Fast Germination

Into a seed tray last weekend went 20 lettuce and 20 spinach seds. They have started to germinate already!

Lettuce weed

Send several hours in the patch today removing weeds from the onions and leeks. Finally planted some of the lettuces out - into the holes made from weeding. One of the leeks made made a fine accompaniment to tonight's dinner. Yesterday saw the sewing of some more lettuce seeds in trays - 20 each of Paris white cos and butter crunch. Also planted some mint and watercress. Mint seeds (and water cress seeds too) are tiny, almost too small to see.

Seeds

Sewed seeds of:
Cabbage, Copenhagen market
Cauliflower, giant of Naples
Broccoli, premium green f1

Lettuce:
Red flame
Cos
Paris white cos
Green magninette

In the weekend

More Lettuces

One of the lettuces in the patch died. The others are doing well. The Paris White Cos that had been growing in pots was transplanted into the patch. With some luck and good weather there'll be a supply of lettuce leaves soon.

Note the 3 rows of lettuces in the back and 2 rows of cos at the front (and looking rather sad). Behind the lettuces are leeks.

BeetIt

In went the sugarbeet along with white turnips. While I was at it also transplanted the green mignette lettuces of which 6 had survived. None of the cos germinated!

The butternut squash are lifting their heads. The tomato in the big pots still live but one cucumber of four has died.

Let us germinate

Turned and hosed down the compost heap. Watered the broccoli, and noticed that the lettuces had raised their heads - some of the minunrttes but none of the cos.

Let-2-se

Just put some lettuce sees into a tray to germinate. 20 cos from Yates which apparently expired in August 2009. And 20 green mignonette from Mr. Fothergill's which also expired in August 2009. It seems unlikely that either won't germinate but if not then it'll be time to nip down to Taste Nature or Nichols for some new lettuce seed.

Kohlrabi, Asparagus, Onions, and Lettuce

Sounds like quite a salad, but was quite a weekend. The Kohlrabi migrated from the seed-trays into the vege patch. Into the seed trays went 5 kinds of lettuce. Of couse, red lettuce is brassica not lettuce; and miners lettuce seeds don't look at all like lettuce seeds and so probably aren't lettuce either.

Red onion and green onion seeds went into trays as did asparagus seeds.

The rhubarb has started to show its head over the soil. As there is an abundance three plants were dug up and given to collegues. These were replaced with a different variety (Victoria) that were grown from seed last year (and kept in pots over the winter).

The tomatoes that were planted about 3 weeks ago (and I neglected to record) have germinated. They have grown to the size of a pin.

The brassicas planted a month ago need about another week before going into the patch.

Good Bad Ugly

After removing all the green turnips and a ton of weeds the bed on the left was somewhat empty. Of the parsnips planted, only 3 (or was it 4) germinated, all from Niche (none from Yates). Not many carrots had germinated either - perhaps all because the irrigation system had somehow been turned off.

What to do with an empty bed in January - plant with winter crops. A new row of parsnips went in and the spaced between the plants filled with new seeds. The same with the mixed coloured carrots, and a new row of Red Barron orange carrots (thats a row of mixed colours a, a row of orange, and filling the gaps with mixed colours).

The row of white turnips was filled too.

Finally, a few days ago 4 brussel sprout plants were planted out into the brassica bed. It looks like the brassica bed is doing well, lets hope for success over winter and into summer (thankfully the rabbit hasn't been seen all summer).

As for the ugly - the cos lettuce have started to bolt. One more was harvested today. Thats 3 for the season. Seeds in the green room have germinated so more soon (hopefully).

Yuck!

Started to dig the final section of the vege patch and its wet, very wet, very wet indeed. Its like a thick muddy goop down there. As a consequence the irrigation system has been turned down from 5 mins a night to 3 mins a night. Everything got a feeding with the organic fertiliser.

Almost everything is growing well. A few things are not: the strawberry spinach is growing very slowly. The parsnips (which are always slow to germinate) are not showing signs of anything and at least one lettuce has died. Parsley hasn't reard its head either.

In the green room a second corn has sprouted as has one pumpkin (seed saved from a supermarket pumpkin) and one zucchini.

The kings radishes have sprouted well and as there were a gap between the rows black-radish from last year was used as a filler.

Venturing out

The seeds from the seed trays had been there a little too long and the time had come for them to venture from the home into the world (well, the vege patch anyway). All three of the seed trays were emptied into the garden which included:

Onions: Both the longkeepers and the sweet red did well with most seeds gernimating and growing. The Borettana did badly with only about 2 sprouting and only one making it into the vege patch.

Articokes were a similar disaster. One Imperial Star sprouted and amde it into the garden whereas about 6 of the gren globe made the transition.

Lettuce (cox) and the strawberry spinach. The strawberry spinach are tiny brittle weak littl plants; it'll be interesting to see if they survive a Dunedin summer.

Also finished the sprinkler sytem by laying the last few meters, burying it, adding uprights and so on.

All in all a good weekend.

