Sunday, 27 October 2007

What a beautiful weekend for gardening!  The fence between us and the neighbours has been partially painted (green, of course!), and Andrew has dug a tidy garden beside it in which to erect the runner bean frame.  It was always my plan to have the bean frame outside of the netted garden this season.  Last summer, the beans climbed through the top of the net and provided a stairway into the garden for cabbage white caterpillars, which became a bit of a scourge as birds could not get in to pick them off the plants. 

Still, the incursion of the vegetable garden into the lawn was carefully managed and monitored by Andrew to ensure that this is not the start of "expansionist" edible plant policies that will take over his lawn.

I don't like to use too many chemical sprays in the garden and yard, but I confess to spraying the entire lawn this weekend with a weed and prickle spray.  I love walking barefoot on the lawn in summer, and Onehunga Weed (in particular) makes that a rather dicey pursuit. It is rife where we live.  So this is the first such spraying the lawn will receive during its period of new growth. It is important to catch Onehunga Weed before it flowers and spreads still further.  Important, too, is avoiding decimating delicate plants with spray drift, particularly in still weather when it settles, so I sprayed first and planted tomatoes out afterward.

The potting bench is like a miniature jungle.  I now have containers full of basil plants, gherkins that are almost ready to plant out, tomato plants reaching for the light (seeds from our own large eating tomatoes last season), spring onions, and capsicums.  Most amazing are the Cherry Dot tomatoes that have grown from the seed of tomatoes that I froze last season and forgot to take seeds from.  This year, I thawed some of my frozen hoard, dried the seeds on kitchen paper for a day, and planted them in potting mix.  And yes, some of them actually germinated. What a surprise!

Most disturbing are my Cape Gooseberry plants.  When given the seeds I was told that they only have a 10-25% germination rate, so "plant lots of seeds to gain a few plants".  Regrettably, I followed this advice. I say "regrettably", because now I have a container chock-a-block with small Cape Gooseberry seedlings. They have grown evenly, so are like a fresh, green, spring carpet.  We love running our hands over the top of the plants to feel their silky texture.  Anyone wanting some seedlings is welcome to contact me, as they'll soon be big enough to give away.  And there are a lot of them!

This winter we emptied the rose garden and put the resident roses into pots.  I pruned them hard, trimmed their roots where I needed to, and potted them in a mixture of rich compost and untanilized sawdust to retain moisture in the pots.  Andrew dug a trench along the back of the empty garden to expose the block wall of the basement, where moisture was seeping through.  The trench was hard work, as the soil was compact and full of conifer roots, and had simply been covered over with weed-mat and bark by the previous owners. 

After cleaning the wall, we coated it in an excellent waterproofing product by Sika, repainted the top of the blocks in house paint, and tanked the wall with corflute.  Then Andrew put shingle in the bottom of the trench for drainage and filled it in.  Delayed by the weather, the roses were by now budding so it was too late to plant them out without causing them shock and knocking them back.  So Andrew has agreed that for one season only I may grow zucchinis and capsicums in the empty rose garden instead.  He has dug part of it over and I have forked in barrow-loads of dark compost, formed little mounds and planted the zucchini seedlings out in their peat pots.  They are looking very happy in such a warm spot.

Friday, 19 October2007

My potting bench is already covered in trays full of new green seedlings.  The tomatoes, gherkins, basil and butter-crunch lettuces are already sprouting in their trays, and zucchinis have popped up in their peat pots.

Andrew is pleased that the garden has been covered and “contained” with a hardwood edge, because he had earlier expressed his concern that I was going to keep nibbling away at the lawn with my spade and stealing a little more ground for my garden each year.  I tried to convince him that this was a good thing, as it would leave less lawn for him to mow, but he was not having any of it.  He’s already seen Mum and Dad dig up the front lawn at their place to plant potatoes, so he's wise to halt any expansion at our house before it gets out of hand.

I like to plant out my capsicums and tomatoes out in the garden at Labour Weekend, which is only one week away.  But this year, like last year, I will have to delay planting out for up to a fortnight because the wind and rain are driving the soil temperatures below what they should be at this time of year.

That will give me time to dig over the empty rose garden and prepare it for vegetables.  We potted all of the roses this winter and dug a trench at the back of the rose garden to gain access to the block wall of the basement, which was leaking.  Once it was water-blasted, it took some time to paint the waterproofing compound onto the wall, as we struck more rain.  By the time the compound was on, the tanking in place and the trench filled in, it was too late to replant the roses as they were budding in their pots.  So, after turning the garden and adding plenty of compost, the rose garden will be home to capsicums, zucchinis and gherkins.  The roses must endure a summer in their pots, and I will be working hard to ensure that they don't dry out.

Sunday, 7 October 2007

From seeds saved from last year's harvest I have planted:

• big, juicy tomatoes
• sweet, red, cherry tomatoes
• capsicums (bell peppers) that are predominantly green (and don't change colour very quickly)

I purchased and planted seeds for the following plants:

• black jack zucchinis
• mixed capsicums (bell peppers) that ripen quickly to a variety of colours
• gherkins (dill pickles)
• butter-crunch lettuces
• spring onions
• basil, basil and more basil

I also planted cape gooseberry seeds that I have been given, but with a germination rate of only 25% I don't have particularly high hopes for them.

I have planted the zucchini seeds in peat pots, one per pot.  It will save them from suffering transplant shock when I move them into the garden, as the pots will break down quite quickly in the moist soil.  I want to give them a head start by germinating them in the warmth of the back shed.  They would simply rot in the ground with the amount of rain we are having at present.

Yet again, I will probably end up with a lot more plants than I need.  But I have now found a local gourmet food shop that will buy my excess produce, so I needn't feel at all guilty about it. I perhaps didn’t need to plant 40 capsicum plants last year as Andrew pointed out during summer and autumn when he was getting sick to death of picking them (and also of me cooking them in everything and freezing them by the kilogram).  I had stored produce away like a squirrel, but in midwinter the capsicums were still flowering and producing.  Their development was a little slow because of the cold temperatures, but we were still getting more than enough capsicums to eat ourselves and to give away at a time when they were costing $2.98 each in the grocery shop.