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Spring
It’s after midnight so winter is officially over, according to the seasons here in Australia. Hurray, bring on the spring. Alas, the warm weather has departed, leaving cool temperatures and rain in its wake. I can live with the rain but was really hoping to get a bit more warmth. So I’m now contemplating what gardening disasters to begin this month.
I harvested my pathetic crop of beets yesterday (Sunday). I only put in four plants and none produced more than two beets. The traditional purple plant had the best showing with two reasonably sized beets. The other three had very small beets. Once I’d cut away roots and leaves, there was little of the vegetable left. I boiled them all together and ate them with dinner. The Scientist ate a bit of it too, but only because it came from our garden as he’s not particularly fond of beets (or beetroot as it’s called here). The regular beets came out tasting well enough but the others tasted a bit off. I know they would have a different flavor but they seemed rather bitter. One of the beets was so small it wasn’t worth cooking so I ate it raw. Big mistake! I’m not sure why, but it seemed to cause a terrible irritation in my throat which lasted for a couple hours.
I still have a lovely red mustard plant which hasn’t been harvested in a while. I think the snails are enjoying their feast and I need to get some iron tablets to keep them away. It’s still growing well so I’m thinking of adding some similar plants in the same garden bed this week. My brussel sprout plant got eaten by insects and all that was left was the stem. My baby broccoli didn’t fare much better but I did manage to get one tiny “tree” of it harvested. I think once the insects had finished off the brussel sprout, they moved on to the broccoli. I guess they weren’t too choosy at that point.
My jalapeño plant seems to have died in the last couple of weeks so I have removed that one and will plant either seeds or a seedling soon. The other chilli plant is still alive and will hopefully be showing some new growth soon. Meanwhile, the cherry tomato plant at our back fence has started growing again. I’m quite pleased to see this since I’d taken almost no care of it during the winter. I’m going to put in a few more plants in the same area this year since they did so well last year. Last of all, my strawberry plants have new fruit coming up and so far it tastes pretty good. I will have to keep the snails out of that pot if I expect to get much out of them this year.
At some time this week I want to finally stop in at the Bunnings that opened in June a short distance from us. They have a good selection of plants there and I’d like to get a few seedlings for the garden. I’m forever hopeful of growing something right. I think I’m making progress but haven’t had a really successful crop of anything yet, unless I count the cherry tomatoes. Even those didn’t work out the way I had hoped. So far, I’m thinking about tomatoes and green peppers plus some lettuce and other greens. I also hope to find one variety of tomato I had put into a big pot last year. It came out tasting wonderful but didn’t end up providing much fruit at all. I might try it in the ground this time if I’m brave. I’m sure when the time comes, I will bring home more plants than I can manage. But hopefully this gardening thing will finally get a bit easier if I keep practicing.
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Cucumbers
I’ve been adding to my garden pots lately but trying to grow continental cucumbers from pots just wasn’t likely to work. These are my only seedlings to go into the ground so far. I planted three seedlings and included soil improver and organic fertiliser along with some stuff to help hold water (Wettasoil or something) in the soil. Just behind the cucumbers, I stuck some of the overgrown cherry tomato plants that had been all crowded into one pot. The plants were looking a bit yellow, possibly due to lack of soil and other nutrients. I’m hoping to grow these up some old trellis pieces we’ve got around the place. Just have to remember to water out in the back regularly.
Other new plants: I bought two tomato seedlings to go into two very large pots I got from Kmart the other day. I also bought two chilli plants. One is jalapeno and I can’t recall the name of the other one. It’s supposed to be good in Asian and Mexican food though. I didn’t have enough potting soil to plant the last chilli seedling so will have to get that sorted out tomorrow. The jalapeno didn’t look quite as healthy as the other one so I planted that first. After all was planted, I did some watering and due to sprinkler issues got quite wet. The sprayer nozzle is broken or I would have used instead.
