for the garden folk

It's feeling quite springy here today. A sort of restlessness for sowing and growing things has come over me. The buds have moved on the plum tree, the broad beans are starting to flower, tiny wee silver beet and mustard are popping up and the pumpkins I neglected to collect are watery and slimy but full of seeds sprouting in the middle. The only thing that slightly dampened my spirits was seeing a STINK bug in the garden.

The soil is magnificent if I do say so myself. I think I'll put the peas in here.
It's only early August I hear you say, don't get too excited.

Well I know there will be more cold snaps but I have the glasshouse and the time to do a bit of mollycoddling.

I pricked out tomatoes into trays today, they're living in the sun room.

I think in my area it's worth putting peas, broad beans, onions and coriander in over the next couple of weeks. I'll do broccoli, lettuces, silver beet and beetroot from seed as soon as the moon starts ascending. If you want to grow tomatoes from seed and have a warm place for them to be potted up until Oct then I'd start them off on top of the hot water cylinder or a heat pad at the same time if I was you. I'll be popping in a few peppers and basil as well, I only need a few of those started early as next months seedlings will probably only lag behind in fruiting by about a week or two. It's the skite factor that makes it worth it -a little competition between Dad and I.

Must do another copper spray of the fruit trees and collect seaweed for liquid brew.

Have I forgotten anything? Oh yes I know, start some more spuds sprouting.

I'd love to hear what everybody else is planting or planning.

Garden notes August

The good old girls are laying pretty well. I only had to buy two dozen eggs this year to get me through their "going off the lay " or moulting period. I check the hen house about three times a day when I'm at home as the chooks get muddy feet at this time of the year and their eggs get dirty if left in the nest.The porous eggshell can absorb the dirt and muck so I like to collect them quickly. While I'm at it I walk around the garden checking out the early spring movement with warm eggs in my coat pocket, I can't wait to see some movement in the asparagus patch.
The red head likes helping with seed sowing
so we planted another lot of cress to put on the windowsill.

I'm doing quite a few sprouts as the garden only has leeks, lettuce, silver beet, hardy herbs and brassicas at the moment. My seed catalogue arrived though making me feel a little excited about the change of season.
There are still a flock of roosters in the glasshouse getting fat. My Dad has agreed to help me kill and pluck them within the next few weeks. I saw an idea in the New Zealand gardener magazine which sounds good for spring. That is to build a hot compost in the glasshouse to keep the spring seedlings warm. It sound worth a try I think as the seedlings in the sunroom are now threatening to take over.

Alot of pruning still to finish here, waiting for some clear weather. Must get out to the beach for some seaweed and past the horse paddock for a few bags of poo.

Roll on spring!

Garden notes

August has been full on with the weather and all the birthdays. I did my seed sowing earlier in the month with the first quarter of the moon. Alot of those seedlings are up and looking pretty healthy. We had a good spring rain this weekend quite warm and wet. I put all the seed trays out in the rain as rain is better for them than being watered by the hose. I think they get nitrogen from the rain?

While the "red head" was at Montessori this afternoon I potted on corn cockle, Phacelia, cornflowers and statice from their seed trays to punnets. They all help attract the beneficial insects into the garden. I separated and planted out some parsley and lettuces, then potted up my beefsteak tomatoes. My back gets sore at this time of year from bending over the seedlings and bringing them in and out of the glasshouse so they harden off. If you put them straight from the window sill or glasshouse to the garden the wind and cold is too much of a shock.I put some sweet peas into the garden too, scented plants remind me alot of my grandmother's garden. She had Winter sweet, Daphne, Freesias, Violets, Hyacinths, and Roses. I think of her when I smell any of those.

Kez asked me about frost cloth.It helps in spring to stop the frost killing plants. It's a loosely woven, white, light cloth which we get in our garden centres. We need to start alot of our more tender plants under it and things like young avocados and citrus spend the whole winter underneath it. In my old garden we used fronds of a native? fern commonly called "pig fern" draped over things to protect from frost. It was more aesthetically pleasing than the frost cloth.

The family sit on the sun room steps eating fruit and throwing the stones into this skinny wee garden next to the neighbours driveway. I let this apricot grow from seed and have espaliered it's branches about 3meters along the fence. This is it's 3rd or 4th winter and this year for the first time it has a couple of blossoms at the end of it's branches.

Giant red mustard, just because it looks so good.