19/3/2011

First blog of the year: first serious gardening day of the year, probably because it's the first warm and sunny day in ages.

Seeds in beds today: lettuce Salad Bowl, yellow and pink beetroots, spinach, spring onions (I haven't given up hope), kale, purple sprouting broccoli (I've had these seeds for who knows how long but planting for the first time this year!) and some random cornflower seeds.

Found some pink oca tubers while digging which I've planted in the veggie patch up the back near the red pear tree.

Also found some massive bits of concrete in the bed by the pond which we've turned into borders. I always wondered why nothing really thrived here; turns out because they couldn't put down roots any further than a couple of inches.

Most things have survived the winter: last year's green kale and the chard; the fruit trees are all at bud burst or later (the Cox already has leaves); the berries starting to shoot, even the ones we pruned a little late, and the new berries (another redcurrant and a red gooseberry - from the 99p shop!) are still alive.

My new thought for the garden this year is: if it doesn't bring joy, take it out and put in something that does. So the achillea summer berries have gone / are going. I need to get some more flower seeds or maybe even seedlings, save myself the grief of seeds not sprouting.

July begins

Wow, we're actually getting some hot summer weather this year. I'm trying to restrict the watering to twice a week (maybe a little more often for the plants in pots because they suffer badly in the heat) and use a can for the plants that need feeding.


Here's some plants that are doing well - the Qld Blue and the purple beans, which have now produced pods which are actually looking more like mangetout. Have to check with the boss about that one since they were her seeds. Since this photo was taken, the Qld Blues have completely climbed the trellis and are now making their way up into the wisteria above. Vigourous can hardly describe growth of up to 30cm a day!?!?! The little cucumber next them has used it as a trellis so isn't completely swamped. And it's producing at least one tiny little cucumber! Since this photo was taken I've also moved the melon down there. It's not doing much but it's not dead which is a result.


Apples and pears in progress, continuing to grow and ripen. Might get up to a dozen apples from the two trees if none of them fall off. I find this very exciting to watch my apples growing!

The teasel is doing incredibly well. Now somewhere up around 7 ft. It's doing its bit to attract insects. The bees love it, as do the ladybirds, being that it's also a magnet for aphids.


Berry harvest - strawberries are almost done now except for the Pegasus which really are a late variety. Next year I'm going to take out all the plants down beside the pond and move them to a place where it's easier to get at them. And move the plants from the path side of the pond to where the strawberries were.

Gardening Club show was on the weekend. I took some 20 plants up for sale - thai basils, aloe veras and some clippings of penstemon that had taken root. I had two geranium cuttings that I wanted to take along but couldn't find... until this afternoon. Typical!

Before we head on holiday I'm going to harvest the aubergine for dinner. I've got people coming to feed and water the cat with requests that they do the garden too in return for harvesting anything they find that's edible. So I can be sure the blueberry bush will be picked clean when I get back!!

However the tomatoes will not be ripe until we're back so I will get maximum benefit from them. Looking forward to that! Oh, and the Apache chilli plant is shooting out loads of chillis, and even the PRetty in Purple plants which are so small are producing flowers! I don't know how a plant that size will support a fruit but we'll see.

Harvest begins!

Since the end of last week, we have begun the harvest of strawberries and raspberries from the garden. With the onset of warm weather, the berries have been turning red overnight, or probably, overday. Last night we picked a big bowl and put them in the fridge. This morning our whole fridge smelt of ripe berries. So delicious!

Other garden progress: we've lost another red pear : ( so now our harvest will be only one. Amanda tells me about the blackcurrants and gooseberries she has; my redcurrant and gooseberry have produced exactly nothing. Although the redcurrant has also been affected by sap-sucking bugs.

The apples are ripening nicely, turning pretty shades of pink where they are getting some sun. They are getting bigger, too, and have a faint clean apple smell about them. I think I may finally be winning the battle against the sap sucking bugs on the apple trees. The leaves are still badly curled but when I check them now there isn't a sickening nest of creatures under there.

Of the many tomato plants, so far only Shirley has flowers. No fruit. However the bought-in eggplant has a baby fruit on it. I've planted out some cucumbers in pots and put them down near the shed with some netting hung over the fence for them to climb up. I put some Qld Blue pumpkin in pots there as well, and one into the garden on the shady side, hoping it will climb the fence. The bought-in chilli and bell pepper have flowers and so should soon have fruit. The blueberries are starting to show signs of turning blue, slowly slowly.

But in terms of what to eat, lettuce, kale, chard and chinese broccoli should be next on the list. They're all looking good. And diligent use of the slug pellets means that the lettuce has survived in the garden.

Flower surprise: sweet william is in flower. I planted these last year and they were swamped by the kale but this year they have shot up and are flowering. Sunflowers are also trying to flower despite the attack of bugs and snails. Sweet peas have flower pods on them so will flower soon. The teasel is now over six foot but not any more attractive than it was. Really, what was I thinking? No flowers on the bottlebrush yet, although Keith and Alison's bottlebrushes are flowering already. Maybe this is the year that we set ours on fire to truly replicate Australian conditions.

