Spring is very close
Plum blossom
I’ve observed some other signs that spring is close. My last cabbage cracked. This is the beginning of it flowering. The cabbage must have sensed the sun and thought it was a good time to send out seed. The oldest of the spring onions are starting to flower and the centre of my leeks are starting to get hard, a sign that they too are thinking about flowering.
It’s a good time to think about planting and I have been!
First of all what I planted outside.
Swift Potatoes. Potatoes are a good first crop in a bed that has not been cultivated before. This bed was once strawberries and some herbs. It has never been dug over properly. You may notice the soil is heavy. I hope the potatoes will break it up.
Peas Wando Select and Snow peas Goliath both from Kings Seeds. I planted a double row of Snow peas, one for each side of the frame. I planted four rows of Wando Select. In past years I have staggered my planting to prolong the harvest. The last two years we have had cold Octobers, which has stop the peas growing. So I have decided to try and get some good growth before October this year. I also put netting over them to bet the birds.
I also planted some seedlings I brought from the local garden centre. In the punnet were two each of broccoli, cabbage and cauli. It cost 3.29, I guess I should count these as a cost. In the same bed I sowed seeds of Chinese cabbage, radish pak choi and daikon radish.
Lastly I planted another square of mesclun under the plastic. Even though I want to plant peppers under the plastic at the end of October, mesclun can be ready in six weeks we can eat it as baby leaves which will help in the lean late September early October. I just need to be tough and take it out at labour weekend.
a of who I’m feeding.
at like one yet.
Eating this week –22 August
We are beginning to feel the shortage of home grown veges that happens in late winter early spring.
As I stood in the garden working out what we would eat this week I realised that it was leeks or leeks,and maybe silverbeet.
So we will eat one leek, still worth a $1.00, the last of our butternut pumpkins $2.50 and spring onions, $1.50 a bunch. I saved $5.00!!
I bought a cauli, which are really cheep at the moment, $1.50, a lettuce $1.50, 500g of brussel sprouts also $1.50 and a small chinese cabbage $1.00 and mushrooms which were not cheep 400g cost $4.00. That’s a total of $9.50 which is about what I spent on fruit -$9.60.
I think that I will spend more than I save over the next few weeks.
I leave with a cheerful photo. Thanks to my wonderful heat mat I am able to raise seedlings of heat loving plants easily. This is a zucchini Zephyr. It took 5 days to germinate, roll on warm weather!
A home grown zucchini sounds like a marvellous thing at the moment, will it still be in February?