Breaking with tradition

It bugs me every year that retailers 

(especially supermarkets and the like) 

put out tomato seedlings early...

long before the soil is warm enough for them.  

I always feel sorry for those people who I see at the check-out, 

buying these early seedlings, 

because I feel sure they are doomed to fail.

Where I live, 

the traditional time for planting out tomatoes 

is on the first Tuesday of November.  

This is 'Melbourne Cup Day', 

a public holiday in these parts - for a horse race. 

The race has been dubbed, 

'The Race that Stops a Nation'.  

Well it may stop the nation but it spurs the gardeners into action!   

But I am flouting that tradition!

Last week saw me at the checkout in a certain supermarket with, you guessed it, some tomato seedlings.  If you had seen me, you may have noticed I was looking a little embarrassed in case other people thought I was barking mad.  I fought the urge to explain myself to the check-out girl.  I paid quickly and slunk out of the shop, breathing a huge sigh of relief once I had my purchases safely stowed, in the car, out of sight.

I planted them yesterday...76 days early.  

I planted them in pots...and of course, they are in the Fat Fruit Greenhouse.  

I have also begun planting some seeds...

but that is blog news for another day!

Have you got spring fever already?

Are you having trouble holding yourself back from planting already?

What are you planting?

Speaking in Tongs

Kitchen tongs are great for transplanting seedlings.

Their sharp edges easily slide through the soil.

They enable you to pick up the whole plant with soil around the roots.

No handling of the delicate leaves and stems is necessary.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't plant pumpkin seeds early and repot them before putting then out in the garden.  This year I have given it a go.  I will also plant some directly where they will grow.

C'mon boys and girls...this is a race!

From speaking in tongs to speaking broadly...

I have broad beans ...

...and lots of lovely broad bean flowers.

From broad to downright fat!

Check out the girth on this garlic!

I hope the size of the stalk is indicative of the size of the bulbs.

Maybe they have just enjoyed growing their tops.

The prodigal returns.

Last Autumn, I carefully planted my brassica seeds

and nurtured them till it was time to plant them out.

I planted mine in a carefully prepared bed.

The netting I put over the top did a great job

keeping the cabbage moths away...but not the goats!

So, we went without.

I gave some seedlings to my sister 

and, as she has more sense than to keep goats,

she had a wonderful crop.

Yesterday she brought one of the caulies

for us to eat.

Although it is tradition, we couldn't kill the fatted calf to celebrate

this prodigal's return because we didn't have a calf at hand

and anyway, we eat mainly vegetarian here now.

So we did the next best thing and killed the fatted cauliflower

and put it in a potato and cauliflower curry!

I won't post the recipe...just put 'curry cauliflower' in your search engine and take your pick!

YUMMY!

Record

No...not a world record
in giant vegetables .... or athletics (LOL)

and not anything musical.

Just a record of my gardening yesterday.

Potted up:

A dwarf Kaffir Lime,

Cardamon

Cardamon

...and some sick looking tomato seedlings bought at a $2 shop

....they may be an early LOSS of money.

Seeds:

Basil - Yates gourmet mix

Zucchini - Yates Greyzini

Zucchini - Digger's tromboncino

Capsicum - Digger's seven colour mix

Pumpkin - Eden seeds Jap pumpkin (trad, non hybrid)

Pumpkin - Eden seeds Turkish Turban (trad, non hybrid)

Pumpkin - Digger's Potimarron (Rare French)

Tomato - The Lost Seed Broad Ripple Yellow Currant.

I even turned on the sprinklers

and created a rainbow in the potager.

I was dreading the amount of soil/potting mix 

these two large tins were going to require.

Then I discovered that two large plastic

plant pots I had, fitted perfectly.

I am going to use these for seasonal flowers.

So I can have some on the go and then

swap them over....perpetually full planters.

I love Spring!

The word of.....??????

I did a bit more on the Outdoor Kitchen...

See that floor...well it is actually

the bottom shelf under the bench.

Then I heard a voice.

It was a voice IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

It told me I had better plant some seeds.

I looked up to see where the voice was coming from.

The only one there was, Claude.

But it wasn't him speaking...

he was just smiling.

Anyway, I decided I had better heed

the words and I planted some seeds.

Tomatoes: Tommy Toe, Mortgage Buster, Gross Lisse and Roma.

Some eggplants and zucchini.

Well, it is a start.

I hope I never hear THAT VOICE again.

It was scary!

Stressville!

Every Southern Hemisphere blog I read

is raving on about the seeds they have already planted!

Go on...ask me how many I have in.

No, don't ask me!

I can't drag myself away from building

the Outdoor Kitchen!

The Cook can't understand my dilema

and wonders why I don't just plant my seeds.

Because my head is full of the kitchen.

I think about it going to sleep.

I dream about it.

It is the first thing I think of in the morning.

