weekend wrap up

I had a productive weekend in the garden.  Yesterday, I planted another tomato (Potentate) and four more cucumbers (Continental and Long Green from Yates).  I also potted up some more melon seedlings which came off the heat pad (Inverno from Franchi and Honeydew from Yates) and moved them into the greenhouse.  I planted two trays of “Classic Fantastic” cornflower seedlings (Kings Seeds), as well as a variety of flowers which I raised from seeds that Egmont kindly gave me last year.  These were Candytuft “Fire Ice”, Carthamus “Grenade Orange’, Godetia “Satin Mix”, Linum “Blue Dress”, Lupin “Israeli Blue Admiral” and Nigella “African Bride”.  All of these flowers are new to me, so I am excited to see what they look like when they flower.  I potted my Dianthus “Jolt Cherry” and Lavender “Bandera Pink” seedlings (also from Egmont) into 6-cell punnets, as they are still quite small and I’d like them to grow a bit more before transplanting them into the garden.  I sowed some more Baby Bear and Musquee de Provence pumpkin seeds on the heat pad, as the plants I put in outside have died (see yesterday’s post). 

Today, I planted some more zucchini, kohlrabi and spinach.  I also spent some time planning gardening activities for the week ahead.  I did some weeding both days to try and keep the garden looking tidy.  I dread dedicated weeding days and they can be very hard on the back, so I’ve worked out it’s best to do a bit every day to keep on top of it!

As I indicated yesterday, it’s not all a bed of roses in the garden.  Here are some more problems:

·         An insect has been eating my Hale’s Best rockmelon plants (Yates) in the greenhouse
·         A tom cat in the neighbourhood has deliberately destroyed many punnets of seedlings in my nursery, including my rudbeckia and tithonia.  I’ll have to sow more.  He is spiteful because we adopted Ginger and not him!
·         Unfortunately I can’t follow up on progress with the Wildflower Bee Attracting Mix and Cosmos Lemonade which Egmont Seeds gave to me to trial in the garden, because some wwoofers pulled them out when they were weeding, despite being told a number of times that they were not weeds.  I will add them to my shopping list for next year
·         It was just too cold outside for some of my chilli and capsicum seedlings.  Despite gradually hardening them off and moving them outdoors to make room for other plants in the greenhouse, I noticed that many of them were dying so back inside they went!
·         The two passionfruit seedlings that I planted to replace the vine at the back of the house that died (see yesterday’s post) aren’t looking too good.  If they die, I won’t bother planting more in the same place.  We think the soil might be diseased, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the clivia

To close, here are a couple of gardening tips:

·         Sunflowers - try not to plant sunflowers in amongst your veggies as they drain a lot of water.  It’s better to put them in a separate bed, which I’m doing for the first time this year
·         Spring onions – don’t pull the entire plant out of ground, just chop what you want from the top and it will grow again
·         Roses – save banana skins and put them around your roses as they are high in potassium and will promote flowering

The photo is of some eggplant seedlings in our greenhouse.

What did everyone get up to this weekend?​