Parsnip!

Thumbs up - the two courgette plants were planted out today, and the direct-sown coriander has emerged.

Thumbs down - No sign of the cumin as yet - at least, I'm pretty sure the things that are popping up are more likely to be weeds than cumin......The tomatoes still aren't quite big enough to be planted out but are coming along nicely in the new "greenhouse" and will probably go in next weekend. No sign of the watermelons - I planted three, two pots are inside and one is outside in the greenhouse as a bit of an experiment to see if the additional heat would help things along, but there's nothing to report as yet (at least a week in).

Harvested today - one big beautiful perfectly formed parsnip. Also three carrots that the perfectly formed parsnip is probably pointing at and laughing. I'll try and grab a photo of the parsnip tomorrow evening.

And I have a guilty conscience over everything else that still hasn't been sown. Must remember to get a tray sorted out tomorrow!

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.

Germination woes

I have given up on the last batch of seeds. Able to be transplanted into individual pots were 2 x basil (only two, sob!), a Mexican Midget tomato, a Henry's Bush dwarf tomato which frankly doesn't look likely to take off, and two Alma Paprika peppers, one of which is an extremely long shot.

Last night's new sowings were:
1 x Souters watermelon
1 x Collective Farm Women rockmelon
and 4 each of Henry's Bush tomato, basil, coriander, leek (hmmmm), oregano, parsley, marsh mallow and forget-me-not.

Fingers crossed! It's really pretty late to be sowing anything but my harvest is going to look pretty small at this rate if I don't.

Done their dash

The tomato plants have done their duty this summer, and are now progressively being removed. However one of the Green Zebras is still going strong, it's draped itself over the lemon tree and is still getting new growth on it, so I'll leave that one in to see how long it lasts.

I'm also planning to take out one of the courgette plants (the runt), and the purple sprouting broccoli today - I don't think I'm going to get any more shoots off the latter and it's getting a bit stinky! The watermelon vine is another one that can come out now.

Watermelon

Ta-da! 6.6kgs and very juicy. This one will be the total of the harvest this season, I didn't get any more flowers once this one had gotten going, and both vines I planted have now faded away in the heat.

Harvesting this week

Let the eating stage commence!

Half the garlic is now harvested, and the rest I'm going to pull up today.

Tomatoes are coming through thick and fast. I've made one small bottle of Roma tomato sauce, and will be doing one of Red Russian and another of San Marzano today, while we're busy eating the Watermouth and the Green Zebra.

I don't think the capsicums are going to be a raving success this year. We've had a couple of ripe red ones from the plant that survived from last year, but they are TINY, as are the unripe ones on the plant. I never managed to get another seedling to germinate and survive - I have a sturdy looking seedling ready to transplant now but I think it'll be too late to get anything off it.

By yesterday I had four large scallopini, so I stuffed and baked them for dinner. They were okay, problem was that the outside skin once baked is very squeaky on your teeth, so I don't think I'll try that again.

The watermelon is still growing - 3cm since last week, but it does seem to be darkening slightly and the tendrils near it are definitely darkening. If it gets too hot this weekend I think I'll have a nice watermelon snack!

Lastly, the purple sprouting broccoli was very nice, even if it is disappointing to see it turn green when you cook it.

Watermelon may be ready to pop

Visitors to the garden have been most amused by my one watermelon, but I'll be the one laughing soon as I think it's almost ready for eating. I've just measured it and it's 32.5cm from the stem over the top down to the point where the flower was, the half-circumference-lengthwise if you will (that doesn't sound like a standard measurement but it's the easiest bit to measure!), and I may declare it ready if it doesn't grow by Monday (public holiday, hurrah!). I also think that the tendrils are browning and the underside is more yellow than it was, but this may be my brain playing tricks on me...

A kind reader has suggested that the vine may be in need of some assisted reproductive technology. Once the current buds are flowering I shall manually introduce them to each other and see if they take each other's fancy :)

Harvest indecision

Garlic - this is really confusing. Some references say to harvest once the tops fall over, but others say that's too late and you should harvest when the tops start turning brown. Not much help, especially as I have some that have now fallen over but are still green! I also hope I haven't got the watering regime all wrong, I found one reference that said they need lots of water in the last month, and another that says you shouldn't water at all in the last fortnight before harvest - I've been watering every other day for the last month. The organic bulbs have only just started to fall over the last day or so, while the bulbs from the garden centre have all been lounging around on the soil pretty much all month now:


I think tomorrow I will pull up a few from the other row (which are all pretty much brown tops now) plus a comparison bulb from the green-top row in the picture above, and see what they look like.

