Herb garden

(Have just found this October post lurking in my drafts and not posted- oops!)

After much hard working digging in bricks yesterday 23 October I now have an official herb garden. So far there's sage and rosemary in one panel, and chives and german chamomile in another...and subsequently basil, oregano, hyssop and mexican mint seedlings have been planted out and are all growing (well, except for one basil casualty). And now I have the brickwork done I can sow the seeds for the few herbs that are direct-sown.

23 October:

12 November: (watch that chamomile patch grow! The transplanted chives are also flowering)

 

I've also transplanted four Russian Red tomatoes, three Green Zebras and two Gardeners Delight, and subsequently three tomatillos, three ancho chillis and four capsicums.

Down the bottom of the garden I've also transplanted a Cape Gooseberry. I have a couple more of these to go in a neighbouring bed but that bed needs reweeding first. My wrists and knees weren't up to that after establishing the herb garden!

Last year I had grown some forget-me-nots in a pot sitting by the front door. These are now flowering again and I even have one plant that has crossed the concrete path and popped up in the main garden in the perfect spot by the edge of the path. Thanks Nana!

Sage in flower

A good proportion of the first two batches of seedlings have been transplanted from the seed trays into individual pots now, ready for planting out starting from next weekend when the tomatoes will be going in the ground. It's just the capsicums and chillies still in the seed trays now, germinated but not quite ready for the next step.

I've also marked out the herb garden with string. Next weekend I'll be bricking out the segments then planting out some of the seedlings. I'll also be transplanting the chives - yes, the chive seed that I sowed last summer that didn't do anything at the time has now popped up and I have four healthy plants to move.

Still on herbs, one of the sage plants has been busy over the last couple of weeks, progressing from this:

(that's my soon-to-be herb garden behind the sage)

to this:

The sea of waving purple is so pretty!

Summer of 2010 update

Busy with harvest time at the moment.

Tomatoes - loving the cherry tomatoes, and the green zebras (as always). Not so much in love with the Purple Calabash (these don't make good 'eating' tomatoes, and seemed extra attractive to snails and the like so suffered a fair bit of damage) or the yellow plum (which turned out to be cherry-sized, and are good cooked or in sauces but not so tasty to eat fresh), so I probably won't bother with those ones again. I must confess that although I started the season dutifully removing the laterals my routine slipped at some point in December and the tomato patch quickly became an overgrown forest that collapsed in upon itself in places. This was obviously Not A Good Thing, and I had powdery mildew on the branches for the first time. On the plus side, we did grab a couple of triple-stake triangular frames and these gave those couple of plants much more support, so I'll definitely be picking up more and doing all my tomatoes like that next year.

Tomatillos - went in a bit late but are now doing beautifully. A very photogenic plant! Looking forward to them ripening, so we can see what they taste like.


Also in the Mexican garden went some chilli seedlings, but they haven't really grown that much. Now that I have a decent mini-greenhouse I'll be sure to get these started earlier next year. I also planted jamaica flowers - these are used to make a drink. I think these went in a little late as they are only just starting to show the first signs of buds, and again I'll try harder next year to sow these earlier.


Cape Gooseberry - similar lanterns to the tomatillos but much smaller. The first few of these are ripening up now, and we love them - so tasty! A definite to keep in the garden.


Courgettes - the year of the marrowing. This year's variety seemed particularly sneaky and quick!

Herbs - coriander went to seed quite quickly so I've managed to save a lot of seed for next year. Dill and chives were direct-sown in late December, took a long time to germinate and are only now starting to be recognisable. The parsley is doing well (not as over-the-top as last year, thank goodness). The existing plot of sage is continuing to be thick and lush, and one branch of my rosemary has been successfully bent over to grow its own roots so we can now get rid of the giant woody mass that is the old bush. This frees up the corner that I want to be my entire herb garden, not just my rosemary garden.

Carrots - fresh from the soil this morning was this funky fellow. He was a decent size, almost 200grams. Now he's carrot cake :)


I'll also share with you one of my neighbour's sunflowers, which we could see back in December waving at us across the fences.

End of harvest cleanup

It's nearly the end of February so things are starting to slow down a bit. Today I actually did a fair bit of weeding, pulled up a beetroot, removed half of the tomato plants, raked up all the fallen lemons, removed all the rocket that had started flowering, trimmed one of the sage plants (this looks like the catnip in that you can cut it right down to the ground and let it regrow again, there does appear to be new growth down the bottom of the stems), and started trimming down the strawberries. Phew!

I was also going to sow some of the new lettuce varieties that I bought this week but first I need to decide where I'm going to put the broccoli and cauliflower - once they germinate of course and for that to happen I have to sow them! I was also supposed to be making another bottle of tomato sauce, but don't think I have quite enough tomatoes, and make some lemon curd, except it was easier to sit around on the couch and watch tv all day. So after an energetic start to the day the harvest-related activities have petered out.

Progess

A photographic update - first is the sage. I discovered today while weeding that my three sage plants, previously looking very bedraggled and sorry for themselves, have sprung to life, all lush and bushy.

Next up is a chitting potato - I wish I had a macro lens!

And lastly, my single solitary leek is now as thick as my finger - a little too soon to hope that one day I'll be able to eat my nemesis, but noticeable progress over the last couple of weeks.

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!)

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.

Dead seedlings

Several of the new seedlings are somewhat less than perky. In fact, I think it's time to call time of death......farewell broccoli, thyme and white sage! Keep hanging in there, borage! They were going along fine, then half way up their length they weakened, keeled over, and that was that. The ordinary sage, and one thyme seedling, are still looking okay and have their standard leaves coming through, so I'll transplant those into larger pots over the next day or two.

New seedlings

Of the sowings into trays I made on Monday, 3 broccoli, 2 thyme , 1 white sage and 1 borage have germinated so far.

Herbs

Here's a roundup on the herbs that were sown on Monday:

Thyme - English Winter, thymus vulgaris from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 18-25°, takes 14 to 21 days to germinate and will grow around 30cm high once transplanted outside spaced 15cm apart. It's a perennial but a smaller one than my mighty rosemary! I have no real idea where I might put these at the moment. Conventional wisdom says to have the herbs close at hand, but those spots are already taken (mostly by the aforementioned rosemary, but also by my beetroot and mesclun as those are the primo spots in the garden), and the spot I'd really like to put them currently has garlic in it (the edge of the BBQ garden). The best solution might be to have them in largish pots through till after I get the garlic out and give the ground a rest for a couple of months.

Oregano – origanum vulgare from Kings Seeds

Germinates in soil temperatures of 18-25°, takes 7 to 14 days to germinate and are transplanted outside spaced 15cm apart. This herb is a spreading perennial, but apparently will reach 45cm high so that's a reasonably high ground cover. I don't want to inadvertently plant it where it might later block out any little seedlings, so a row running out from underneath the lemonade tree might be good as it will catch plenty of sun there and won't interfere with anything else.

Sage – salvia officinalis and salvia apiana from Kings Seeds

These two sages germinate in soil temperatures of 18-25° after 7 to 21 days, and are transplanted out at 30cm apart. The common sage is for eating, and will grow to around 50cm high, while the white sage is an aromatic giant at 150cm high! These will be accompanying the oregano by the lemonade tree – I'll be trying to hack back the bouganvellia at that end of the fence as far as possible so the white sage can sit along that, with the common sage in front.