Roundup

Finally got around to the final sowings today.

Direct-sown into the salad garden was three varieties of lettuce, along with corn salad and spinach. Into the herb garden went chives and dill (I also transplanted in a parley yesterday). And into the Mexican garden went jamaica, a variety of hibiscus that makes a tasty drink. I also sowed another row of peas, and transplanted the watermelon.

Into seed trays went: ancho chilli, Marconi red pepper, tomatillo and epazote (all for the Mexican garden), plus basil, bergamot and passionfruit. I'm hoping it's not too late for these Mexican additions, I should really have had these underway a month ago.

A quick trim of the citrus trees to remove some of those lower small branches attracting the whitefly, and done for the day!

Into the garden this week

Over the weekend most of the seedlings were planted out in the garden - the cape gooseberry, 11 tomato seedlings, and four Mexican marigolds. I really need to get a wriggle on sowing the remaining late spring/early summer seeds though....Also up from the direct-sown seeds are the peas, beetroot and carrot.

While I wasn't looking whitefly has arrived on the citrus, so the round of spraying with Neem Oil has commenced today. Begone!

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....

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!

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!

Whitefly - autumn round

The whitefly is back. The sweet new leaves attracting them this time are my purple broccoli seedlings and the new growth on the citrus. I sprayed on Wednesday, again on Sunday, and will keep that up for a few more rounds.

All my capsicum are red-ripe now. Shame the largest one is only 4cm across!

Not the right tools

Finally making headway re the whitefly on the citrus - numbers are dramatically down. However I've learned that you shouldn't buy a cheap sprayer. It took at least half an hour to get the new sprayer (with wand) working the first day, and the next time I also had awful problems. I then had to tip the Neem mix into the little 1 litre hand sprayer, which promptly broke when I tried to pump air into it. We now have a shiny new McGregor's one, which does look suspiciously like the old cheap one except the wand is brass - hopefully it will prove to be more effective and robust.

The right tools

Having the right tools makes a huge difference! I bought a 5-litre sprayer, which is enough to spray the whole edible garden at once, with wand thingy so I can reach high and low with ease. This is much more efficient and effective - who knew?

Before I sprayed yesterday I also pruned the citrus trees, to get rid of the new low growth, the somewhat dead bits, and generally thin things out a bit.

Today I did some transplanting - borage and catnip into the ground (the catnip was sampled within about 15 minutes of it going in), and four sage, four catnip and an English Winter Thyme from the seedling trays into pots.

Whitefly

I seem to have quite the invasion of whitefly - it's not something I remember from last year, certainly not on the courgettes, but this year they are trying to make a home on the broccoli and courgettes. And sadly they are firmly established on all four citrus trees. I've been spraying (more like drenching both sides of all the leaves!) Neem oil every three days (they've just had their third cycle of that regime), which seems to be working on the broccoli and courgetes as there's nothing on them today and no sign of any eggs. I think I might still have a battle on my hands over the citrus though.

Onion

Allium cepa, Stuttgart Long Keeper from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 10-25°, direct sow 15cm apart and 2cm deep, takes 10 to 14 days to germinate, then 26 weeks to harvesting – so I must get these in the ground ASAP by the end of September, and it's too late now to do two sowings which would otherwise have been a nice idea. Apparently they want a long cool spring period to maximise the top growth before the bulbs start to swell in summer.

Onions need a well-composted sunny spot with good air circulation as they are prone to fungal diseases in damp conditions. On the companion planting front, they are good with strawberries and lettuce (and beneficial for carrots), but bad with peas and beans.

At harvest time the leaves should yellow and die down, after which the bulbs can be carefully lifted out with a fork (important to avoid bruising) in a dry breezy period and left to dry on a wire rack in the sun for a couple of days. The necks have to thoroughly dry out (up to two weeks) before storing.

While I grew some spring onions last year, onions themselves will be a new experiment this year. The Stuttgart Long Keeper is an heirloom variety, and I intend to plant a long row in the long triangular stretch (maybe 3 metres long) leading up to the lemon tree shown in my post of 31 August. I did compost this spot in autumn, so hopefully it'll prove to be suitable soil (nothing's ever been grown in it except weeds).

Weeding

It was a beautiful sunny day today, hurray! By late morning it had warmed up so we were able to get some weeding and trimming done. The rosemary clump (which is enormous) had its first trim, although I would like to get it down to an even more respectable size - I might just give up and see if I can get cuttings to grow then start again with some smaller plants. After trimming, it's still around 3 feet high, and more than six feet across.



Last Sunday I also managed to get some citrus food down - it was raining heavily anyway so I didn't have to water it in well myself! This is the first time our three lemon trees, lemonade tree and orange tree have had any attention in the almost seven years we've been here. They have cropped quite happily despite the neglect, so I'm expecting big things of them now they have been fed!