Basil - disappointment. I only had three seedlings to plant out today, far from the border of nine around the tomatoes I had envisaged (although the tomatoes have grown so well there's no room for nine basil). There won't be much pesto for Tiny Tim next Christmas.

Garlic - disappointment. I think the overall quantity (8) is right but I'm afraid that it's not going to be good news under the ground when time comes to dig these up. One's died off (the black aphids swarmed the runt, even though it had been a wet couple of weeks and I though the aphids only showed up when the plant was stressed for water), and several of the others have two or three shoots rather than the one strong sturdy one they should have. I think next year I will buy fresh garlic to plant from, rather than using my own (this year's was 2nd generation).

Watermelon - disappointment, couldn't get any germination. I'll get some fresh seeds next year. I do have a seedling of rockmelon though, which I planted out today.

Pea - disappointment. It was growing, even had a few pods on it, but has suddenly died.

Lettuce - disappointment (Danyelle - no germination at all) and delight (Cos - looking really good although not quite ready to sample yet)

Rhubarb - delight - growing strongly. I also have a second seedling in a pot that looks really good but I can't justify more than one plant with the space we have available.

Eggplant - disappointment. All my egpplant luck was obviously used up on the germination front this year, I had the seedlings ready and planted out much earlier than last year but one's died, another's on its way and the last one is still hanging in there but has a definite failure to thrive.

This weekend in the garden

Yesterday - transplanted tomatoes - 2 x Tigerella, 2 x Green Zebra, 2 x Watermouth, 2 x Dali. Also transplanted a rhubarb.

Today - transplanted 3 x eggplant, sowed a row of mesclun, row of cos lettuce, row of Danyelle lettuce. Also sowed the poppy seeds.

The germination isn't going that well. It doesn't look like we'll end up with any cherry tomatoes this year, none of the two sowings of Mexican Midgets have taken although a single Dwarf Cherry has emerged this week - a bit late, but hopefully I can keep it going and get it in the ground. There's also two basil, well down on the dozen or so I planted out last year! I've even left space around the tomatoes for a full border of basil.......

Also germinated this week is an Alma paprika pepper that I really hope survives, although it doesn't look like any of the other peppers are interested - might try germinating them directly outside where it's warmer than indoors.

Still to do today - melon and watermelon.

Seed + seed raising mix + water

Today was a big day! Sown into individual cell compartments of seed raising trays are:

4 x tomato - Tigerella
4 x tomato - Green Zebra
4 x tomato - Mexican Midget
4 x tomato - Henry's Dwarf Bush
4 x tomato - Dali
4 x tomato - Watermouth
4 x rhubarb - Glaskins Perpetual
6 x eggplant - Long Purple
3 x capsicum - Burpee
3 x capsicum - Alma Paprika
3 x borage
3 x marsh mallow
3 x chives
3 x oregano
3 x basil
3 x coriander
and 2 x courgette (Black Beauty) direct into pots

Now to collate my information on each vegetable/herb so I know where I am!

Trimming the strawberries

There's been plenty of rain around this week keeping the garden well moistened, so I can only assume from the droopiness that the strawberry plants feel that it's time for a well-earned rest. That said, it's just the ones in the planters that are drooping:

I've started trimming off all the old leaves and just leaving the new growth. Here's the square planter, the two plants in the foreground are the old trimmed ones, the two in the back are untrimmed runners.

However I can't quite bring myself to sort out the strawberry plant and her runner babies in the garden - I don't really know where to start! The single original plant is the small darker patch, the rest are runners.

I also spotted the first flower on one of the eggplants today - too late in the season to produce any actual eggplants, but pretty nonetheless.

Garden roundup

Courgette & scallopini - now removed

Broccoli - now removed

Tomatoes - now removed apart from the last Green Zebra plant which is still going

Onions - appear to have removed themselves :)

Strawberries - still fruiting!

Spring onions - still going strong (shouldn't have planted so many)

Eggplant - the plants are growing on upwards now, but it's far too late in the season so no eggplants again this year :(

Weekend roundup

The heat is getting just a tad monotonous, is it not? I hosed the garden down again this morning (quite a mission as the hose is at the other end of the house), and noticed the following:

* The spring onions and the onions (which are particularly weak looking) are still suffering from the purple aphids, it doesn't seem to matter how much I water them

* Whitefly is back, this time on the underside of the tender new purple broccoli seedlings and on some of the citrus. I will try to remember to spray with Neem tonight.

* I seem to have planted the basil a bit late (although it will still get there - mmm pesto) and the eggplant very late - must try harder next year!

Here's my poor exhausted tomato plants mid way through the harvest:

Red Russian in the foreground, Green Zebra in the middle and Watermouth at the back. The San Marzanos are below:


And lastly, my courgette. I've been trying to get a photo of this for a while, but had to wait until all the leaves in the immediate vicinity were gone. You can see the vine coming out of the ground (it always surprises me just how dead it looks once it's dried and split, but evidently it still does the job), then it splits into two! Is this common? Both ends are equally sturdy and as productive as the average plant so I have two for the price of one.

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.

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.

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!)