Another Busy Weekend.

Wow, my first full weekend to myself and a productive and surprising weekend it was.

Productive simply because I managed to get a lot done, obviously.

Mainly maintenance gardening jobs like weeding, spreading and side dressing with compost, applying liquid fertiliser, some pruning and then today I got lots of seed planting done.

Talking about seeds, I watched a short video from Blooming In Brisbane Gardening TV by Claire Bickle who looked at salad greens including sorrel, chicory, rocket, mustard giant red, watercress and kale.

Some of these I don't have so this morning I placed an order with Edan Seeds for Chicory, Fennel Florence - Romanesco, Mustard - Red Splendor and Sorrel. While I was there I also added some Shallots, the red bunching variety which are highly coloured at all ages and a packet of Helchrysum, Tom Thumb Mixed for the bees.

Still on seeds I went mad planting this morning including, 

Eggplant, take two (first sowing failed to proceed)
Taskeniki,
Red Square,
and Rosa Bianca.

Carrot - baby, Cabbage - red, Lettuce - Great Lakes, Tomato - keepsake, Zinnia and Cosmos, Lemon basil, Lemon cucumber, More borage, Cosmos Bright lights,

Pumpkin, Leek and Watermelon.

That took care of most of today and this afternoon I went to a get together for the Toowoomba area Backyard Veggie Growers group.

 

And surprising simply because we received and unexpected nine mils of rain on Saturday night.

Not much else, bunged a few spuds into the ground, planted a couple of lettuce and a few Chinese cabbage.

Just have to sit back now and watch it all grow.

Cheers

Stewart.

Seed planting

I didn't have a whole lot planned for today due to the forecast for rain in our area.

We ended up with 23mm yesterday (Saturday) and woke up to bright sunshine this morning.

As it turned out it became a good day for planting seeds.

Seed planting

Water Cress - Nasturtium officinale. Started out by sprinkling some Water Cress seeds over about a one meter square area and watering them in.

I've never grown Water Cress before so this'll be a new learning curve for me. Seed purchased from The Seed Collection.

Tomato - Australian Red. A bush tomato with medium sized fruit. This plant produces large flat red fruit and it is noted for its ability to form ripe tomatoes in cool summer areas.  Seed purchased from Rangeview Seeds.

Eggplant -Taskeniki, Rosa Bianca and Red Square. What was I thinking? Three varieties of eggplant. 

That's right, I was trying to make the order up to ten dollars so I could get free postage  and  they were appealing to me too. Seed purchased from The Seed Collection.

Alyssum - Royal Carpet. Something to feed the bees with. Seed purchased from The Seed Collection. 

Tomato - Cherry Roma. Picked these up from Bunnings. 

I was looking for a cherry tomato when I saw these. This will be the first time growing these so I'm curious to see how they turn out.


 Coriander. These seeds are from a coriander plant I let go to seed and then collected the seeds for my self to see if I can become more self sufficient.

Other seeds I've collected are Basil, Pumpkin and Beans (dwarf), not a huge list by all means but I have radish and rocket going to seed now that I'll collect. As I get better I'll increase my varieties.

A part from weeding and mulching some rose and bamboo prunings that just about covers my day in the veggie garden. One more thing, the bamboo prunings were from a lattice structure I built for some climbing beans, Purple King, also purchased from Bunnings.

Cheers

Stewart.

Egg 'versatile' Plant v Jack 'runny nose' Frost

Ooops, no contest, Jack 'runny nose' Frost by a knockout.

Egg 'versatile' Plant is said to be planing to make a come back in early spring.

I'm off to my plot at the Toowoomba Community Organic Gardens to plant some cabbage and lettuce and ues a garden hose :)

Cheers and happy gardening
Stewart

So, ya wanna' sow some seed do ya!! update. #1

Link for the Original So, ya wanna' sow some seed do ya!!

Hi all,
I been avoiding this update due to the unmitigated failure of the seed to germinate.

It's not very clear in the photo(far left punnet) but I only had two out of six Cos lettuce seeds germinate.
Now I'm not going to blame myself because at the same time I planted up three punnets of three different Tomatoes with varying success, ie six from six, five from six and one from six.

So at this stage I'm going to blame the viability of the seed.

Now while I'm on the topic of seeds and planting I had a very productive day of seed planting yesterday.
First off was carrots of which I have not been that satisfied with the flavour of.
The current variety of carrot I've been growing is named 'All year round', so I planted two different variety's named Topweight and Early Chantenay to see if I can find a more flavorsome carrot.
If anyone has any suggestions for a more flavorsome carrot or a personal favorite, please let me know.

Also my digger's seeds arrived last week so I planted into punnets some Five colour Silverbeet, Listada Di Gandia Eggplant, Rouge D'Hiver Cos Lettuce(red brown var.) and Red Iceberg.

I also planted another couple of small rows of Beetroot Chioggia.