Feeling seedy

See? I told you I am addicated to sowing seeds; I have bought even more! I realised the other day that despite all my mad sowing, I didn't have any eggplants at all to speak of. I went out almost immediately (well, a couple of days later) and bought a punnet of Lebanese eggplant, and another of the fat 'normal' kind, the name of which escapes me, and planted them out in the garden. And I got a couple of packets of purple eggplant seeds, but, like a true addict, it wasn't enough and I needed more: Ebay beckoned.

First port of call? Yet more eggplants!

Thai 'Udumalaphet';

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

'Casper' white;

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

A funky unnamed red variety;

Source: flickr.com via Katie on Pinterest

Famous 'Listada de Grandia';

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

And while I was on a roll with the weird and wonderful?

Silver Queen, burgundy, Star of David and Clemson Spineless okra: (cool binomial name too, Abelmoschus esculentus). I don't even like okra - I think it's like eating glue - but Chef D does and I couldn't resist the mixed colours.

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

White beetroot (isn't that mutually exclusive?);

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

'Moon and Stars' Watermelon;

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

and green tomatillos (and what do they taste like? No idea!);

Source: google.com via Katie on Pinterest

But now, a little bit of a problem: We're off overseas in a month for a month. Should I plant these now, or later? Eek! I got carried away and didn't think of that when I was madly clicking 'buy it now' the other day. I think I will hedge my bets: Just a few of each now, and more when we get home. Is it just me or is Spring running away with us already?

Hello...

Hello, my name is Katie and I am an addict. I can't seem to stop myself from sowing seeds,
I think just one more tray, just one more set of tomatoes. But I have filled up the entire picnic table now, and I've run out of spare containers, so I might be forced to stop by circumstance. What do you think? Is it a problem? Chef D told me that he and MIL are laughing at me when they get up in the morning and find half a dozen more pots on the kitchen counter. They're laughing! At my obsession!



Actually, I think I could squeeze in one or two more trays on the bottom right side...

It wasn't me... (Winter wednesday #13)

...who used the bread knife to cut up a block of peat and then used a Tupperware jug to prepare the peat. Ahem.
OK, I lie. I'm not sure it's what kitchenware companies have in mind when they design their goods, but it works quite well on a block of compacted peat, the old bread knife.

You may have noticed that I have been propagating seeds like a madwoman lately. They're doing quite well overall, aside from a few toddler related 'incidents' (SP has long arms!) I've moved them outside to the picnic table which gets more sunlight.


I like the way the lids are secretive about what's inside underneath the condensation.


This is why I moved them: That's bok choy on the left, which shot up like crazy and I'm sure it's not supposed to be that tall and leggy! Even though it was bright inside its' not the same as sunlight, so I think this is why that happened and I have planted more since. On the right is roselle, which looks good, if a little bit anemic.


The hollyhocks sprouted very quickly too, and overall are looking pretty good... except for that random too-tall one on the left.


I'm also trying these out in my quest to grow kangaroo paws (Anigozanthus sp) from seed (so far, entirely unsuccessful, they sprout and die, without fail!). They're called 'Seedsticks' and are a promotional product which was passed on to me from my mother, I think, several years ago. I found them the other day and am giving them a shot, but because they're quite old now I don't know how well they'll work.


I've also filled up a few Styrofoam boxes with a mix of peat, compost, and manure, and have sown carrots and daikon in them. D snaffled the boxes for me from his work. Who's Ben, you ask? He's their fruit and veg wholesaler. I could fill my entire yard with these boxes if I wanted to; they only get thrown out otherwise.


Hum, hum, hum, what else? Oh yes, potato bags are filled with a peat/compost/manure mix too, and some old pea straw. And potatoes of course: two per bag. Keeping them company are my little figs and the pomegranate, which are all putting out their very first Spring leaves. Nawww!


And finally, the shape of things to come, drawn very shabbily with fluro pink marking paint. I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to focus on when I took the photo. Apparently nothing! But, poor photography skills aside, I am starting to see how things might look one day: a big, rounded garden bed with wide stairs up to it, and leading back to where I am standing is a low tier, the future home of my plum trees. No idea what I'm talking about? Have a look here: The Grand Plan (already altered, mind you, I need to update it!)


So that's Winter Wednesday for this week, and the second to last of the series: fun with paint, peat, poo, paws, and propagating. Spring is in the air and I am loving it! Pop over to Hazel's to see what else is going on.

Hey, Spike!

I caved in today. I bought more plants from work.

