another busy day in the garden

Today has been another busy, productive day in the garden.  It was beautiful and sunny.  I had a very early start at 6.30 am, because I didn’t go to the gym this morning.  I have the running race in the evening.  I always finish at around 2 pm on Thursdays so I have enough time to shower, change and rest before taking the train into the city.  I powered through the following tasks in 6 hours:
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•          Planting more tomatoes – After setting up my work station and soaking each plant with Yates Thrive Natural Fish and Seaweed liquid fertiliser, I put in one of each of the following varieties grown from seeds given to me by Egmont: Big Beef, Dr Walters Special, Heirloom Red Pear, Heirloom Marriage Big Brandy and Heirloom Marriage Genuwine
•          Filling the garden waste bins – On hot days I leave the lids of our bins open so the waste can compress a bit.  I noticed that there was space to add more, so I managed to fit some of the nasturtium and calendula I pulled out the other day into each of our two bins.  When it sinks down, I’ll be able to fit even more waste in
•          Planting more capsicums and chillies – I put a few more plants in 35 L containers, including two Jalapenos (Yates)
•          Doing a stocktake of existing chilli and capsicums planted into 35 L pots – as you might recall, I have been planting capsicums and chillies into 35 L buckets since Labour Weekend.  I did a little tally of which varieties I have planted so far, so I know which different varieties I need to add to our collection from the seedlings in my nursery.  So far, I have planted the following varieties of capsicums: Mama Mia Gialla (Kings Seeds), Mama Mia Rosso (Kings Seeds), Muscato (Kings Seeds), Belle Combo (seedlings purchased from Kings Plant Barn), Cornos Red (Kings Seeds), Double Up (Egmont), Chinese Giant (Kings Seeds), Candy Cane (seeds given to me by my gardening friend Minette Tonoli) and Palladio (Egmont).  We have the following chilli varieties in our garden: Lombardo (Franchi), Carolina Reaper (seeds given to me by Minette Tonoli), Red Scorpian (Kings Seeds), Indian Jawal (given to me in a seed swap), Sweet Banana (McGregors), Alma Paprika (Kings Seeds), Thai Super Chilli (Kings Seeds), Cayenne (Yates), Sky Hot (Kings Seeds), Thai (from a seed swap), Hungarian Hot wax (from a seed swap), Fire and Ice (Kings Seeds) and Jalapeno (Yates).  As I add more capsicums and chillies to our garden, I will update this list.  As you can tell, I really enjoy growing chillies and capsicums!
•          Organising my capsicum and chilli seedlings – I did a stock take so I know what varieties I have left in the nursery.  I sorted out which ones were the healthiest and put aside one of each, which will be planted into the garden soon
•          Potting up some zucchini seedlings – these were Zephyr (Kings Seeds), Cocozelle (Kings Seeds) and Fiorentino (Franchi), which went into individual 10 cm pots
•          Organising melons, eggplants and squash (spaghetti squash, kamo kamo and gem squash) - I organised the different varieties of each into separate trays.  I had a terrible time with watermelon but I was pleased to see that I’ve ended up with around 15 plants.  I’ll write more about my melons in another post and list what varieties they are then.  I also didn’t hold much hope for Banana and Inverno melons but I have 5 and 4 plants respectively which isn’t too bad.  Of all the melons (and maybe plants in general thanks to sowing two packets of Hale’s Best from Yates), I have the most rockmelon seedlings but it’s also the plant that I lost the most of out of everything I sowed.  The germination rate was excellent for all the different varieties I sowed, but they proved irresistible for pests who enjoyed having a nibble at them.  I have five different varieties of rockmelon this year: Hale’s Best (Yates), Tuscan Delight (Kings Seeds), Charentais (Kings Seeds), Inspiration (Kings Seeds) and Aspire (Kings Seeds).  I’m growing the last three for the first time this year, so I’m excited to see how they turn out.  As the weather has been consistently warmer this past week, I think it’s about time I rolled out that black plastic and started putting in the biggest plants before the snails and slugs start to munch them!  Plants are generally safer in the ground than in punnets around here.  This is tomorrow’s task.
•          Yates query – I received an answer to a question I fired off to the experts at Yates last night:  when do you stop liquid feeding the garden?  Chris (who has patiently and rapidly responded to many queries of mine over the years, thank you so much!) said that once fruit starts to mature, it’s no longer necessary to continue liquid feeding.  This is a good thing as the garden becomes difficult to navigate when the pumpkins start creeping everywhere (they’ve already started, see yesterday’s photo!)

Today’s photo is of our Zephyr zucchini, which has started to develop fruit!