Not Spring Onions

First sewing of seeds for the season. The old seed tray from last year (that's right I've got 3 now) has been filled with potting mix and 40 seeds planted in it.

15 * Onion Borettana
15 * Onion Pukekohe Longkeeper
10 * Onion Sweet Red

Last season's Pukekohe Longkeeper produced excellent "normal" onions. Several were given away but a winter's worth were kept and used. We don't eat many (less than one a week) but did have one in tonight's casserole (and it was good). They continue to keep well (in the kitchen). They were harvested when the tops tipped over

Last season's Sweet Red produced tiny onions. They are also in the kitchen but will get planted back out shortly. They were harvested too easly, the tops had not tipped.

The Borettana are new so no experience there.

Leeks from last year produced badly. One was left in the garden and it had continued to grow over the winter and it now quite respectable.

M-10 Out. But $85.25 spent!

Went to Mitre-10 today to get tickets for tomorrow night, but they are sold out. Had to make do with some plastic irrigation pipe and some joiners for the vege patch (total cost of $11.28). Add to this some potting mix and 2 new seed propagators from Nichol's (total cost of $73.97) and its been an expensive week.

As this is the vege patch blog and not the herb patch blog little discussion will be given of the planting of rosemary, mint, and some potting mix for an old whisky barrel - currently with nothing in it.

Downgoing and Upcoming

The vege patch has just gotten a little larger. Its taken all winter but finally the last few (about 6) feet have been added to the end of the vege patch. At first it looked like an easy job, but after digging down a centimeter it turned out that the reason it was a well draining spot was that there wasn't any soil. What must have been a dozen wheelbarrow loads of broken (half) bricks were buried in the garden. Removing these and sifting in soil took days - and since it never stopped raining all winter there weren't many suitable (weekend) days. Finding spare top-spoil in the garden wasn't too difficult but moving it is hard work.

As the vege patch is now at its maximum extent a wooden border was added around the whole site. The wood was rotting in the shed and is now rotting at the edge of the vege patch - and it looks better then it did before.

Upcoming events... On Thursday Mitre-10 is having a seminar on growing food. Lynda Hallinan is coming to Dunedin for the Rhododendron festival and will talk about her second year of living off of her vegetable patch. Will try to get to both events, Lynda's first talk was very funny.

Worth every penny (cent)?

On Friday the seeds from Kings arrived, the order was filled exactly and completely along with the 2 "free" packets. The dates on the packets are long - 2010 and 2011. Seeds from the local gardening shops have often had shorter dates.

Reading about the species I've never grown on the Internet is interesting. The Eggplant is a potato relative (the flowers look very similar) and is perennial (comes back each year) but usually grown as an annual (grows and dies in one year). It is temperature sensative so will be grown inside in the first year to see how it does.

The root parsley really is the root of parsley. I've had problems with parsley going to seed in Dunedin before (and taking over the whole garden) so care will be taken (especially as the leaves don't taste good to me!).

The "Spinach Strawberry" is neither strawberry nor spinach. It is "Chenopodium foliosum" - which aparently does produce red fruit. I didn't look too hard but also didn't find any comment on the taste of either the leaves or the fruit.

$40.15 + postage

After reading the (somewhat funny) special issue of NZ gardener "Homegrown 2: Live off your land for less" (which is cheaper direct than at the supermarket) I was inspired to grow borlotti beans - the photo in the magazine is of these fantasticly coloured spotty beans and pods. It turns out theyre actually called borlotto beans, demonstrating that the editor can't spell (but consistently can't spell).

After getting a price from Trademe I (to ammuse myself) compared the price to Kings Seeds's price. It wasn't amusing, Kings was a fraction of the trademe price. So I got inspired by the Kings web site and was up until late choosing seeds (consider me a Kings convert). It didn't help that you get 2 free packets of seeds if you spend $40 (so I did). Here's what I got:

Broccoli Italian Precoce
Cabbage Copenhagen Market
Cauliflower Green Macerata
Cauliflower Violet Sicilian
Pumpkin Austrian Oil Seed
Radish Oriental Watermelon
Spinach Bloomsdale
Turnip Tokyo White Cross F1
Turnip Red Round
Bean Borlotto Fire Tongue
Eggplant Black Beauty
Zucchini Black Beauty
Turnip Golden Ball
Cauliflower Snowball Improved
Spinach Strawberry

And for my free packets I chose:

PARSLEY BARTOWICH LONG - this is a kind of root vegetable
ONION BORETTANA

This should do for seeds for the whole season - but then again those yellow zucchini look good, as do the multi-coloured squash.

Carrots

The rabbit has stopped eating the brassica (because there aren't many left) and has moved on to the carrots - luckily it only eats the tops and not the roots. That said, no leaves leaves little carrots - and here they are. Several varieties, orange, purple, yellow, white. The best tasting are the purple and the orange ones. Yellow are a little tasteless (but still better than shop ones).

Capsicum

Capsicum grow well inside in Dunedin. These three demonstrate that green turns to yellow. There were harvested over the weekend and, since we don't eat many, given to parens.