Onion in yon-der

Moved the onions into the patch. This time into the middle patch where I've never tried onions before.

New season onions

In trays, some Pukekohe Longkeeper and some Red Amposta. The green room needs a thorough clean - next weekend!

New brocks

A new set of broccoli seeds into a tray for winter. Premium green F1.

Also transplanted zucchini and pumpkin into the patch alongside onions and leeks. It may be too late for the alums... but worth a crack anyway.

Blasted snow

The cold blast and snow have confused the onions. Several started to flower. A. Ee tray of Italian long keeper has been down in an effort to recover the season.

Germination and Onions

The Copenhagen Market cabbage and All The Year Round cauliflower have started to germinate. The germination rates are low, the cauliflower rate is so low that the seeds are essentially non viable.

Also planted some Red Wing F1 and Italian Longkeeper onions in trays. According to the Tui NZ Vegetable Garden, you can plant onion seeds February - July.

Onions into the Patch

The red and regular (brown?) onions were moved into the patch. The density there is now quite high as it includes onions from last year from earlier in the season and from now.

Last year's onions keep trying to flower, but they're getting nipped in the bud. With luck this will encourage them to grow onions rather than flowers.

Planting Out Onions and Turnips

The first batch of Long-Keeper onions went into the patch. Some were left in over the winter, just to see what happened. They survived and continue to grow. You can see here a mix of old and young onions.
The last spaces in the patch are filling up. You see here the brassicas planted out over the weekend. In the front on the left was planted (today) with the white-turnips.

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.

Oh Peas!

Last night took the Snow Peas and some regular Peas and soaked them overnight. Tonight drained the water and rinsed. Also took 2 barrowloads of compost from the compost heap and spread it over the vege patch where the peas will go (hopefully) tomorrow.

As there is already leaks and onions in that section of the vege patch, compost was spread around them. Note... Onions survive the winter just fine. With luck they'll split some time in spring.

Brassica Germination

Planted 4 kinds of brassicas into one of the seed trays: Broccoli (Premium Green F1), Cabbage (Copenhagen Market), Cauliflower (All Year Round), Pak Choy (White Stem). The "plan" is to compare the seeds with the seedlings.

The Kohlrabu have germinated with nearly all peeking up out of the soil. Both the emerald and purple varieties have gerninated well.

The onions are showing signs of germination, but some are rotting. They get a white mold on them. I suspect that the seeds germinate then some mold sets in and they turn into little mold balls. None-the-less, it looks like enough will be successful to result in a first-round ready for planting in a week or two.

Un-young

Onion, that should have been.

Planted 3 trays of onion seeds, one of sweet red, one of italian long keeper, and the final of bollatana.

All the seeds were at least one year old and so the germination rate night be lower than expected.

There isn't a whole lot more that can be planted at this time of winter other than the brasicas.

Some Seeds Sewn

Spent the evening getting the seeds of the plants for the sun room this:

Tomato
  Purple Calabash
  Riesentraube
Cucumber
  Mini White
  Marketmore
Watermelon
  Baby Doll

As well as some plants that need to be strong before being planted out:

Eggpant
  Black Beauty
Zucchini
  Black Beauty
Rhubarb
  Glaskings Perpetual
Onion
  Italian Long Keeper

Lets hope germination happens

State of the Onions

The tree onions appear to be doing well. The chives died down and have re-emerged from the soil. The garlic is showing no signes of anything!

Tree Onions

I was thrilled to see Red Barn selling Tree Onions. These neat plants grow their bulbs in the air where they grow until they get to big and the plant collapses causign them to bend over and touch the ground where they root!

In went the tree onions, as did some garlic, and some chives that have been sitting in the green room for a few months. I also bunged some sage in the same patch (not the usual vege-patch, this is a new herb-patch).

Onions

An experiment with onions. While on holiday I read about onions needing long daylight hours before the bulbs form, and also that you can get them ready for planting early. So I planted a few punnets of seeds (bolotano and long keeper) to see if it works.

Onions

Although not all harvested today, here's this year's onion selection. Red onion on the left and green on the right. The harvest was not as good as it might have been because the cabbages swamped the onions.

Onions and Radishes

After getting a fresh bag of Yates Black Magic seed raising mix it was time to see if the cause of the onion germination problems was the potting mix. Other onions this year have been germinated in Yates Thrive. In went one seed tray worth of the borettana onions, 40 seeds in total.

Out of the seed tray of thrive went one borettana and one red onion into the patch. As all the radishes have been eaten, so too did three rows of radishes, two of the watermellon radish and one of the black radish.

On the topic of watermellon, some have germinated as have cucumber. Probably too late for this season but they'll be kept inside in the hope of someting good happening.

The Onions and Spinach Leek

Transplanted from the seed trays into the vege patch:

2 spinach (the first to germinate here ever!)
1 borettana onion (which within a few hours was mistaken for a week and half-pulled)
6 leek
3 egg plant

The whole patch got a good weeding (it needed it) then a row of root-parsley by the stratwberry spinach (the spinach plants are about the size of my thumb nail!).

Finally, by the turnips went in a row of coloured carrots (niche seeds) then a row of orange carrots (red barron from red barn a few years ago) and finally a row of white turnips (Kaiotes).

Seeds for pots for $12.00

The Warehouse has sets of 10 little plastic flowerpots for $4.00. Three loads was loads (for $12.00). After soaking zuchini seeds, white corn seeds during the day they went into the posts and got a good soaking.

Also soaked during the day were peas and sunflowers that went into seed trays. The seed tray was then filled with onions and spinach. Pumpkin seeds (saved from the supermarket pumpkin as well as giant pumpkin from last year's seed stock) remain soaking and will (hopefully) get transferred into pots tomorrow.

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.