seeds of success!

As you’d expect for early to mid spring – our vegie garden is a hive of activity. All our seeds are heritage or open-pollinated varieties – and it's so exciting to see them all germinating and growing strongly. Like a typical gardener I have to regale everyone with tales of my darling seeds and plants.....

'Cherokee wax' dwarf bean

We have 3 types of beans currently – ‘Climbing Princess’, ‘Cherokee Wax’ and a Borlotti type.

We’re trailing 2 varieties of carrot – ‘little finger’ (which is apparently a squat little one – I’m expecting Sass and EJ to attack these raw) and ‘Chantenay red-cored’ (deep red in the centre – very attractive). Both have sprouted thickly.

Getting our ‘hollow-crown’ parsnip to sprout has been a source of great pride – parsnips are fickle buggers – I remembered my late grandfather’s advice – plant them shallow, stamp them down hard with the back of the rake and water only on planting

My dear pop would be proud!

We’re eating from the giant mustard greens (they’re much nicer picked small and tender) and I’m stealing outer leaves from our small red cos lettuces (oh they are del-i-ous – yum! But I am a BIG salad lover)

The salsify is up – this is a fun experiment –I’ve never come across it before…

'early fortune' cucumber - an oz heritage variety dating back to the C19th

We’ve got the ‘early fortune’ cucumber up as well as both the ‘rondo de nice’ and ‘yellow straightneck’ zucchinis (the yellow ones are for my ‘famous’ bread and butter zuc pickles – remind me to post a recipe later in the season)

'rondo de nice' zucchini

We’ve got both ‘progress’ dwarf peas and ‘oregon’ snow peas up – but they are looking patchy – I think something has been snipping of the little seeds as they emerge… (I’m thinking its birds)… so I’m re-seeding the gaps…

No sign of any of my pumpkin seeds up yet – but I have these dotted around my other garden beds and the conditions are variable and not ideal

In my seed raising area finally all my tomato seeds are up – we’re planting ‘yellow pear’ (for my mum – they are a low acid variety), ‘amish paste’ – these are fabulous big juicy things – a beefsteak variety.. brilliant for a sandwich; and ‘rouge de marmande’ (I’ve grown these before – but my crop wasn’t brilliant – better luck this time around) I look forward to posting some pics of these as they grow and fruit.

As I’m quite behind – I resorted to buying a few small tomato seedlings to get some production happening – and yesterday planted 6 romas (my main sauce tomato – I make soooooo many bottles of tomato sauce and relish!)

And over in my seed raising area I have okra, spring onions, banana shaped rockmelon, raddiccio, bronze arrowhead and more red cos lettuces all up and going – still waiting on the ‘rosito’ eggplant and ‘golden wonder’ capsicum

oooooh there's so much to do - what am I doing here in front of the computer! must get back out there amongst my dear little plants!