Inspired by my own last post, I’ve got it together to go out in the rain and plant out a new bed.  I’m wet and muddy, but I did have such fun. And the wood stove is going so there is hot water to get clean and warm again, and visions of broccoli and caulis and onions and carrots and beets and peas and celery and spinach and lettuces and kale to be harvested in a few months.

Advanced seedlings are such a wonderful instant garden technique.  The chooks came off this bed a week ago and it was mulched but empty (apart from some stinging nettle they declined to clear for me).  The seedlings have been growing happily in the shadehouse for the last few months in pots of compost mixed with creek sand, with some worm castings and seaweed brew to keep them very healthy.  Within a couple of hours, I have fully planted garden, and within a couple of months, harvestable crops.

Today I’ve planted a new set of seeds in the shadehouse to keep the roll happening.  It’s a little early but here in northern NSW our winters are short.  The days are already perceptibly longer and in another week we will reach the point in the day length bell curve when the days start lengthening faster and faster.  All of a sudden the season will shift. Spring, though it is still unnoticeable, is already in the air.  It’s a point in the calendar that has been recognised forever, celebrated in Europe as Imbolc, or St Brigid’s Day, in north America as Groundhog Day, in Japan as Setsubun, in India as Vasanta, and probably by Australian Aborigines too, though we white Australians have been shamefully ignorant in learning from them.

So I’m taking a risk on planting the first of the summer fruiting annuals, hoping it will be warm enough for seeds to germinate.  I’ve laid some old windows over the boxes to make mini-glasshouses to urge them along a little.  I’ve planted capsicums,  eggplants, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans – several varieties of each.  If nothing else, it brings me visions of warm weather to come.

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My garden has been shamefully, shamefully neglected lately.  Call yourself a gardener.  Lots and lots of other stuff going on including a couple of big projects, and that I’ll be becoming a grandma in early December which is very exciting.

The bandicoots burrowed into a bed so I put off planting it out till I got time to fix the fence.  It’s been too wet to mow, so I moved the chooks on without mulching a bed, and it sprouted weeds so I put off planting it till it was dry enough to mow.  We went away for a week’s holiday so I let everything in the shadehouse go. But in amongst all the putting it off, I found a day, a while ago to plant.  Half an hour of mowing to get some mulch, a bed where the chooks had been, some seedlings that were overgrown in the shadehouse and badly needed planting out, a couple of hours in the garden.

I thank myself when I find time like this. It’s deferred gratification, because like everything gardening you don’t see the results straight away.  But it means that we have broccoli and caulis coming on, peas and snow peas, carrots and onions and celery for winter stews, spinach and kale to add greens to anything, spring onions and coriander and parsley.

Once you have a garden established and a system that works, it doesn’t take much. Something I’m very grateful for at the moment!

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Roots and perennials planting days yesterday and today, but they’re town work days for me, so most of  it will have to wait for the weekend.  This weekend I’ll put in another round of seed and plant out another round of carrots and beetroots, and pot up this thyme and also some sage I’ve propagated from seed.

So all I’ve really done this break is to stick some artichoke seeds in a seed raising box this morning.  Theoretically I should wait for Spring to plant them, but the days are now lengthening and though it is still quite cold, they don’t need warm soil to germinate and they won’t freeze in the shadehouse.

Artichokes are easiest propagated from pups, or suckers taken from an adult plant in autumn after the plant has stopped bearing.  If you are careful, you can drive a shovel down between the parent and the sucker and separate a sucker with roots.  You can plant it out straight away, or pot it up till spring then plant it out. The baby will be a clone, genetically identical to the parent.

But I wanted to try a new variety.  Imperial Star is a variety bred for frost-free situations, and supposed to bear much earlier.  I like the idea of having artichoke hearts for winter dishes, and I’m a sucker for seed catalogues!

I soaked the seed overnight and sowed it into a mixture of creek sand and old compost in a seed raising box.  I shall pot the seedlings up and raise them in the shadehouse till they are advanced seedlings, then plant them out into the garden. They are actually giant thistles and have the same deep tap root, so they can cope with hot dry conditions quite well but not water logging – they like a well drained, sunny spot where the root won’t rot.   They’re big plants, needing a bit of space, but they’re quite decorative and one of the few things I can plant outside my fortress fencing since they have their own thistle-y defenses against possums, birds, bandicoots, wallabies, turkeys and everything else that wants to share my garden.

Since artichokes are semi-perennial, lasting a few years, it’s worth spending a bit of effort to plant them in a nice spot, so I’ll give each seedling a good half bucket of compost at planting out. But for now, lets just see if I get some up!

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Fruiting planting days through until Monday, and it is such perfect garden weather – such a contrast to last weekend – that you would think the garden gods are conspiring to get me planting peas instead of spinach! It is so calm and sunny that I am tempted to think about putting in some Spring seeds – some tomatoes and capsicum and chilis, some cucumbers and zucchini and squash and melons, some beans and potatoes  and eggplants. I know that is a bit too foolish.  We still have some cold weather to go yet. But I might just go through my seed box and stick some leftovers in a seed tray for fun.  It’s on the jobs list for the next week or so anyhow – to go through my seed box and see what I need to order for Spring planting – so I might as well give some old seed a go.

But really, the garden job this week is to plant out the pea and snow pea seedlings and get the last of the pea seeds in.  The ones I plant now will be bearing in October, which is really a bit late for them in this part of the world – it will be warming up so much by then that they will be very susceptible to powdery mildew.  And in any case, I’ll be looking for all the climbing space I can get for the beans and cucumbers.  So I won’t plant too many of them, just a few to try to eke out the last of the season, and I’ll choose resistant varieties and feed them lots of compost and seaweed brew to build up their resistance.

The mice early in the season got so many peas that for once I have enough trellis room left for planting out these late ones.

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