Pea free

No sign of any germination as yet on the pea front. Given the size of the peas planted, I imagine any sprouting should be fairly sturdy and easy to spot! I did note that the beatifully even soil now looks suspiciously cat-raked though.

Pea

Pisum sativum, Wando Select from Kings Seeds (an English heirloom pea suitable for fresh use or freezing)

Peas are a cool season crop, so in Auckland should be sown from autumn to spring (late spring is probably too late). Direct sow generously at around 4cm deep, and thin out later to around 12 cm apart. You can presoak the seeds for 4 hours before sowing. Peas take 7 to 10 days to germinate (but sometimes as long as 4 weeks), and need watering at sowing, flowering and as the pods swell. Sow successively and pick pods regularly to encourage more growth.

Peas are a climbing crop and can grow up to 2m high (although mine apparently only get to 45cm or so) so they need support - a frame out of bamboo stakes is a good idea. I'm sowing mine in a small bed (prob 50 cm by 30cm) in the back corner of our garden. It's too small for stakes as it's fenced on two sides so I'm planning to tie several layers of string across the diagonal to give the plants something extra to cling to.

I've sown some this morning, and if they don't germinate another batch can be sown in a month's time when it'll be a bit warmer.

Potato chitting

Rumour has it that you can just chuck a potato in the ground, forget about it, then accidentally discover lots more potatoes several months later when you're digging around for some other reason. I've never grown potatoes, and while it seems that it's not quite that easy, it also can't be too hard.....

Yesterday I purchased some seed potatoes from the garden centre (Heather, a second-early good allrounder apparently - not much choice as I left it too late, next year I will get organised and order some interesting varieties from Koanga instead). The ever-reliable Royal Horticultural Society's Vegetables in a Small Garden tells me I should be storing them indoors, exposed to light, with the eyes face up, so that they can sprout, or "chit", before planting them out.

In Auckland you can apparently grow potatoes all year round so I'm not that fussed about when they make it into the ground or when they come out! I've added a reminder to my new Google Calendar widget (you can see that in the right-hand bar of the blog) to check on them for planting out in a month's time.

Rosemary cuttings

Today I took some cuttings in the hope I can grow some fresh rosemary plants to replace the current bush. I'm not sure exactly how big the cuttings should be, and if you do anything other than cut a bit off, stick it in water and wait, but time will tell if this approach works.

The current rosemary bush is approx 3 feet high and 6 feet across so takes up just a bit more of the garden than is strictly necessary. It's quite woody if you try and trim it back and seems to be dying off in a few sections, hence the need to grow some replacements.

Signs of life

The garlic emerged in the last couple of days - so far I can see seven of the eight bulbs have sprouted (a small furry someone has been a-digging near the row and buried the last bulb under a small mound so that one's taking its time). These took a month to pop up, so a bit longer than last year.

Since there's not much happening on the edible front, here's a photo from the non-edible - a bud from the star magnolia's first flowers of the winter season.

Koanga Institute catalogue

Phase two of the planning for spring is now underway - the new seed catalogue from Koanga Institute came out today. After phase two comes phase three - solving the "garden/wishlist=not enough space" equation.

Kings Seeds catalogue

The 2009 catalogue from Kings Seeds is out, and arrived in my mailbox today. Let the planning for spring commence!

Winter Solstice and the garlic's in

It's the winter solstice today and I have planted the garlic. This year I was able to use the best bulbs from last year's harvest, so this is third-generation organic garlic.

Quantity-wise it seemed like the twenty I planted last year was in fact way too many. Will the eight I am planting this year be too few?

I have planted 3 in a row in the long patch leading up to the lemon tree outside the kitchen window, and the other 5 in a row where the two courgettes were last year. I learned last year that apparently I don't go out our front door enough to plant anything out there that needs daily inspection, so garlic should do nicely. The bulbs went in around 5cm deep, pointy-end up, and last year they took 2 to 3 weeks to sprout.

I did get black aphids on the garlic about three months in to the growing cycle last year, so I need to watch out for this and spray with Neem Oil - hopefully I'll do better at stopping the bugs establishing themselves.

Lemon meringue pie season

Lemons at the beginning of this month:


View out my kitchen window this morning:


Mmmmmm....you know what I'm thinking!

Pasta sauce

Note to self for next year - it is worth taking the time to remove the skins from the tomatoes before making pasta sauce :(

I'm also thinking there should only be one courgette plant next summer. It ended up in everything I made, and I'm quite over courgettes now. Next summer I'll restrict it to one plant, and eat them all fresh.

The definition of optimism

It's June in the Southern Hemisphere - that's winter, my optimistic capsicum friend. Why are you trying to ripen your itty bitty teeny weeny harvest?

Cover crop

Last Sunday I sowed phacelia in the two main patches where the veges grow come spring. No germination as yet, so it will be a while before we see this sight again.

I see from reviewing my earlier posts (loving blog labels, very easy to locate notes to self!) that I had thought about sowing phacelia in the shaded strip leading up the front door. I had borage in there over summer, which was lovely but a bit big, so I must remember to order some more phacelia seed to sow along there in spring.

The discouraging leek

"If your leeks are ready..." says the the latest email newsletter from Lynda at NZ Gardener. Really? Out there, someone's leeks are ready? My single leek is still pencil-like. A sturdy pencil, but still......

In other news, the lemons are half green half yellow now. There appears to be one less-than-healthy branch on one of the trees where the lemons are all small and oddly shaped, rather like they've already been shrunken and preserved, but the rest are coming along nicely.

Now, if it would just stop raining for a day so I could hoe away the weeds and sow the cover crop for winter before it's too late!

Catnip

The catnip is now officially enormous. I must find some human uses for it! It does get plenty of use as a place for Bugsy to sleep, judging from the giant cat-shaped indentation in the middle of it, and I will definitely start harvesting and drying it to do some custom-made cat toys.

Leek

After two years of trying to get leeks to germinate, and then thrive, I finally have one single solitary leek that was today transplanted into the garden. Hurrah! Hopefully it will continue to thrive.

In other surprising developments, my Jingle Belles capsicum seedling (that germinated late and was therefore going to winter indoors before being planted out in late spring), has decided to attempt to grow some capsicums. They're about 5mm across.

No sign yet of any lettuce and mesclun seedlings - I'm pretty sure everything green in that patch of the garden is a weed but I'm leaving them there just to be on the safe side.