If you’ve been following my blog posts, Facebook feed and Instagram, you’ll know that I had the misfortune of buying in bulk landscape supply mix called “Veggie Mix” which I am now, with the midway point results of my BioAssay, very confident was higher in…
These are actual images of plants I have grown this season (Spring/Summer 2019) in compost and “veggie mix” bought from a landscape supply place, which I have now no doubt contained herbicides Killer compost is a term given to compost and manure mixes that contain…
Warning – this is in entirety a moan post. But I did promise to share the good and the bad. Seems the bad has had me in its jaws the past two weeks… Following the chaos of the week of 14 October where all my…
October! October! A truly beautiful month. With spring truly sprung, there’s birds chirping, bees buzzing, lambs jumping through dandelion fields, and flowers – including fruit blossoms – popping up everywhere. The growth in my garden has suddenly accelerated in the past week, enough even for…
Last weekend I was down and out with a head cold, and just did not feel up to doing the weekly retrospect. But actually, although it’s spring, it feels kind of slow-going, so not even much news this past week. Nevertheless, here we go with a combined week 4 + 5 update.
The apples and pears in the orchard is blooming, which is very exciting for me, and everything is by now showing signs of life – even the plum (Reine Claude de Bavay) which I was worried about.
The berries are also all doing well, or at least kind of well… two blueberries are battling a bit (Muffin and Reka), but the Rabbiteyes (Suwanee) are looking good. Loganberry is putting on some flower buds, and the blackberry is still a bit small, and seems to have had a knock of something – frost? The raspberries have swollen buds, or at least I’m convinced their buds are more swollen than they were last week, and I can’t wait to see them burst forth with new leaf growth!
I still need to mulch the second row of the orchard. Getting more bike boxes on Monday for the bottom, and need to then source some arborist mulch.
I started to add some perennials, herbs and annuals to the edges of the first row – I added horseradish, comfrey, lupins, day lily and lavenders. Also a coreopsis (mango something) and some red helenium.
The old apple – the only fruiting tree in the gardens when we moved in, is also flowering profusely. Excited to see what it turns out to be!
There’s been lovely structures put in the potager – the pumpkin arch in the 3-sisters bed is complete, and although not aesthetic, still importantly, the fence that separates the potager from the sheep paddock is done too.
I’m feeling a bit defeated wit the garden itself though. Sure, the peas have started flowering, but they’re still not looking the best, and the pea vines are only about 60cm tall. The broad beans are … or are not… I don’t know, they’re there, and flowering, but less than 30cm, and not at all healthy looking.
Even the lettuces are taking their sweet time to do anything… at least they’re not dying, but no real growth has been put on either.
I put in some dianthus (Rainbow Loveliness) and some more kale (Lacinato) and have cleared the space and made the cloches (repurposed) for the squashes that are eventually going to go in.
The birds are still digging up my plants – I am forever replanting the spinach and silverbeet, cabbages and red Californian onions… even after putting a whole whack of bird scare tape all round and through and over and in between everything.
I also forgot to frost cloth the basella (Malabar spinach) and lost the 6 plants I had, so that’s off the plan then for this season…
Good news! The potatoes are doing excellent. Especially the early potatoes. But the second lot, Ilam Hardy, is coming along really nicely too. Shew! Some success!
It’s a good time this past week to put seed to ground, but I’ve not had a chance, hoping to do that later today when the rain eases a bit.
I still have space in my HOtBox for those that need a warmer start to life.
I’ve got a lot of seedlings waiting to be transplanted - both in the HotBox, and in the GrowTent. There's quite a few flowers, and a few herbs and interesting edibles too. Hope to make a list this weekend, so I can update the blog about what I have going next week.
Three weeks into spring, and things are going well. Albeit a bit slower than I’d like – not the plants’ or weather’s fault… but just life and budgets coming in to play. If you didn’t know, I’m working to create my new homestead garden and…
Full steam ahead with my garden diary / inspiration blog. If you’ve missed the beginning, feel free to check out the Introduction, and last week’s first edition – Week 1. It was propagation week this past week according to the Lunar Planting Calendar, so I…
Weather notwithstanding, spring is definitely happening in the garden. There are daffodils everywhere, peonies are starting to send up their new shoots, and most trees are full of leaf and flower buds.
Ornamentals: I’m rather pleased about a pendulous (weeping) flowering cherry that is about to burst into masses of deep pink blossoms.
Herbs: The rocket I planted a few weeks ago in the Quick-Access garden is doing what its name implies – rocketing. That’s fine though, I’ll do a new lot soon, and will let these flower and set seed so I can save some more. The rosemary is flowering too, so I get two crops for one – edible flowers, and edible leaves. I’m excited too to see the French Tarragon putting up some shoots after winter dormancy, meaning the root cutting I brought with from Auckland took and is growing well in the new garden. Same with hops, and horseradish.
Potager: The violas I planted as an edge to the Early Spring bed is full of flowers – a happy addition to my salads.
Orchard: The orchard is currently my pride and joy. I have finished with row one and it looks splendid
My broad beans, Hughes Crimson cultivar, are flowering. They’re only 15cm tall, so I was worried about this because usually my broad beans reach 1.2m before they even think of flowering. I asked around, and it seems to be a climatic thing, and most local gardeners reckon they’ll shoot off once the weather warms up a bit more. I’ll keep an eye on it though, I can’t think of a spring without broad beans!
My heirloom purple podded shelling peas are also not looking too grand… not sure why they are unhappy… still growing, but not as lush as I’d been used to.
I've found out that there’s such a thing as Indian Coriander – and it is a bit different to what we know as common, or European Coriander. Firstly, the seeds are oval – that’s how I stumbled upon this tidbit of information on a herb that I thought I knew pretty well. I found a packet of gifted seeds marked coriander, but with ovoid, not spherical seeds. This put me onto Google and I found this cultivar of Coriander which is said to grow greener, and has pronounced citrus overtones.
I’m hoping these seeds are viable, and I get some interesting plants from them – I’d love to do a real life comparison between these plants and what I have as “Slow-bolt” coriander.
Minette’s “Week in Retrospect” is back in season! This weekly blog post will mostly be a way for me to keep track of what is happening in my garden, my herbarium and my homestead, a diary to look back on, and learn from. But it…
