It’s a roots and perennials planting day today, but it is also a work day, and in the countdown towards the Christmas holidays, work days are stretching at both ends.

So I stuck a few carrots, beets and spring onions in the ground this morning before work   using my usual system and blessed the fact that I have a  garden with stamina.   This afternoon, I shall use some of my already made potting mix (and thank myself for having made a compost pile  and stockpiled some creek sand) to plant another round of seed of them all. It took half an hour this morning, and it will take just half an hour tonight. It’s what I love about using a lunar calendar, that it gives me a reason to avoid putting it off and just do at least a minimal amount of planting even in crazy busy times.  I will be so glad I did in a couple of months time.

I’ll also plant out these pigeon pea seeds.  Pigeon peas grow really well here in northern NSW.  They’re a straggly, semi perennial bush that lives for about seven or eight years. They fix nitrogen in the soil, and bear a fairly decent crop of seeds that make great dhal and good chook food.

But the wallabies love them. At one stage we planted a whole acre of them on our stony hillside and over their lifetime they turned the soil from barely growing tussock grass to orchard.  But once the wallabies had identified them as food, we were never able to plant them again outside the fencing.

So now I carefully raise seedlings in the shadehouse in pots until they are 30 cm or so tall, then plant them out with wire surrounding and try to get them above wallaby height. They are worth it though.  When the zombocalypse hits, they are one of the plants we can depend upon.

The trouble with luffas is that I want them for Christmas, to go with my handmade soap. But I can’t plant them early enough here for them to mature and then allow time to clean and dry before Christmas.

So every fruiting planting day through spring, I get the seed packet out, look at it, decide that they will like the weather a bit hotter and since they won’t be ready for Christmas anyway they can wait, and put it back in the seed box. Then the the zucchini and squash start making like triffids and I forget that I swore and declared I would plant only one cucumber each planting break, and  I remember how many varieties of beans I want to find space for, and by this time of year, I get the luffa seed packet out, look at it, decide that there really isn’t room this month and put it back.

Then every Christmas I think, wouldn’t it be perfect to have some luffas to go with the soap.

So this time, I planted some seeds.  They’re old seed, left-over-never-planted last year’s poor neglected seeds.  But if they germinate, I am determined to find them some space and next Christmas, I’ll have luffas.

This gardening really is practice in deferred gratification!

Besides the luffas, I planted just a few seeds each of zucchini, button squash, tromboncino, rockmelon, and cucumbers (Chinese Snake this time).  All in individual pots. I shall keep them in the shadehouse for a few weeks and then choose the strongest one or two of each to plant out into the garden.  I also planted a couple of dozen each of Purple King, Blue Lake and Red Seeded Snake beans, two to a pot, and I’ll plant them out in a few weeks when they’re 15 cm or so tall. And some sweet corn – just 12 plants which is probably too few in a patch to guarantee pollination so I’ll have to hand pollinate, but I have 2 small patches in already and there just  isn’t room for more.

And I planted a row of seed of tomatoes (Principe Borghese and yellow cherry), eggplant (Mini Violet Ruby this time) and capsicum in a seed raising box. I’ll transplant the strongest half dozen of each into individual pots at the two leaf stage, then out into the garden when they are a good 15 cm or so tall.  This will be the last round of eggplants and capsicums for the season.  The summer solstice is just a few weeks away now.

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Last year I planted my brussels sprouts seed in January, in the midsummer leafy planting break, after the solstice.  I transplanted them at the two leaf stage into a nice big pot full of mixed compost and creek sand  and kept them watered with compost tea and seaweed brew, and protected from aphids, cabbage moths, web moths, bower birds, and all the other things that like to eat crucifers in summer.  When they were 20 cm tall, in mid-Autumn I finally planted them out, scattered around the garden, surrounded by dill and coriander,  in a nice well composted spots on the southern side of beds where they could grow tall without shading anything, close enough to the fence to tie them to it to give them a bit of support.

And this is what I got for all that trouble:

I really am too far north for brussels sprouts, and climate change is only making it worse.   Every few years, just often enough to keep my hopes up, I jag a combination of variety, timing, and weather that gets me a crop.  But most times there is just not a long enough period of cool weather for them to form sprouts, and I get loose leafy sprouts.  I should give up.  Remind me of this when I complain again next year.

The problem is that I like brussels sprouts, cut in half and lightly fried in olive oil, and they are ridiculously good for you. This time I am trying Long Island variety, planted in November.  This is the earliest I’ve tried it for a long time, and it will be quite a challenge to keep them safe for all the summer and autumn. But the idea is to have the plants already big enough to start forming sprouts by June.

This leafy planting break, I am also planting :

This is the season to really test out lettuce varieties.  The cos lettuces are actually doing the best at the moment but I’ve run out of seed of them.  The two-star are a nice lettuce but they are bolting a bit quickly for planting before the solstice, when the lengthening days are just asking for a bolt.  Red oakleaf have done well for me this time of year in the past, and the two self sown ones are from lettuces I deliberately let go to seed because they held on so long.

Some parsley and coriander, both of which will bolt quickly but if I keep successive planting going, I have the makings for tabouli and Vietnamese spring rolls. And Egyptian spinach – a new one for me.  Anyone grown it?

I have a few lettuces and basils (sweet, lemon, lime and Thai) as advanced seedlings ready to plant out into the garden, but mostly today will be cleaning out spent broccoli and brussels sprouts, trying to find space for all the sweet corn, capsicum, eggplants, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, tromboncino, cucumbers, beans, rockmelons, luffas and assorted other fruiting annuals I have ready for the fruiting planting break next weekend.

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