Introducing my brand new, virulent green, native finger lime, Microcitrus australasica. He'd fit into the palm of my hand at the moment, not that I'd want to hold him with all those thorns. One website I've read called him 'delicate,' and I thought, what is so delicate about a plant with more thorns than leaves? Actually, he's quite cute when he's so petite - those leaves are only 5mm long at most - and I'll keep him in a pot so that his future-fruits are easily accessible. This wee lime is a native of the east and northern rainforests of Australia, and I'm told - by my new work-plant-gurus - that he'll do quite well if I treat him as per a normal citrus (IE good drainage, lots of fertiliser) and I don't have to put him in native potting mix or anything. However, he's a very slow grower and it might be some time before we see any fruit on him.


I also bought... drum roll please... a little Pterostylis curta, or blunt greenhood. In years to come I'm hoping that it will multiply to look like this. We have some display pots at work that look like that, full full full of flowers and leaves: amazing, spectacular, and every other adjective you can think of. Customers see those pots and say, 'is that real?' Greenhoods are relatively tough for orchids, and so are good ones for a newbie; it's just lucky that it happens to be a favourite of mine. It's also indigenous to my local area, which is always a plus.


Last but not least, a couple of progress photos of all the seeds I sowed the other day. Predictably, the bok choy is first off the line with it's heart-shaped seed leaves (right hand row), but there's a nice surprise on the left hand row of peat pots: those white nubs are the roselle seeds sprouting (that's Hibiscus sabdariffa, for those playing at home).


And then, same same but different, are the hollyhock seeds which have also begun to down roots and up leaves. So far, so good. I hope this continues and I have a proliferation of vegetable and flower seedlings taking up space on the windowsill in the weeks to come.

Sixteen days until Spring!

Getting carried away

I spotted these 'windowsill greenhouses' from Jiffy at the hardware store. They were kind of cheap, about $8 per kit, and came with 12 peat pellets each, so I figured, why not? And I bought two kits and a packet of 36 peat pellet refills.

(Picture borrowed from here)

I have recently discovered the wealth of seeds that can be bought from various people on Ebay, and I had bought some black and white hollyhocks that I wanted to try to grow and I thought this looked like a good setup to try them out. I also had some red and yellow giant sunflowers, which I'm ridiculously excited about growing all along the back fence.

You fill the trays about 2/3rds with warm water and the pellets swell up to 6 times their original size or so in less than 15 minutes.

Then you part the cloth covering (if it hasn't done it already by itself) and sow your seeds in the dimple. Hollyhocks apparently like light to germinate so I just popped them on top and smudged a little of the peat over the top.


I filled one of my trays with sunflowers, and the other with hollyhocks then stood back and admired them.


But I wanted more, more! It was kind of fun, adding water and watching the pellets grow.
I rifled through the plastics cupboard and found some plastic takeaway containers and other more sturdy clear plastic tubs I thought would be suitable. I had all those extra pellets to use up after all.

The pellets do tend to float around at first, when they start to soak up the water you can poke them back down again.


I got creative with some cling film, and had an inspired idea about sowing strawberry seeds in a strawberry tub (with the holes sealed over for now, so they don't leak water all over the window sill). I even put labels with the date on them! (You may remember that is a gardening resolution of mine: to label things properly.)

That was last night, and I had such a good time doing it that I went back to the store today and bought two more windowsill propagators. I hope this works well, and I haven't put all my faith in these flimsy plastic containers for nothing. They make an impressive pile when all together... (for photo purposes only. They're lined up all along the kitchen window sills for the time being. I don't know what MIL is going to think when she sees it, but she's away at the moment so I can put my seeds where I like.)


The timing is right, though, to get the vegetable seeds sown in time for planting out in Spring. I haven't had a lot of success with sowing seeds so far, only peas, beans and corn have ever done well. I went through the container with my seeds - my Packets of Promise - to see what else I had. In addition to the hollyhocks, sunflowers and strawberries, I've also sown butternut pumpkin, 'lemon' cucumbers, 'Tigger' mini melons, Thai green eggplants, Black Russian tomatoes, bok choy, sweet capsicums, 'Minnesota' mini rock melons and roselle. I didn't actually buy a lot of those: remember how I mentioned Ebay for seeds? Well, when I bought my hollyhocks recently the seller accidentally sent me my seeds in one envelope, and someone else's seed order in another. Oops! I contacted them to let them know, and they said just to keep them if I wanted to and, of course, I wasn't about to say no to free seeds!

If this works well I'll be half set for Spring. Fingers crossed.

Lime time

Today it's glorious outside, it might even be warmer outside than in the house. I can even venture outside barefoot. It's the kind of day where we've opened every window and door to let the sunshine in. It really feels a lot like Spring already. An early Spring? That would be nice, a good way to balance out the early Winter! SP and I made a bit of a tour of MIL's garden, to see what may be seen out there on this radiant July day.

