Thanks Shallot

Hi all,
Well it's cold here in Toowoomba as it probably is every in Oz at the moment.

I finished work this morning at 4am and had to wait 5 minutes for the car to warm up enough so I could melt the ice on the windscreen.

I also had 4 large eggplants that now look like they have had the life sucked out of them.

Some good things about the cold is that it will sweeten up all my brasscias that I have planted as well as being a good time to plant my shallots and onion seeds.

I planted my shallots on Monday along with preparing a garden bed for my Spanish red onion seeds which I'll be planting on Monday coming.

I haven't over done the preparation of this bed as I don't want to much fertility.


The bed has been fallow for the last three months and I added about 50 liters of cow manure to a 3x2 mtr bed.

Too much fertility can cause excessive soft leafy growth to the detriment of storage and increasing their susceptibility to disease.



Cheers and happy veggie gardening,
Stewart.

Green Harvest time

I'm lovin' these guys.

I placed my order with Green Harvest on Tuesday evening, received e-mail confirmation on Wednesday evening saying my parcel had been posted.

Parcel arrived at my front door lunch time Thursday.

How good is that?


Whoo woo, empty box full of potential!!!






First out of the box is two packets of seed.

#1 is Spinach 'Bloomsdale', an English spinach for cool weather.
It prefers a rich well drained soil with added compost, so I better get cracking with the soil prep.
#2 Is Beetroot 'Detroit', not much to say, just a good beetroot variety.
Beetroot is a heavy feeder so I'll be adding plenty of compost and Rooster Booster before I plant a Autnmn crop.





Next is the Garlic. Allium sativum

'Italian White', is a softneck garlic which does not produce a flower stem (more on softneck and hardneck in next post).

















More 'Italian White', six bulbs all together leading to approx 48 cloves to plant.












Then the Shallots. Allium cepa var. aggregatum syn. Allium ascalonicum
Synonyms include Golden of French Shallots, Eschallot, Potato Onion.

I've never grown these before so I'll be keeping a curious eye on them as they progress.

According to Green Harvest the bulbs are a culinary onion with a superb mild flavour. They can be eaten raw, boiled, baked, or fried. Golden shallots are long keeping and will store for up to 12 months.




Last but not least, more Garlic.

'Monaro Purple' is a hardneck or top setting variety which usually produces a flower stem in early summer.
It is suitable only for cooler areas (I hoping I'm cool enough here, fingers crossed, time will tell. I know I get bloody cold).

So there you go three thumbs up for Green Harvest.



PS. At the time of writing this I could not connect to the green harvest web site, I'm assuming they are having server trouble.
So if the link does not work, please come back and try again at a later date.
Thank-you.