Watermelon - still getting bigger every day. I think these should take around 75 days, and the vine was transplanted 2 November, which brings us to 16 January, ie around now. I found these extra indicators of ripeness online - the tendrils on the stem near the melon turn brown, the surface becomes dull, rough and hard, and the surface sitting on the ground turns from green to yellow. Not sure that last one applies as mine is very pale green but lighter on the underside, and has been all along. However the surface is definitely firmer now, so I guess it's getting there. As it looks like this might be the only one I get, I don't want to harvest it too early or too late!


Purple Sprouting Broccoli - I believe the theory here is to harvest the head then leave the rest of the plant - harvesting the head encourages the individual shoots up the side, hence the "sprouting" in the name. No idea when you harvest the head though - at the moment the stalk isn't as tall as what you would see when buying a cut one, but perhaps that's leaving it too late if you want the sprouting to happen. Aaargggh!


Yes, the caterpillars do appear to be well fed, don't they? At least they appear to prefer the leaves to the pretty purple bits.

And lastly, my most exciting discovery of the day:


Roma for the win! You may notice that this is on the plant that has collapsed the most, which is why all the bunches are very close to the ground. I'll be putting some netting around that one tomorrow to keep the birds away from My Precious.

Watermelon progress

The watermelon seems to be doubling in size every couple of days. Pity there's only one watermelon on the vine doing anything! Several of the flowers have a baby watermelon at their base but they don't seem to be developing at all.

Five days ago:


Today:


The vine seems to attract the mosquitoes for some reason - there's always a cloud of midges that fly up if you disturb it, and there's always several sitting on the melon itself.

Baby watermelon

Five baby watermelon

On the morning dash round outside to see how everything is faring (it's been raining and quite windy overnight, the coriander is not happy with the wind), I spotted five baby watermelon! Then it started raining again before I could get a picture.

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.

Flowering

The first flowers have today appeared on the tomatoes (in particular the Russian Red and the Roma above, which means they have flowered just over 3 weeks from transplantation) and one of the courgettes (a month from transplanting), and the watermelon vine has tripled in size over the last couple of days and actually looks more like a vine now. The beetroot patch is coming along nicely too, the leaves may not look so pretty any more (this evening I sprayed liquid copper on the surrounding soil of the beetroot, broccoli and mesclun to keep the nibblers away) but the roots are starting to heave themselves up out of the ground.

Tomato transplantation

Phew! I've just transplanted 11 tomato plants and the watermelon into the ground. I had to have a rethink on exactly where all the tomatoes could go, as I had forgotten that one of the beds hadn't had any prep work. The tomatoes aren't as close as they appear here, I had the telephoto lens on the camera so it's compressed them together.

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.

Weekly roundup

It's been a week since I did the first big sowing indoors and out.

Out in the garden some mesclun seedlings have popped up (at least I think they're mesclun, they could always turn out to be weeds or grass but it looks good at this stage). The rocket sown indoors in a seed tray is also up.

In the tomato tray, I have three Green Zebra, four Roma, four San Marzano and two Watermouth up. No sign of the Russian Reds as yet though.....

And in the same seed tray, there's now two coriander, but alas no parsley.

I used those compartmentalised propagation trays - one seed per compartment, that way when/if the seedlings are ready to move out of the tray (either out into the garden or into an intermediate-stage pot) I can just lift the contents of each compartment out on a teaspoon and into its new home without any disturbance.

And not a peep out of the two courgette and two watermelon sitting in their own pots. I think I'll add a bit more water and cover them up to see if that gets them going.

Watermelon

Souters from Koanga

I haven't got much of a clue about watermelon, so this will be a bit of an experiment. These ones are similar to sugar baby, only need soil temperatures of around 15° and should be planted out around 50cm apart according to Koanga. Yesterday I sowed these straight into pots rather than seedraising trays, and will transfer them into the ground once they are established. Watermelon generally take 5 to 12 days to germinate, then 10 to 12 weeks to mature, need at least a metre's space, and I assume you only end up with a few watermelon per vine?

I don't have that much space available, so I'll be trying two vines, one in the slightly shady corner, and another in the sun near the lemon tree.