It is not quite spring yet, but look, we have a single jonquil blooming in the garden, so I am declaring it the beginning of early spring at our house!
With that in mind I need to get my act together where the garden is concerned.
We’ve made really good progress on weeding and re-jigging some of the veggie garden, but we still have a heap of work to do – though it feels a lot more manageable now.
I’ve gone through all the seeds we already have and I’ve been pouring over both my Diggers and Eden seeds catalogue trying to decide what seeds we need… and what seeds I just want! I need to order by the start of next week so I’ll need to make some tough decisions and cull the list a bit I think.
I’ve collected up some seeds that I am going to plant out now… some are ‘winter’ plants others ‘spring’ things – not sure this is exactly the best time of year to plant any of them but we have a kind of odd climate here, it is not the same as Melbourne and not quite like anywhere else listed in any of my planting guides so sometimes I just wing it, go with a bit of trial and error and make it up as I go along. I figure it is better to put some seeds in the ground and have a go, than to not plant them at all.
These are the things we are going to try now –
Broad Beans – just one or two as I think we really should have done these in autumn, but I think our spring will stay cool enough to give then half a chance… maybe
Onions – probably a bit late but what the heck
Silverbeet, Pak Choi and Lettuce – we can pretty much grow these year round but they seem to run to flower quick in the warmer weather.
I’ve already put in some peas, and potatoes and planted back more than half of our garlic harvest from last year – none of these have gone in at exactly the recommended time so it will be interesting to see how they do.
The Baldy Boy has been busy out in the orchard. He put in two new mulberry trees and pruned some of the other trees. Some of the trees have a few blossoms on them already – though the huge frost we had the other day knocked most of them off. I hope that doesn’t do any harm to the trees…. I am crossing my fingers we might get at least a little fruit this year. Some of the trees have been in two years so we’re really keen to at least get one or two fruits to try!
Now all I need is to finalise my seed order and hope for some more bright sunny days so that we can get out there and keep working… oh it would be nice if the small child started walking too, crawling around in the mud makes your hands really cold!!
we started prepping some more of our garden beds for planting out soon.
I’m really looking forward to spring and getting things moving along.
Oh, how I long for a proper garden! Even with only a balcony for pot plants, I generally manage to plant a few beans and herbs and whatever else takes my fancy when I get the soil ready, but I’m over trying to make the balcony work. Everything died after Nathan was born because it just didn’t get watered and pots dry out so easily. I haven’t investigated fully, but I think that even my worm farm is dead. I think it’s time to pack all the pots away and start again when I have a real garden.
Oh, and I drool over the Diggers catalogue!