Sowing & Growing List

I've been meaning for a while to make a list of all the food plants we have on the go, including those currently in our 2 patches or in pots as well as seeds I have sown.

I have just finished the list and put on as a side 'widget' to the right ... ---> you can find it under my 'followers'.

I am amazed there are over 40 foods on there- particularly as it seems we have hardly anything to harvest! There might even be more as I'm going from memory (it's nearly midnight!) and previous blog posts.You would think from reading it that we were fully self-sufficient, but actually far from it.

The reason is that a lot of the foods are at different stages - things like the herbs are almost always growing and really hardy. However others like potatoes, leeks and garlic have been in for a while but won't be ready for a couple of months yet, and a lot of the others I sowed the seeds recently so are either seedling stage (no food!) or yet to germinate (no food!) Also some need a lot of time and patience, like the hazelnut trees which are just showing their first leaves of Spring, or the Cherimoya fruit seeds that I just started today. Both of those won't produce anything edible for a couple of years. Hmmm... long wait.......!

The bean seeds and some mesclun salad leaves have germinated, and both produced really well last year, lasting us for months.

Until then .... well we are going pretty well in eggs with 12 a week average, and have lots of parsley, (my seed saving  from January worked!) so scrambled eggs with parsley is a popular option!

 :-)

Stocking up on market goodies!

How's this for a burst of Spring colour? I don't usually go for these kind of potted annual flowers, but these were just so cheery!
We went out to the local market today, and it was brilliant. I usually enjoy the markets anyway, but this month there seemed to be so much more 'good stuff' (and less scandalously priced rubbish!)

I filled the tray above with 15 decent size pots - for $22, which I think is a bargain! I could have had any combo of veggies/herbs/flowers. This was my choice today:-

2 hot chillies
2 Black Russian tomatoes
2 curly parsley
1 lemon basil
1 pot of celery (about 10 plants in it!)
 and 6 lovely flowering annuals.

(I don't even know what flowers they are, I let our children just pick what they wanted!)

I thought the flowers can go somewhere in the centre of the back garden, so we can see the lovely colour from our lounge room doors, and they will be near to our second patch, so hopefully attract some bees.

Also at the market today - a new stall which sells vegetable seeds from the local seedsavers and small amounts of herbs/plants/veggies that local growers have excess of. It is such a great idea, I hope it takes off. I bought 5 packets of seeds from there, at only $1 each !!!
Ruby Chard, rocket, New Zealand spinach, curly kale and marigolds (for beneficial insects) are now added to my ever growing seed collection, but not for too long - they will be potted /planted this week. There is info on every packet including the harvest date and where it was grown. Brilliant!
I also bought some beautiful lemons there, and bay leaves (can you believe just 10c a sprig?) so I was very happy with my purchases.

I also picked up a handful of seeds yesterday from a Cherimoya, which is a kind of cool-climate custard apple. Never had one, but apparently it is the fruit of the Gods, a mix of beautiful fruit flavours! I guess it tastes better than it looks ....... !

I got them when went to a talk given by the Cooerwull Plantsmen from Lithgow, about growing fruit and nut trees in the Blue Mountains. It was a great morning, loads of info & tips, nice friendly crowd of about 20 people, and it was in the community gardens in Katoomba which I hadn't been to before, so it was really interesting to have a look around there too. Oh, yes, and of course I got the Cherimoya seeds from a generous man who had brought a bag to share around!

Speaking of nut trees (and yesterday we did!) our hazelnut trees are starting to wake up from their winter sleep. The buds are bursting open with beautiful tiny green leaves, looks lovely. It was good to see some mature hazelnut trees at the community gardens, to get an idea of what our will look like in around 5 years. For now they are in large pots until we build and move, but I was told that they will be fine like that, even for a couple of years.

So lots of planting and seed-germinating ahead for me this week, although I never feel like its a chore, I really love getting outside into the garden and having lots of plants at various stages of growth. Hopefully we will have lots of edibles soon!

:-)

Spring Seed Plantings

Maybe its the lovely weather we've had lately, or maybe I just need a bit of optimism in the garden, but today was time to start off my vegetable seed plantings for Spring.




I have a lot of seeds left from last year so no need to buy any more yet, and I enjoyed picking through and seeing what I could start off now. We have quite a mild climate here, mostly it is safer to wait until the soil is a little warmer before planting in the garden, however most veggies can be started off in pots now ready for planting out in 4-6 weeks. (Its only 9 days until Spring officially starts anyway!)