The strawberries are doing pretty well. Snails have become less problematic since I put the pots up on brick pavers. The fruit is now tasting really nice so I’m kind of wishing we had more planted to keep up the supply. The thyme is doing well as are most of the cherry tomato plants. I’d like to add basil and mint to the garden but need to figure out locations. It would be nice to make a proper herb garden some time.
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Growing things in pots
I went to Kmart and Big W today to buy some supplies for growing things. I’m sticking to containers at the moment and bought a big pot for a tomato plant and a relatively big box planter, probably for herbs. I’m thinking of getting another big pot for a cucumber plant or two. I also bought potting mix and some coriander seeds. I absolutely love coriander and want to have a good crop of it. Not sure what else I might plant…perhaps some bell peppers and chillies, I think…
I also bought fertiliser for the cherry tomato plants that are slightly more than seedlings and for the future tomato plant or two. I didn’t get any planting done today but plan to get lots done tomorrow. Actually, that’s not correct. I did plant some thyme seedlings in an old box planter. I’ll probably have to replant them because the soil already there is not very nice and probably needs to be replaced. I didn’t come to that conclusion until the seedlings were in though.
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Planting
On Saturday, I spent much of the day mowing the front lawn, then clearing out much of mess on the other side of our driveway. After the winter’s rains, lots of winter grass had grown quite tall and was looking very untidy. I cleared out almost everything and cut the branches on our pin-cushion hakea tree. One might say this tree is a weed because it grew from the seed of one we planted when we first started our garden. The original was beautiful but died quite abruptly one year, leaving heaps of seeds behind.
The current tree has grown rather awkwardly and looked a bit like a gawky teenager, I guess. I have cut it back significantly around the bottom and trimmed off some of the longer, drooping branches that seem to drag it down. It looks much healthier now. Despite it’s gawky appearance, it bloomed quite nicely over the winter, far more than this or the original ever did.
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Hard work in the garden
Thirteen or so years ago when we moved into this house, we did a lot of planting of shrubs and whatnot…one of the plants was an orange honeysuckle plant. The flowers looked really nice. The thing is, I know that it’s not an ideal plant. I remember very well how my parents spent weeks clearing the honeysuckle from along the creek bed that ran behind our house. It was literally choking trees. I’m not quite sure how closely related this variety is, but the flowers are quite similar, aside from the color. We planted two of these shrubs and one of them has turned into a monster while the other one has had rather modest growth over the years.
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Yard work
We’ve had a week with no rain so I decided to pull out our electric mower and cut some of the tall grass and weeds that have collected in our backyard. It’s an endless sort of task. I managed to finish most of one section but I need an edger tool to get the grass along the fences and walls. It looks somewhat better there and I got rid of most of the really tall, weedy grass. There were a few bits that had grown nearly to my shoulder, much higher than the rest of the grass there. The weather has been slightly warmer lately so I am a bit more motivated to get outside and do some gardening again. I really want to get a no-dig garden up and running this spring but I am unsure of the size I want and the place to put it. I’m thinking about a narrow garden bed along the back wall of the house. I used that area a few years ago for tomatoes and basil but haven’t tried to plant anything in a while.
I’ve noticed quite a few caterpillars in the garden this late winter so I’m hoping to see some butterflies in the spring. Unfortunately, I discovered I’d mowed down three of them (although I did manage to relocate several others).
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Strange lettuce
A couple days ago, I was visiting a friend and she was showing me the lettuce she is growing. She gave me a bit to taste and it’s quite different. It’s called brown romaine and starts off tasting like ordinary lettuce. But once you get to the stem, it turns quite hot, like horseradish or something. Her family doesn’t like it so she has given me the seeds and a bag with some of the lettuce leaves. I rather suspect this is not the usual taste for this lettuce because I can find no mention of such a strong flavor for any sort of lettuce (aside from bitterness). We are going to plant seeds in pots and see how it turns out.
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