Rest & Relaxation: Seed Sewing

After a busy day digging the vege patch (and not even finishing one bed), rest and relaxation took over. That is, an evening spend sewing seeds into seed trays. The 2 new trays are now in action and in the green room (which is cold tonight).

First tray:
15 * Artichokes Imperial Star F1
15 * Artichoked Green Glove Improved
10 * Cabbage Copenhagen Market

Second tray:
15 * Spinach Bloomsdale
15 * Strawberry Spinach
10 * Lettuce Cos.

The strawberry spinach seeds are the finest seeds I've ever seen and were hard to work with.

Finally, in an effort to get the Borlotto Beans up and running

5 * Borlotto Beans

Planted in seperate pots. The beans were not soaked overnight, which apparently helps.

Onions

There is a gap in the onion patch so time to plant some new ones. In the planting chamber went 10 each of onion, red onion, leek, and spring onion.

There is also a gap in the spinach section so it was re-planted with fresh seeds (last of the packet). A few lettuce seeds went in at the same time, again in gaps in the rows.

Finally, harvested seeds from the rhubarb plant, seperated them, dried them over night, and planted several in pots in the green room. I'm told they might not come true because they come from a probable cross-breed, but lets see!

Red, White, and... Yellow!

Red carrots really are red. Yellow carrots really are yellow. White turnips are white too. The red carrots taste better than the yellow ones. Garden salad for lunch, lettuce, carrot and turnips fresh from the garden. Excellent!

Onionesque

The onion and leeks in the planter were moved into the patch. Rows of 6 spring onions, 9 onions, 8 red onions, and 8 leeks were taken from the planter and put into the area dug-over last weekend.

Lettuce (cos) and 2 rows of spinach were planted from seed directly into beds by the onions.

3 Purple cauliflower and 5 brussel sprouts were transplanted into the brassica beds. No luck (at all) with green cauliflower. It looks like green cauliflowers from Kaiotes are bad.

New squash planting. 5 zucchini (Watkins), 2 squash (Yates) and 4 pumpkin (Watkins). Addiionally a seedling tray (2 rows each) of Purple Cauliflower, Green Cauliflower, Romanesco Broccoli, and one row each of Cailiflower and Brussel Sprouts

Organic fertaliser for the first time too.

Sprouting All Over

The barrels of letuces out the front are sprouting too! Pak choy, spinach and lettuce in this case, other lettuces in other barrels.

The cauliflower and broccoli in the sprouting chamber have also started to sprout. It isn't clear whether the Kaiotes cauliflowers are any good or not because they were hatched in soil and its hard to tell the grass from the cauliflowers.

Second Row

Two weeks ago the first turnip rows went in. This week the second rows of turnips went in. Three types are being used - Yates Turnips (Purple Top White Globe), half a row. The other half of the row was last years seeds harvested by me - they were originally the Yates Turnips but went to seed and so they're being tried. I have hundreds of these seeds!

Turnips - sprout 6-10 days, harvest 10-12 weeks.

The second row of Japanese Turnips is the Turnip Tokyo Cross from Kaiotes. It will, indeed, be interesting to compare the results from Yates to those from Kaiotes - both in size and taste.

Turnip Tokyo Cross - sprout ???, harvest ??? details not included!

Radishes in previous years have been a complete disaster. For two years none grew, but at the end of last year a last-ditch effort to grow some in an otherwise empty spot resulted in a bowel of small ones. This year Radish Black Round (Kaiotes). They are apparently Raphanus sativus. Two short rows. As nothing else has grown to shade the spot (yet), they should get good sun.

Radish Black Round - sprout ???, harvest 53-80 days.

Atlantic Giant Pumpkin (Kaiotes). Four, each planted in their own little pot and placed in the sun room upstairs. Once they sprot they move to the garden - probably under the tree.

Atlantic Giant Pumpkin - sprout 3-12 days, harvest 120 days.

Six Black Beauty Zucchini (Watkins) went into a white plastic six-hole propagation pot. These also went into the sun room upstairs. Again they'll go under the tree. Again in previous years no success. Two years ago they grew well outside but no fruit. Last year they did badly outside and inside no fruit because all the flowers were male!

Black Beauty Zucchini - sprout 5-10 days, harvest 5-7 weeks.

Lettuce, Pak Choy, Spinach

The two barrels out the front were dug over and planted with lettuce. The beer-barrel had relatively moist soil whereas the other barrel had relatively dry soil. Both were broken weeded, broken up by hand, mixed through, and leveled off.

Wet wooden barrel was scattered with tons of Mr. Fothergill's Lettuce (Green Mignonette). They'll be thinned later if they sprout.

The other barrel was successful last year at both Yates Pak Choy (White Stem), and also at Yates Lettuce (cos). This year the same were planted, but a few (half a dozen?) Watkins Spinach (Winter Queen) were added in the middle seperating the two.

Pak Choy: sprout in 7-10 days, harvest in 6-8 weeks
Cos: sprout in 7-10 days, harvest in 8-10 weeks
Spinach: sprout in 7-20 days, harvest in 8-10 weeks
Green Mignonette: harvest in 10-12 weeks