I prefer to grow from seed than buying seedlings for a few reasons - it is definitely more economical to grow from seed, depending on what you buy and the company you can often get 200 seeds or more in a packet costing around $3, whereas a punnet of just 6 seedlings of most things will cost around $4. Even factoring in a few failures you are still way ahead with seeds. Also you can choose non-hybrid, non-genetically modified, open pollinated and organic seed much more easily than finding seedlings of the same. By growing these types of food, you can then save your own seed if you wish for the next year, with a much greater chance of growing true-to-type plants. These types of seeds are also more disease resistant, hardier, produce over longer seasons, have more nutritional value and are tastier !!! (Have I convinced you to try yet??!!)

Some good online companies I have seeds from currently are --- The Lost Seed, Cornucopia Seeds, Green Patch Seeds and Diggers (Check out their websites by clicking on my links.) I have found The Lost Seed (based in Tassie) to be most generous and have loads of helpful info on their packaging including germination info and seed saving tips (do you know any other industry that tells you how to NOT buy their product again??!!!!)

I also have a few odd packets from swaps I have done with other seed-savers, and some seeds I saved myself from last year.


I use commercial seed-raising mix, and whatever I have for containers. The best I found (from many experiments last year!) are the containers from strawberries/alfalfa/cherry tomatoes etc, they already have the drainage holes and have their own little lid, which is handy until the seeds germinate.


So today I planted -----

Bush Beans -Cherokee Wax
Climbing Beans - Purple King
Climbing Beans - Blue Lake
Broad Beans (only 2 left from last year)
Vegetable Spaghetti/Squash (never tried it, but looks interesting!)
Butternut Pumpkin -Waltham
Watermelon - Moon and Stars
Beetroot - Rainbow Mix
Tomato - Grosse Lisse (full size)
Tomato - Tommy Toe (cherry size)
Cape Gooseberry - Golden Nugget
Peppermint
Basil
Echinacea



I have some more to plant but ran out of time today, lots of lettuce varieties and some more herbs, but will do that another time .... they will go direct into the soil.

So hopefully in a few weeks I will have a whole load of seedlings ready for planting into warm soil. Until then I will keep them covered on my back deck, and for the containers that don't have lids I will show you my incredible germination greenhouse-system ......

Yes, its a plastic bag. Came as excessive packaging from something or other. I think if I can't avoid plastic bags at least I can reuse them!

Works well to keep heat in without drying the soil out, with a few little breathe-holes. (If you use these, remember to take the pots out when the plants germinate or they can rot).

I always like to know what others are growing, and what works for you, so let me know!


:-)

Yes, we have no potatoes .....

Garden update for this week...... some good - like the tiny grape tomatoes, not many of them but they are so sweet .... and some not so good - we decided to see what potatoes have grown since we planted them way back in Oct last year (see here )

The cage method revealed - nothing. Not a thing. Not one spud! We did have a few healthy looking plants for a while, then waited until they died back as we were supposed to. But there was nothing at all going on in there other than a worm-farm in a cage. Today I dug through the larger no-dig spud-bed down the fence line and again found nothing except decomposing straw. Hmm. Disappointed :-(

Luckily we have a lovely neighbour 2 doors down who gave us a bag of hers last week as she has just grown sooooo many she can't use them all! Of course she left with some fresh eggs ;-)

On the up-side my trial-seed-saving parsley has germinated! (And it only took 2 weeks which I think is pretty quick for parsley) At rough count I think there is at least 20 seedlings which is great. I'll pot them on in a week or so (just a pity there'll be no lovely potatoes to put the parsley on!)

Other planting - 6 purple king beans plants into the patch to replace the ones eaten by the bowerbirds. Pumpkins and eggplants settled in well, happy with the 8 days non-stop rain we've had. Rain also responsible for rotting a few of the tomato plants, being constantly wet does not make them happy :-(

Edibles this week - few tomatoes, various herbs, rocket, chillies. And 24 eggs last week :-)

Seed saving

A few of my plants have gone to seed recently in the heat- I half neglected them and half meant for this to happen so I can try a bit of seed saving.


I picked these seeds today - from an Italian flat-leaf parsley. There are a load of heads like this one but the others are still green so 'll leave them a while. I usually just buy seedlings but will give these a go and plant them later this week (nothing ventured nothing gained!) Apparently they can take up to 6 weeks to germinate, so I'll keep updating .... but it may be a while!




Also have some coriander (cilantro) going to seed - bit green though so I'm hoping they will dry on the plant too?



I also saved some seeds from our hot chilli and planted them out yesterday- I can't even imagine eating more than one plant produces as they are SO FIERY, but they just look so pretty!