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.