June... and harvest not too far away.

Why is the scarlet kale scarlet in one part of the garden and green in another part?

Apples and pears in progress. Unhappily one of our three pears has fallen from the tree so our harvest will be reduced by one third.

Raspberries: this year subject to aphid attach which has never happened before. Damn and blast. Still, the bushes are thick with fruit, we just have to fight the sap-sucking insects for it.

So much expense, so much careful planting and hoping, but in the end, all I got was three Pretty in Purple chilli sprouts.

The teasel. It is now approaching six foot and growing taller every day. It's not an attractive plant by any means.

More tomatoes planted out. More tomatoes potted on. I feel like I have hundreds but we'll see when it comes to fruiting whether that's the case.

Squashes all potted on: got Queensland Blue, Waltham and Jamaican grey (shall we call it). About 12 in total.

All Morton's secret and a large part of the Salad bowl lettuces are in the ground now.

Aubergine has a flower and hints of another flower so we shall have a fruit. Hurrah.

All the purple beans are in the garden now, in three separate clusters. So far surviving against slug attack. If I get beans I will be very impressed.

Some 20 sweetcorn sprouts. Only about thumb height right now but I think they grow quickly.

Five cucumbers: the Tatoma seem to be the tall ones, close to 12 inches/30 cm tall by now. The Wautoma are much shorter.

Melon: only one melon hatched and I am in two minds about what to do. I've put it outside the greenhouse and so far it's doing OK. I don't know whether to keep it in a pot or plant it out into the ground. I guess we see how the summer goes.

First of the strawberries is turning red... not long now!

Lazy

This is the time of year my blogging seems to drop off. Here's what I wrote about last week, I'll follow with what is happening this week.

Reconciliation time: time to look at the seeds planted and results produced and decide what to keep and what to put away. I chucked the tray where I’d tried to grow cabbage. Only two had sprouted and they had both managed to be eaten inside the greenhouse. By deciding to cull some pots with seed plantings that had been less successful, I made a little more room… for more seeds. Oh, and amongst the pots I was chucking out I found what looks like it may possibly be an aubergine seedling. Considering I planted maybe only one of these, I think that is a good result. I've potted it on, and will keep an eye on it.

The Qld Blue pumpkins have all hatched and so I’ve moved them into bigger pots. I also spent a lot of time putting tomato seedlings into bigger pots (tomato seedlings everywhere! I guess it’s because I used soil from the veggie patch as mixer with bought compost, and that’s where the tomatoes grew last year) and for a couple of plants, they have now graduated to being planted out (into the veggie patch).

All the biggish scarlet kales have been planted out. I planted out a few more lettuce and thinned out the beetroots, distributing the seedlings around the garden. The four miserable chard seedlings that sprouted have gone out too. (And I’ve potted on the bonus tomato seedling that grew in with them).

The biggest of the purple bean seedlings have also been planted out into the area where the peas were shredded by snails last week. I circled the new plantings with slug pellets, despite having a secret belief that these pellets actually attract slugs and snails (as well as killing them). Well I am probably right – this morning there was a gastropod conference going on by the plants but I couldn’t tell if they were dead or not. Hopefully they are dead but hubby is going out today to make sure.

Out of earlier plantings of herbs, I got only one basil plant. This was a very disappointing result so I’ve planted up four more herb pots: basil, thai basil, chives and parsley. If I get a good result this time, I’ll give away any extras to the gardening club show in July.

Also into pots were some more pumpkin seeds, these ones labelled “grey-skinned, good roasting”. They came from the pumpkin we buy from the Jamaican stall at the market. I also planted up a whole packet of sweetcorn. Probably left it too late again but I have to try. The cat, little beserker that he is, tried to eat the dried corn seeds.

The money I spent on chillies from Real Seeds was not best spent. I have got only two sprouts of the pretty-in-purple and none of the Wenks Yellow.

Now to the weekend just passed...
I hit the fruit plants with a spray of dishwashing liquid - I have it in my head that this will work against aphids and kill them. The little blighters are getting big and fat and I hate them.

The sweetcorn is taking off - looks like I will get a good crop of seedlings, but whether I've left it too late for produce only time will tell. I'm going to stick them at the back of the veggie patch when they get big enough.

In a few weeks things will look great as there are lots of flowers with buds ready to break open. Even the teasel which has turned into some kind of monster about 2m tall.

Our rosemary bush has died! The landmark for our property that has guided so many visitors to our front door has up and died after the long cold wet winter. We've offered it to Keith as some kind of barbeque fuel since he cooks on coals, we thought he could do a rosemary scented lamb roast with the dried wood and leaves. In the meantime, I'll have to keep some magic scissors in my pocket and walk the neighbourhood looking for a rosemary bush from which to snip a shoot or two to grow a new plant.

