Yesterday, today and tomorrow - re-potting seedlings, seed sowing and putting more plants into the garden!

I’m sure all gardeners would agree with me that September is such a busy month in the garden.  Fortunately, the weather has been fine lately, making it easier to get outdoors.  Yesterday, I spent three hours repotting some of my chilli, capsicum and tomato seedlings into six-cell punnets, as they had outgrown their black plastic punnets.  I also repotted some more Sweet 100 tomatoes into larger pots.  I really enjoyed this little task.  It’s very rewarding to see my little seedlings blossom into plants and I find the process of re-potting plants very therapeutic.  Although they’ve moved up in the world, I’m keeping all of these heat-loving plants securely under cover in the greenhouse.   Despite what you see in the garden centres at the moment, don’t be fooled, folks!  Temperatures can fluctuate a lot at this time of the year, particularly at night. 
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Today, I did quite a bit of seed sowing – zucchini and some cape gooseberry seeds (Egmont Seeds) on my heat pads indoors and leeks, celery, kohlrabi (green and purple), silverbeet, spinach, chives and spring onions in punnets outdoors.  I’m excited to be growing the variety “Spinach Oriental Imperial Green” from Egmont Seeds for the first time.  As the weather has become a bit warmer, mum and I moved all of my marigolds and petunias from the greenhouse outside to our patio.  Last night, I did a test and placed one punnet of each outside and they were still looking good in the morning, which I took as a good sign.  This way, there’s more room in the greenhouse, which will no doubt be filled with zucchini, pumpkins and cucumbers in the coming weeks.

Tomorrow, I’ve got plans to plant some cosmos and cornflower seedlings into the garden to brighten up the veggie patch.  I’m also going to put in more cut and come again lettuce, as well as mesclun.  I’ve got about a dozen punnets in the patio at the moment and I’ll probably plant them into containers.   I’m also going to sow a packet of wildflowers from Egmont Seeds.  I try and grow wildflowers every year to attract bees to the garden and help with pollinating fruiting veggies such as capsicums, chillies, zucchini, cucumbers and pumpkins.   A couple of years ago, I sowed Wildflowers of the World from Yates seeds and I find that some of the flowers still come up again year after year by themselves.  I try and sow fresh seed every year to fill in the gaps.
   
I haven’t thought beyond that but tomorrow when I have some time I’ll reflect further on what else I need to do in the garden this week.  For now, we are taking a bit of time out every day to sit outside on our outdoor furniture and admire the garden.  It’s important to think ahead to what we will grow in future, but it’s also important to enjoy the present.  We have been enjoying an abundance of produce from the garden, including cabbage (red and green), cauliflower, carrots, leeks, peas, spring onions, kale, asparagus and broccoli.  I’ve included a photo of a typical harvest from our garden with this post.  I’m also positively beaming at the sight of the spring garden which contains a number of different veggies in progress, including potatoes, broad beans, more cabbages and broccoli, strawberries and garlic. 

Despite how busy you are this spring, make sure you take a bit of time out to enjoy your garden too!  It definitely won’t look this fresh and lush in summer.  I promise l’ll include a photo of how our garden looks at the moment in a future post.