First up, I looked to see how all my propagation of four weeks ago is going. The raspberries I dug up don't look like much from a distance, in fact you could be forgiven for thinking they'd died, but up close their little green noses are poking out of the stems and soil. Yesterday I dug up half a dozen extras, hoping for a raspberry filled Summer;



The white Japanese windflowers are also doing well, as are most of the correas;



But the jury's still out on the penstemons. They're all looking a bit limp and wan;


We cut a whole heap of coriander, and I mean a heap! I chopped it all down and have frozen it in water to use at our leisure. There's still three times this again in the garden;


We found a splash of unexpected brilliance in the red leaves of a rhubarb;


And a sweet surprise from a ground cover pelegonium - or geranium - which has been hiding in the violets and soursobs, I didn't even know she was there until she showed her blushing face;


And lastly we looked at the lemons and limes.


SP helped me collect some of the 'balls,'


So expensive in the shops, and so abundant in MIL's garden! If there were ever fruit trees that paid for themselves in greens and golds, then citrus are it in our Mediterranean climate.



I hope you're all enjoying your Sundays. xx

More on strawbs

On Friday I promised I'd do a gardening post next, but I had my wires crossed and needed to do the second-hand love post first, then the gardening one, so you get two in one day today :)

About a week ago, or a little more maybe, I got the next round of bare-rooted strawberries in the post. This time I'd bought Cambridge Rivals and Aromas.


And in true Katie-style, and direct contradiction of my pledge to label things properly, when I unwrapped them I happily snipped the labels away from the plastic, cut away the plastic wrapping, popped my new plants in glasses of water, and then realised I hadn't paid any attention to which label went with which bundle so I didn't know which was which. Thanks to a helpful person on the Diggers' FB page I think the Aromas were the ones with more leaf, but I can't be sure.


I went off and spent my birthday money on a couple of strawberry pots (which are surprisingly hard to find!) and some terracotta dishes. I would have liked glazed pots, but there was nothing in either shape to be had. I splashed out on premium potting mix too.
I potted them up, and couldn't help thinking, as I laid out their roots, that they looked just like a group of ladies settling down to afternoon tea with their skirts spread neatly around them.




Then I took a picture as a record, and admired how lovely and tall my Aquadulce broad beans are getting in the background, and how lush the nasturtium is (on the right) and then I realised how crooked those pots are!


And then, just for fun, I took a picture of the whole potty shambles along that garden bed there :) Man, I can hardly wait to have my backyard back so I can do things properly.


Just FYI, in that first polystyrene container is 20 pots with freshly sown Anigozanthus seed. The first batch which was sown in Summer had about a 5% germination rate, and then they were all frizzled off by the heat; I'm seeing if I have more success with them in Winter. Also in this pot is half a dozen experimental Goodenia amplexans cuttings. They have no rooting hormone on them and varying amounts of stem/leaf. Basically I gave my Goodenia bush out the front a bit of a haircut and then stuck the trimmings in pots to see what will happen. (Top left fluffy plant: a Rodanthe paper daisy I couldn't resist at the garden centre the other day.)


Speaking of things out the front, here is a progress shot with my back to the house looking out to the road on the Western side of the garden. Bottom left twig is the Fuyu persimmon, top left barely visible twig is the Nightingale persimmon, along the fence is the lavender hedge, and along the wall is the latest Lomandra border which I have creeping around the corner to intersect with the lavender. Also visible are the concrete upcycled pavers I'm hoping to start setting in soon, and a pile of crap I need to get rid of.


This week I will also take a picture of the rough draft of my front garden plan for you. I've only been meaning to do it for two or three months!

Raspberries and windflowers

One of the really good things about staying at a house with a really lovely and full garden is that there is plenty of plants which can be divided and propagated and then taken over to our own garden.

Over the weekend I dug half a dozen Japanese Windflower plants out of the kitchen window patch. They're the white, single anemones and far too beautiful not to try them out at our place.
The roots are surprisingly thick and robust considering how delicate the leaves and stems are.



I've popped the whole lot into a couple of pots and they're staying outside in the rain and semi-shade. Let's hope they do well, I think they look a little seasick, hanging over the edge of the pots like that, thinking, what the hell just happened?


I also helped myself to some of the raspberries. Notice they all have leaves? It never really gets cold enough here for plants to go truely dormant.


Last year at Christmas we ate ourselves silly on the raspberries out of MIL's patch. I did plant some at our place last winter but they were eaten by insects so many times that they struggled and struggled and eventually died. I also have native raspberries planted and they are looking quite good but aren't known for an abundance of fruit. These raspberries have been potted up into a very sexy ice cream container, ready to be shifted later on in winter.


I might take some more over the week, I think, the more I have the more will survive? Right?