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...

May begins

Bank holiday weekend, three days off work, should be an excellent gardening time if it weren't for the weather. Today I managed to get some planting done: purple bean seeds passed on by my boss; the last of the wenks yellow and pretty in purple chillis from real seeds; a row of Queensland blue pumpkin seeds and another row of the heritage yellow pear tomatoes.

Turns out there was a snail in my greenhouse. It bypassed all the other plants and headed straight for the zinnia seedlings. Bastard. Well it's now met its maker so will not be doing any more harm to my zinnias but it's possible that yet again, I'm going to have a poor show on the zinnia front this year.

Strawberries are flowering like crazy so we're excited that there will be a bumper crop this year. Still no flowers on the redcurrant though. I double checked the pear tree pollination groups and Beurre Hardy and Red Williams are in the same group. Maybe the Beurre is just having a little tizzy although the James Grieve I got in the same shipment has flowers. Maybe pears are just a little more temperamental. I would be so happy to get some apples this year! Even just a couple!

Last night it rained heavily and today I see the first poppies have come out. The rain has beaten the tulips about so they are on their way out. The cucumbers in the greenhouse are getting their first true leaves so soon I'll be able to transplant them into bigger pots. I may even try planting a few more.

And now, a few pictures from the garden last month:

Apple tree blossom: the Cox Orange Pippin

Pear tree blossom: the Red Williams

Tulip: just one of the many

Claudia's Birthday

Happy birthday to my long time penfriend Claudia, whose birthday it is today.

In honour of the event, I took a day off work. I did enough overtime last month to buy a day off so here today is my day off. The day started well, we had a hire car so took some stuff to the dump and then off to Homebase (10% off day!). It looks like we're going to paint the garden fence while the weather is good so we got some paint and some other bits and pieces for the summer DIY programme. Of course, I can never leave the garden section alone but came away with not very much, considering: a loganberry, a chilli plant "Apache" and tomato plant "Shirley". Also got some garden misc stuff - drip trays and a sack of dirt.

Back home and out into it. Raked the lawn before mowing to clear out the winter detrius and moss. Then did some planting out: 12 chinese broccolis have gone into the veggie patch at the back, Shirley got planted onto the sunny side as did the Loganberry (between two raspberry patches). I potted up the chilli and stuck it in the greenhouse, it will probably be happy in there.

Our neighbour was also out doing her garden so we swapped: I gave her some strawberry plants and she gave me some viola and "blue plant" seeds. They've gone into a dirt tray in the greenhouse, see what happens.

The little red kales pot I've divvied up and potted on individually, same with one of the tomato seedling pots (the Roma). I also did some long intended repotting, dividing the mint into several pots and tipping out the thyme pot, taking a breadknife to the roots, removing the moss and repotting it in fresh soil. I just hope I don't kill it!

The problem with the pear trees: the Red Williams has blossom all over it; the Beurre Hardy has none. How are these supposed to cross pollinate? At Homebase today I tried to steal some pollen from a flowering Conference pear in the garden section by swiping the corner of a tissue through some of the flowers. When I got home I wiped the pollinated tissue over some of the Red Williams flowers. No idea if this will work or not.

Tomorrow I'd like to get on and do some more weeding. I might go through my seeds tonight and see what is there that I either haven't planted or have planted but with no results.

Despite the niggling backache, I feel so much more satisfied with today's efforts than I would after a day at the office!

Sprout

Oca is sprouting! But only the oca down by the shed. The oca in the back corner of the yard and in the sunny spot by the raspberries have not sprouted yet. And the strawbs have flowers so the season will soon be upon us.

Lettuce play

Today I planted out my greens - lettuce "mixed", salad bowl and Morton's secret lettuce from realseeds. They describe it as seed from Frank and Karen's lettuce breeding programmes, a huge diversity in forms and shapes, different varieties you won't get elsewhere. Sounds intriguing.

Also planted are some Minibel tomato seeds and regular Kale (called Borecole on the packet). The garden Kale is definitely about to go over to seed so we'll be saying bye-bye to that very soon.

Fruit tree blossoms are almost out; there are flowers on the main raspberry (not the Lidl raspberries) and the gooseberry. I forgot to check the redcurrant.

Planted out today from the greenhouse: 12 kailaan seedlings, 6 on the sunny side, 6 on the shady side. I also planted out 3 "giant" sunflower seedlings. There's lots more kailaan to go out, just waiting to see how these 12 get on before I plant out more.

Melon seeds are germinating in the greenhouse! The zinnias are also going great guns.

We did some more clearing around the pond today and found some strawberry runners trying to grow on nothing so I've transplanted them. See how they go, it's not like there's a shortage.

Almost all the tulips are out: plain yellow, pink, bright pink, flame coloured red/orange/yellow, two tone maroon-yellow, one white-tipped pink. Still no sign of the Queen of Night yet.

Gardening Club - April

This month's talk was on colour for all seasons, and although our guest speaker seemed to have an enormous garden and budget to match, I wrote down some of his suggestions but on double checking on the internet with other people's pictures the ones I most liked were:

• Wintersweet (Chimonanthus)
• Witchhazel (hamamelis) for the great flowers in winter
• Pseudowintera colorata, a plant with NZ origins, also called Horopito
• Species tulips were recommended over other types as they last longer
• Acer auroa, a japanese maple with yellow autumn leaves
• Delphiniums
• Leucanthemum (daisies) - he recommended shaggy but I've just seen one called Goldrausch which is yellow and shaggy
• Hedychium (ginger!) which I didn't know you could grow here but he seems to be doing so. The varieties I noted were Carnival, Pink Flame, Spicatum and densifloram Assam Orange. I'd love to grow ginger so will look into this.
• Colletia cruciata, an amazing looking plant that's more like an art collage. Look it up.
• Astrantia major
• Eryngium which I like the look of but am not sure I would want to grow them as they look a little too much like thistles
• Verbena
• Helenium which seems to come in attractive bright yellow/orange/red combinations