For one very scary moment I thought we had eaten the last of the beans saved from last summer.  But whew.  Plenty in the jar for planting for this year. These are Rattlesnakes,  my current favourite bean variety originally a gift from another gardener.  They’re a tall, prolific climber and great as green beans or dried as a pinto bean substitute.  Which nearly got me into trouble through cooking all of them. Chili beans have been a staple this winter.

Today I’m planting a couple of dozen seeds of these in leaf pots, three to a pot and I’ll weed out the weakest before planting them out in a few weeks time.  I would plant them directly if I had space but the bed they will go into is just about to be cleared and fertilised by a fortnight of chooks if I can get around to moving the chooks this afternoon. And every other climbing space has peas or snow peas still bearing or coming on, or is needed for the Blue Lake beans and tromboncino and cucumbers planted in pots last month

I’m also planting seed of tromboncino and cucumbers and zucchini and button squash by the same method. Yellow cherry, Yugoslav and Principe Borghese are my favourite varieties of tomatoes at the moment, so I’m planting a few seeds of each along with, tomatillos and capsicums in a seed raising box.  I’m skipping eggplants this year.  They are very prone to some kind of virus spread by flea beetles in my garden.  I’m hoping a year off will break the cycle.  I need to remember to be careful not to plant too many tomatoes for the same reason.  I try to avoid planting them in the same spot two years running or they build up disease (something I needed to learn the hard way, several times over – duh!) I always have enough chilis come up by themselves.

And I have an early planted cucumber planted last month ready to go out – Suyo Long is my favourite variety this year.  And a tromboncino or two, and a dozen Blue Lake beans about 15 cm tall already.  And the garden is full.

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One of the most important insights that really changed the way I garden was realising just how long plants are babies for. It is still late winter, I know, but up here in northern NSW we’ve had a day over 28°C already, and another couple above 25°C  (scary, but let’s not go there). It’s been plenty warm enough for cool climate greens to germinate at their fastest.

But their fastest is pretty slow.  These babies are just under a month old, and they’re just now ready for transplanting out of the seed germinating box into individual pots with lots of compost and worm castings.  They will then be happy in the shadehouse for at least a few more weeks before planting out into the garden.

So, although I have no beds ready at all, I know by the time they need to go out, the chooks will have moved twice and I’ll have a bed cleared and mulched and fertilised and ready for them.  I’m trying to get a good sequential planting  rhythm going again so there’s a continuous supply.  So today I planted another round of seed of lettuces, silver beet, Italian silverbeet  (lucullus), leeks, spring onions, and aragula, and a first round of the summer greens – amaranth, Egyptian spinach, and all the basils. I potted on the  lettuces, leeks, chinese cabbages, raddicchio, silver beet, parsley, rocket, and coriander. And I planted out the last of the celery, kale, and broccoli raab for the winter.

So although I have lots of overgrown weedy neglected garden beds, I nearly have a full garden in train, and that feels very good.

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It is still late winter isn’t it?  I really wanted to name this “Early Spring” – the weather has turned the corner here, and the soil is warm enough now to reliably plant capsicums and eggplants and things that won’t germinate if the soil temperature is too low.  So this planting break I have planted seeds of:

Capsicums – three kinds: my own saved “Supermarket flats“, Liz’s gift of seeds of her “Mini Capsicums” (thanks Liz!), and my old favourite Hungarian wax (particularly for stuffing)

Tomatoes – four kinds: so hard to choose, but I’m determined not to overdo the planting again, so I’ve chosen yellow cherries, Roma, Principe Borghese, and Brandywine.

Eggplants – I have trouble with a virus spread by flea beetles. I’ve been cycling through varieties looking for resistance. This year I’m trying Thai Green.

Beans: four  kinds – Rattlesnake – a gift from Deb, that I tried very late in the season last year, so these are now second generation saved seed.  And my old favourites – Brown seeded snake beans, Blue Lake climbers, and Purple King climbers.

Cucumbers: Continental this time

Squash: Yellow bush

Zucchini: Tromboncino are going to be my main variety this year, because they use space so efficiently by climbing.  But I’ve put in a couple of seeds of Fordhook as well, just in case.

Pumpkin: I have several varieties that self seed, but I’ve put in some Potkins this year too for stuffing.

Sweet Corn: Balinese

I looked at the seeds of melons, luffa, sunflowers, tomatillos and okra too, but they didn’t make the cut this time.  The garden will be very full by the time I get this lot planted out so I might wait for next month for them.

The small seeds are all in a seed raising box. I shall transplant them into individual pots when they have their first true leaves, choosing just a few more than I plan to plant out.  That way, they will already be a month or more old before they are planted out, and I have another month to move the chooks through a couple of beds so as to get enough space well prepared for them all.

The big seeds like beans and cucumbers I’ve planted directly into pots.  I plant the beans three to a pot and choose the strongest two, and the cucumbers two to a pot and choose the stronger one to plant out.  The pots are filled with a very rich mix of compost, worm castings, some creek sand for drainage, and a little sprinkle of wood ash to raise the pH, all watered in with dilute seaweed brew.  So they will be planted out with their own little fertilizer stash. I’ve scored a lovely set of old concrete laundry tubs recently and they make a great potting mix making station – one tub filled with mix and one with dilute seaweed brew for soaking the pots as I fill them.  it makes the task so easy that I got it all done yesterday in a couple of hours.

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Today in my community we are getting together for a little bit of visioning and stone soup lunch to celebrate the point in the calendar when the lenthening days turn the corner and all of a sudden Spring is on its way.  If you graph the change in length of day, for the last three months it’s been barely changing, slowly slowly falling towards the winter solstice, then slowly slowly rising. Round about now though, it goes over the flattish hump on the top and start to dive steeply towards the equinox then on towards the long days of summer.  If you are in the northern hemisphere, all that is reversed.

The Celts called it Imbolc, which literally means “in the belly”.  Spring, though it may not show yet, is already here with its promise of new life, of sun and warm and dreams and ambitions and new projects. My chooks know it – they’ve started laying again.  The geese know it – the two adult males scrap without really hurting each other, then run around with their wings out like soccer players with their shirt over their head, loudly proclaiming victory.  The ducks know it – they’re investigating all sorts of weird places for nest suitability, even though both drakes were got by foxes this winter so sadly there will be no ducklings.

I’m hoping the asparagus hasn’t quite caught on yet, because the alternative explanation is that the wallabies are still getting in somewhere and having asparagus feasts every night. I’m still really cross about the way they completely decimated my nasturtiums and mint and lemon grass and vietnamese mint, all in one night, after finding a tiny little hole forced through by a bandicoot.

And it’s time for me to get back into my garden properly again, after several months of really neglecting it.  I find that, if I manage just a few hours every week, it just keeps producing. But if I miss just a few weeks, the jobs that need to be done before the next job start to pile up and it all falls in a heap and my blithe “so easy to grow at least the basics of food” starts to sound really hollow!

Roots and perennials planting days today and tomorrow, and I’m going to get these seed potatoes in the bed that I’ve just moved the chooks off, and plant a new round of carrots, spring onions, beetroot, Jerusalem and globe artichokes in the shadehouse.  I shall use my usual method for the spuds, planting them straight out into the bed, my usual method for the carrots and spring onions, planting them in individual little biodegradable pots, and my usual method for the beets, planting the seed in a seed box.  And, with any luck I’ll get some time to look at all my perennial herbs and see what needs dividing, transplanting, or replacing at this still secret very start of the growing season.

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