I sit with my breakfast and 

look out of the window at it.

I plan what to do, how to do it

and what order to do it in.

I photograph it.

I talk about it.

I admire it.

I blog about it.

I resist leaving the property...

even to do the most important things

because I don't want to stop!

On Tuesday, the Cook dragged me

screaming and kicking to visit her mother

and to go to a market.

The pain!

So, I succumbed and bought

a mini greenhouse

as suggested by Farmgirl

and endorsed by Veggigobbler.

I even put it together yesterday...

but look!

You will note, it is still empty,

and I have promised three other people 

that I will grow seedlings for them.

Maybe I will plant 

some today.

M A Y B E !

I've fallen off the wagon

I just thought I would make 

a quick visit to the nursery last week.

Ooops! 

In my defense, 

some of these babies were on the $2 table.

*cue dreamy music*

One day when I get a greenhouse, 

I swear I will never buy seedlings again.

...probably.

She has her father's nose.

I recently became a Great Aunt for the fourteenth time.  As my niece lives in a different state, her mother and I were reduced to pouring over one photo on Facebook.  After the initial the oooooing and aaaahhing we began, that generations old game of, looking for family resemblances in the gorgeous, squishy little face.  My sister and brother in law only lasted a week before they jumped on a plane to continue the game in person.

I love the way the tiny babies of different plants look when they emerge.  

Sometimes they resemble their parents and other times not.

Onion seedlings - although folded over, look a bit like onions

Carrots look more like grass

A beetroot has its mum's colouring.

Brassicas bear strong family resemblances with the same little heart shaped leaves
whether they are cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli or another. Of course grow up to look
exactly like their Mum or Dad.

Which gardener among us doesn't recognise the furry little leaves of the  infant tomato plant when it pops up in the compost.  This little fella will have a short existence...wrong time of the year for it at this end of the world!

You can see, by their heart shaped leaves, that turnips are members of the brassicaceae family too.

Mmmm!  I may have been a bit heavy handed with the turnip seeds (three types) in these rows.  

A bit of thinning required I think

I also like the way, when you nibble on them,  seedlings usually taste like the vegetables they will grow into...just like the way human babies all have that irresistible smell. 

Fruitful labours

Thanks for all the advice about planting seeds.  

The next lot I plant, I will use seed raising mix and bio char only.

Once the seeds are up and I water with liquid seaweed, the bio char should hold the nutrients and make them available to the seedlings.

The seeds planted only five days ago in my compost mix have germinated.

These are the older seedlings in plain seed raising mix.  They have developed their second leaves so I will now pick these out and pot them into compost.

Check this out...my first seven raspberries.

Already gone (yum), but not forgotten. 

I have shared a photo of this beauty in a recent header but it is so big and beautiful that I wanted you to see all of it.  I love the shape and colour and am always amazed at how fast pumpkins grow once they set.

Seed Planting RSI

I have been planting, planting, planting.  In the last two days I have sowed these seeds...

In seed trays:

• Onions: Pickling Onions - Paris Silverskin 
• Onions: Ailsa Craig
• Kale: Cavolo Nero 
• Kale: Chinese Gai Lan
• Cabbage: Savoy
• Celery: Tendercrisp
• Broccoli: Purple Sprouting 
• Broccoli: Green Sprouting
• Cauliflower: Early Glory 
• Cauliflower: Snowball Improved
• Leek: Carentan

Direct into the garden:

• Turnips: Early Purple
• Turnips: Swede - Champion Purple Top
• Turnips: Japanese Turnip - Hakurei.
• Carrot: Chartenay Red Cored
• Beetroot: Crimson Globe

You can see why I have Repetitive Strain Injury!.

The photo above shows some brassicas I planted about a fortnight ago in seed raising mix.  They germinated well but have stalled.  I gave them a drink of weak liquid seaweed yesterday.

Yesterday's seeds are planted in a combination of my own compost, some bio-char and seed raising mix.  I covered the seeds with seed raising mix.

The truth is I haven't grown a lot from seed in the past.  I have always been either too busy or too slack and bought seedlings.  The tomatoes and things I planted for this season germinated but, like the seedlings above, didn't flourish like the 'commercial' ones.  They took off eventually once transplanted but were slow.  *sigh*

What do you use as a growing medium for your seeds?  

What tricks to you have to share?

Zucchini in

The first of my home grown seedlings have gone in the ground.  The four zucchini had produced their secondary leaves and were robust and the weather has warmed up with an even warmer forecast. 

To protect them, I will be putting little bottle 'glass houses' over them at night for a while.  But I think they will outgrow these pretty quickly.

  The chickens take their job of working over the newly dug beds very seriously so I have to protect the seedlings from their enthusiasm, hence the orange fence.  

These beds are in a different section of the vegetable garden to the 'no dig' beds mentioned in earlier posts.