Growing Challenge #8

I love spring! The lush new growth on everything is gorgeous, and everything is still compact and neat in size and somewhat contained in their garden beds. Another week, another Growing Challenge update!

I had another seed-planting day this week, and managed to plant out another four punnets of lettuce (fingers crossed I keep the snails away from this lot!), one each punnets of chinese broadleaf celery and wild rocket (from Veggie Gnome, thanks Veg!), a punnet of teeny-tiny stevia seeds, and a punnet of slow-bolt coriander. Apart from the lettuce, I've never grown any of these before. I tell you, I'm really getting into this seed-sowing thing. To think I was paranoid about killing them all before and only ever used seedlings!

Already, the wild rocket and the broadleaf celery have emerged (must be those great quality seeds from Veg ;-) which is great. You can't go past salad greens as being super-easy to grow, and tasty to boot.


I also managed to clear some room out of my greenhouse. I potted on some capsicum (peppers), midget watermelon, the last 2 remaining strawberry spinach that the snails didn't get, and some Listada da Gandia eggplants.

I also planted out the bush beans that the snails didn't get (1 each borlotti, yin yang, red kidney and cherokee) and then direct-sowed the remaining seeds I had of each around them in the vegie garden, plus a number of the flageolet beans that the snails ate.

Then I planted out two Black Beauty zucchini, about four Butternut pumpkins and four luffa seedlings, plus six Richmond Green cucumbers (two of which have since been eaten - sigh) and the tendergreen mustard seedlings.

Into four pots I planted out the remaining tatsoi seedlings (also victims of snails in the greenhouse). The next morning I was greeted with this:

All but one have been chewed to bits! Argh. They probably would have bolted to seed anyway. Sigh.

Anyway, the tomatoes are absolutely bursting out of their tray as you can see, though I don't mind this particularly, as apparently being a little stressed and root-bound promotes more rapid flowering (which is clearly a good thing when you are hankering for those first tomatoes of the season :-) In a couple of days I will sow some more tomato seeds - Amish Paste and Brandywine Pinks. I've never grown or eaten either of them, but everyone who has seems to rave about them, so I am very much looking forward to my first harvest of those.


They are going to have wait another couple of days though whilst DH finishes off these:


New vegie garden beds!! It was our wedding anniversary a week or so ago, and being the romantic he is, DH bought me 20 hardwood sleepers and 2 cubic metres of garden soil :-) Now this weekend (which is a long weekend, with Monday being a public holiday and DH is taking Tuesday off as well), he is diligently transforming them into garden beds for me! Lovely stuff.

Elsewhere in the garden, the golden button squash are already developing their first flower buds:

And the watercress is developing seed pods. I've only ever saved the seeds from (last season's) Lazy Housewife beans before but I'm going to have a go with these too:

Sadly the really hot weather this week has seen the snow peas stop flowering, and what small pods were left on the vines suddenly bulged with fat peas before I could pick them.

I can't decide whether to rip them out, as the vines look like they are dying back but it's entirely likely at this time of year that we will now get a run of "normal", mild spring weather and they might start flowering again with a nice dose of seasol and worm wee? Who knows. I'll probably give them the benefit of the doubt for another week or two.

Finally, we bought the first pineapple of the season this week, and have saved the top for replanting. Its drying out on the BBQ for a couple of days to heal the wound a little before the girls and I plant it in a pot to see what it does. Should be interesting for them :-)