With the onset of warmer weather (some days), I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on the greenhouse and open the door in the morning to let the sun in and stop it from turning into a sauna. I know I want the plants to keep warm but I don't want them to cook. The cucumbers are getting very tall (or at least one of the varieties is) and will need potting on. The rest of the purple beans will need to be planted out somewhere (where?). I gave a few to Amanda along with my spare red kale: she has more luck with beans than I do. I also gave away a few bunches of lettuce seedlings - may as well, I seem to have hundreds and they're likely to die unless I get them into the ground soon.

There are berries on the strawberries, if we get some good sunny days over the next few weeks they might even ripen. Live in hope! There are definitely apples on the apple trees, maybe as many as a dozen between the two. They are fattening up nicely, although it will be many months before we get to enjoy that harvest.

So what will be the first harvest from the garden this year? Could be the red kale and the chinese broccoli. None of the tomatoes (except the shop-bought "Shirley") are near to having flowers yet (and Shirley, despite having flowers, doesn't seem to be enjoying her full sun position). The Chinese broccoli are going a bit leggy - they keep spitting out flowering stems which I'm cutting off to make them branch out. I thought they would be more like asparagus, with thickish stalks, at least that's what I remember from Chinese restaurants. Maybe I have to do some more research on them.

And spring onions - why bother? Am I cursed? I just wanted to grow something that seemed quite simple and easy and was relatively expensive to buy when you only even need one at a time (and supermarkets only sell them in bunches). When I think of all the seeds I've planted over the years that have not grown... grrr....

Worth a thousand words

This week I'm going to be a bit lazy and use pictures to show what's going on in the garden.

The oca by the shed have sprouted earliest and most out of the three batches I've planted, although some of all batches have now come up, the others much later and in smaller numbers. Maybe the shed oca were the most successful because they were the first choice tubers.

The chinese broccoli by the shed were showing signs of having been picked at by something. Turns out they are a hit with the wood pigeons so I've now draped netting over them as a protective measure.


These are two of the three Red Williams pears-in-progress. Not sure if they were pollinated naturally by insects from another tree in the area or from the pollen I brought home on a tissue from the flowering Beurre Hardy at Homebase.

You should be able to see two rows of lettuce here. The bigger ones at the back with more diverse leaf patterns are the Secret Lettuce. They are getting big enough to plant out soon.

These are the Wautoma and Tamra cucumbers. Not sure how many seeds I planted but I've got four strong and one struggling seedling.

Looking very similar to a cucumber, this is the Musk melon.

These are the Waltham squash seedlings. They took a long time to hatch but no surprise as they are really a hot weather plant and we haven't had much hot weather lately.

Scarlet kales: doing quite well. The ones I planted out are doing well so most of these will follow soon. I've also got some plain green kale coming along at baby stage in the greenhouse.


Just some of the strawberry flowers that are going to turn into a bumper crop of berries this year!

Planted on the same day but in two different sets of conditions. These are the purple beans my boss gave me seeds for. The ones in black were planted outside, the ones in the round pot were put into the greenhouse. It will be interesting to monitor the differences as they grow on.

Amanda tells me she has actual fruit on her gooseberry plant. I checked mine again today and can't even see flowers. I'm sure there were flowers there. No flowers on the redcurrant either, and the loganberry looks like it may have died!

The apple trees look like they have apple babies happening but I'll wait a few weeks before I take some pictures just to be sure. It looks like I will have a tough fight with the sap-sucking green insects over the fruit trees this year - they are sucking the sap out of the new growth on the apple trees and the raspberry bushes.

Plant fair at the local farmers' market today. I bought a verbena, a red daisy, a Moneymaker aubergine and a Big Boy bell pepper.

Bugs and Buds

Good news! There are three budding pear babies on the Williams Red. Bad news! Aphids (or greenfly or whatever you want to call them) have infested the new growth on the apple trees so it looks like it will be a battle over the summer between me and them. For today I've blasted them with fine spray to push them off the leaves and I've also removed the worst affected leaves but I don't believe for a minute it's fixed. This is going to be a nasty fight.

Elsewhere in the garden I finally have sign that some oca is coming up in the patch down under the wisteria. At least one oca, anyway.

In the veggie patch, the chinese broccoli are being eaten. Not by snails or slugs (no trails) so it must be some kind of cabbage moth kind of thing. Another battle on my hands there.

Last night at gardening club, I won a raffle prize and picked a plant - it's like a large perennial cornflower they tell me. Well it has buds on it, I thought why not.

Today I planted out Gana's peas and the biggest of the scarlet kales. I've also dropped a few of more spring onion seeds in but not giving much hope there. No sign of life on the purple beans yet and some of the tomatoes I planted out are suffering a bit. They're going to continue to suffer because the temperature is down to 5 degrees tonight.

The loganberry doesn't look happy. But I found one - just one - of the yellow beets I planted has hatched. Yippee!

All the sunflower sprouts have now been planted out. I dug up a batch of bluebells which I identified as Spanish, not English. I need to get something and work on the dandilions in the lawn, and to root out (literally) the bindweed which is starting to appear all over the place again. But it the neighbours don't tackle it too...