Growing carrots from seeds (the only way)

Growing carrots from seeds is the only way to grow carrots. You're wasting your time planting carrots from punnets of seedlings, as they will always be twisted and stunted. Unless that's how you like your carrots.

Planting carrot seeds is also dead easy. You just need some organically vibrant soil (soil enriched with compost or from a previous crop), make a shallow row (5mm) and place your seeds in the row and cover them back over.

It's now the fun, read difficult, begins.

It's getting the little buggers (seeds) to germinate.

The only way I know is to keep them moist or in other words, never let them or the soil get dry, ever, not for a minute, not for a second. As far as I know they can't be over watered so even if the soil surface is looking like it will go dry I'll be in there with a watering can.

Not so bad in the cooler Spring weather but in Summer while at work I'll build a little shade cover with some fencing wire and clothes pegs and hopefully this will prevent them from drying out until I get home from work. Or I'll wait until some showery weather is forecast and plant then.

Broccolini and Brasscias

I was reading an article or it might have been a gardening tip somewhere that suggested removing the seed leaves or the first set of leaves and planting your brasscias into the soil up to the base of the first set of true leaves, so here goes.




Cheers

Stewart.

The Coming Season

Getting ready for the coming growing season can mean only one thing here at My Veggie Garden, seeds.

This year I'm taking a different path to the one I usually take.

After reading David Glenn's, from Lambley Nursery, spiel on growing F1 hybrid tomatoes for improved yield and increased disease resistance I've purchased two packets of tomato seeds to trial here in My Veggie Garden.

Lambley Nursery is set around an old farmhouse in the hot dry wind swept plains of the central Victorian Goldfields so it will be interesting to see how they do in my, usually hot and humid summer.

 At around a dollar per seed they could be considered expensive but I consider it a small price to pay, for if they do crop well it will be a good investment.
The two Tomato varieties I'll be trying are,

• Tomato, Gourmet, 'Gabriella' F1 
• Cherry Tomato, 'Tycho' F1

On the Lambley Nursery web site, David Glenn goes on to say,

"If you are having trouble growing a good crop or indeed any crop at all of “heirloom” tomatoes or seedling tomatoes bought from garden centres or big box stores you will be joining a growing band of gardeners.  The answer is to plant disease resistant varieties. 

We trialled 10 varieties of disease resistant hybrid tomatoes and the 3 listed below were the best for taste and for disease resistance. I was still picking good, ripe, full size tomatoes at the end of April. 

The seed of modern, good flavoured, disease resistant tomato hybrids is expensive but it more than pays for itself in the vastly improved production of ripe tomatoes."

I've also ordered other seeds that I will trial for myself as well, these include,

• Cucumber, Australian Slicer 'Icebreaker F1' 
  
  • Beetroot, 'Red Ace' F1
  • Broccolini, 'Happy Rich' F1
  • Cabbage, Mini, 'Gonzales' F1
  • Carrot, 'Nelson' F1 
  • Coriander, 'Calypso' 
  • Scarlet Runner Bean, 'Scarlet Emperor' 
  • Bush Bean, 'Simba' 
  • Spinach, 'Tyee' F1 
  • Zucchini, 'Bush Baby' F1
   

I'm keen to get started and can't wait to see the results but I'll be posting as I sow and plant and hopefully have a bountiful harvest to share.

Lambley Nursery has a good reputation among my circle of gardening friends and my seeds arrived well packaged and inside the two week time frame I was advised to expect.

Happy days.

Three eggs from the girls.

Yay, we're back in business again.

Happy days.

Cheers,

Stewart.

New Potatoe Patch

Stand back trendsetters. I've got some serious digging to do. ‪#‎newpotatopatch‬

Busy morning digging a new potato patch in the neighbours yard.

Hard Virgin soil, 16 bags of stable horse manure and an hour later and I'm all done. Even had to break out the mattock at one stage,

Leave it sit for a week and I'll add a couple of wheelbarrow loads of compost with some blood and bone and turn it again.

Leave it sit for another week and I'll be planting spuds.

I think they're chitting themselves. #badpun #baddadjoke