One of the best things about planting advanced seedlings is the head start you get. I think people tend to forget how long plants spend germinating and as babies. These seedlings are a month old already. If I’d planted them directly a month ago, this bed would have spent all that time hardly used, just inviting weeds.
It’s such a good disguise. It looks just like a ladybeetle. If I didn’t catch it actually in flagrante eating the leaves on my squash, I would think it was a good guy.
Aren’t they cute? I found them when I was recycling potting mix from some seedlings that I didn’t need to plant out. There are two different kinds. I think the larger ones might be land mullet eggs, and the smaller ones the little skinks I find in the shadehouse and garden.
Chooks are such a good way to double the harvest. These bok choy were self sown and if I’d been pressed for space I would have fed them to the chooks as greens much earlier. We ate a few leaves, but then since I had nothing desperately needing the spot I let them go to seed – which they did very happily, producing lots and lots of seed (which is…
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.
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…
I‘ve started bringing in the garlic. It’s a good crop this year, which I’m really pleased about. I think, like a lot of gardeners, I was extra conscientious about planting this year. I really really didn’t want to end up buying Chinese garlic. As well as all the usual concerns about what agricultural chemicals may have been used growing it, and the methyl bromide treatment demanded by Australian quarantine, there…
I cleared out the spent snow peas this morning and mulched up where they were ready to plant out some tomatoes next fruiting planting break. I ended up with this bowl of pea seed. Now the dilemma: should I save them to plant next year, or make hummus of them?
Conventionally they are planted in spring and harvested in autumn. But when I’ve had a patch established before, I’ve just let it go and dug up a sweet potato or two whenever I want one.
Yesterday’s planting. Note just three zucchini seeds, three tromboncino seeds, three cucumber seeds. I’m being restrained!