Seed Raising And Summer Planting

Here in Australia we are technically in the last week of winter but because I live in the sub-tropics we are actually in spring already and only weeks away from summer if I had to guess since strawberry season has started.  You see we really only get a few weeks of spring and autumn, about 3 months of winter and about 7 months of summer.
In the past few years I have been caught out and one minute it is winter and the next we are into summer temperatures and I do not have my summer veggie seedlings ready.  Because the nights are still cool it is hard to get summer seeds like capsicums, tomatoes and eggplants germinated in time for the warm days so this year I am trying a different strategy.
I am still raising most of my veggies from seeds but I have also purchased a small number of more advanced seedlings that are already about 15 cm high that I have planted out this week.

Capsicums, eggplants, lettuce and basil with a whole
lot of self seeded coriander at the end of the garden bed.

The last of the winter veggies coming on are now sharing the garden
bed with lettuce, capsicums and zucchini.

When raising seeds I find the easiest way is to raise then in a foam box with a deep layer of seed raising mix which you can rad about here.

We have had some great rain here over the weekend and so It looks like I got my seedlings in just in time on Friday.  They have all been well watered in and now I just need them to grow as fast as they can because I can't wait to eat some tasty beefsteak tomatoes.

Are you thinking about summer veggies yet?

Lovely Golden Melons

One of the few things that is growing in the garden at the moment are some lovely watermelon.  These are golden midget from Diggers.

The skin is a lovely butter yellow colour and the fruit are quite small which makes it great for just the two of us. Apparently they are quite well suited to cooler climates too.

The flesh is lovely and sweet too.

As with all heirloom watermelon these are not seedless.  So I have some to give away to anyone in Australia.
Please email me if you would like some feebegood at hotmail dot com

Seed Swapping

A little while ago I announced that I had Pak Choy Seeds to give away.  A number of you replied and seeds have since been posted off.

I did not offer the seeds with the expectation that I was getting anything in return so it was a lovely to receive things in return.

I received seeds and also some lovely seed envelopes from the lovely Patricia.

Swapping seeds with friends and family is such a practical thing to do since most seeds do not germinate as well once they are a year or so old and there are usually more in a packet than you need.  Also if you choose to save you own seeds you are likely to end up with enough to supply a commercial market garden so why not share them around.

If you are new to seed saving or would like more information Liz from 8 Acres provided so useful links in this post.

I still have plenty of seeds left if you would like some and they can be posted anywhere in Australia so let me know if you would like some.

Organic Seed Giveaway

This year I had great success with Pak Choy.   But after eating it for quite a while and other greens doing well in the garden I let the last 3 plants go to seed.

And go to seed they did.  So last weekend, after drying out the seed pods for a few weeks, I spent  some time shelling all the little seed pods.  Now I have more seed than I could ever use so I would like to give most of them away.

If you would like some please email me and I will post them to you  (my contact details are on my profile page).  I can only send these within Australia due to quarantine laws but I have plenty to give away so if you want some please let me know.

Hot Hot Hot

It has been getting very hot here lately and yesterday was no exception.
It has also been extremely dry.  The last time it rained was mid July.  I have raised a lot of seeds and have potted them on into indervidual pots but all this hot dry weather is making it hard to keep them from suffering.
Yesterday we had a scorcher of a day with the below temperature of 37 degrees registering at 2 pm.  It was one of those days that you pray for rain.  People often talk about the heat being oppressive and the air feeling heavy.   Today I knew exactly what they mean.

The dry heat has been a bonus in drying my Pak Choy seed pods and all going well I will have plenty to give away soon so stay tuned.

And it turns out my prayers for rain were to be answered.  A storm rolled in late afternoon, and although there was not a lot of rain(only 4 mls), it was enough to cool everything down and water the garden and paddocks.

A few weeks ago one of our neighbours kindly came and slashed our back paddock to get rid of all the dead grass and thatch.  Since then we have watering it from our bore and it has been greening up nicely.  So this rain just topped it up.

Sprinkler watering the paddock (A bit hard to see but look for the jet of water)

The paddock starting to green up

Weather reports suggest that we are in for a long hot summer so I am sure we can expect plenty more days like this to come.

Day 1 in the Garden

So the first day of my work break has come and gone and it was a productive one.

It was off to town to pick up supplies.  Some Searles 5 in 1 compost, some vermiculite and a few other bits and pieces.  I use the vermiculite mixed with potting mix when planting out seeds and I see on the packet it is made from organic materials, but I really do not know that much about it and if it is actually a good thing to buy/use and what are the environmental impacts.  If anyone knows I would love to know.  Other wise I will be putting it on my list of things to find out.

Then it was off to the mushroom farm to make enquiries about compost and buying mushrooms in bulk.
And I wasn't disappointed.  I met with the owner and she gave me a tour and told me what I was able to purchase.
Basically there was no minimum quantity so if I only wanted a kilo of mushrooms (as if) that was fine and I had the choice of the following:

A1 Buttons $7 kg
A2 Buttons $6 kg (these were basically not pure white on their caps)
Cups $5 kg
Swiss Browns $8 kg
Mushroom compost $1 per bag and still producing stacks of mushrooms

My A2 Mushrooms

 So I got a 4kg box of A2 mushrooms and now I just have to divide them up and work out how many to keep out and how many to freeze.  I am not sure if anyone else freezes mushrooms but I find they freeze well.

After lunch I go on to some of the outdoor jobs on my list, mainly planting seeds for the summer veg I want to have this year. So out to my potting table in the shade house it is.



My potting table  and my basket of seeds, paper pots and extra paper and my number 1 helper



Paper pots from over at sow give grow

All done - well for now

So I have planted out: Sage, Thyme, Rocket, Purple Artichokes, Zuchini (tri colour), 3 types of Tomato's (Amish Paste, Russian Mix and Galapagos), Heirloom Capsicums (7 colour mix) and Heirloom Eggplant's.
Some of these I tried last year but I was too late in starting and the humidity killed them off so this year I hope to have things up and running before the humidity kicks in.

Well out to the garden I go again to see what more I can get done.

Welcome back Sunshine



Self Watering Seed Tray


It has been incredibly wet here in Queensland where I live and this year seems to have so far delivered more wet days than fine.
So I was extremely thankful that I was able to spend some time outside in the sunshine over the weekend planting out seeds.
Some were planted directly into the garden beds and some into my self watering seed tray that I purchased through the diggers club. 
I have found this incredibly useful as I am prone to forgetting to water seeds resulting in poor germination and development.

Last year I planted out 2 rows of beetroot and one of Silver beet and it kept Hubby and I (as well as some of the family) going for a number of months.  Since then I have found a large number of ways of using beetroot that I am looking forward to trying (beetroot brownies mmmmmm) so this year I plan on planting out a few more rows.
I have still stuck with just one row of silver beet, as even though it takes quite a few leaves to give each person a good serve, we had plenty last year and the space would be better used for something else.  Not sure what just yet.
I have also sown leeks, cabbage, broccoli, sage, parsley, basil and lettuce into my seed tray.
In addition to the new things I have sown I found a few sad looking seedlings of capsicum, eggplant and a mystery cucurbit, that didn't get planted out when they should have.
Now in reality these will probably amount to nothing, not only because they were left too long as seedlings but are also being planted at the wrong time of year.  However if I was just to throw them away I would never know if they had the possibility of becoming anything so hey why not.