Month: November 2014

Planting – foxgloves, jalapeños, sweet corn, beetroot, and Daikon

On By CathIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve come inside now and left all my wet rain gear in the greenhouse to dry. It’s quite cold, but it seems wrong to have the heater on. I have given up and turned it on anyway.

Today I have planted Foxgove seeds in flats – Strawberry Merton and Pams, which is white with boysenberry blobs. I’ve also planted a flat of white cosmos, transplanted some scented geranium cuttings, and put the finished tulip bulbs to dry in the greenhouse.

I took some cornflower seeds off some tall blue ones at Lynn’s last week and planted them last weekend and they popped up right away. I put them in separate pots today although they only had their seed leaves. Same with the Jalapeños. I finally got the seed in last week from a dry one left from last year. On the hot pad they all came up right away so I separated them all into a flat so they will survive in the greenhouse over the week without water.

I’ve done a bit of hoeing between storms to get a place ready to plant beetroot- I have Golden Detroit and Detroit Dark Red and also Daikon to plant. The parsnips and carrots are up and weeded. Radishes seem to have been eaten.

Weeds and grass have grown so quickly over the last few weeks the grass is knee high in some places. Luckily the trees are shooting away too, the Feijoas and Pohutakawa have so much new growth they seem a third bigger.

I read about people who don’t mow any grass and I like the idea, but then every time you walk anywhere you would get soaked by wet grass, and it would squash all my little tiny plants – all the freesias, and saxifrages, and probably all the salvias and sun loving plants too. It almost seems like mowing is the only way to stop from being overgrown completely.

The bread seed poppies, which are a type of opium poppy are out with their fabulous graduated red and pink flowers. The plants themselves seem a bit spindley this year- I think they might need more lime or fert than the soil in the areas they popped up can provide.

The roses are looking good as well. The rugosas don’t seem to have the amount of scent I had expected but are finally doing better now that they are in better soil with fewer weeds. Before they were basically growing in clay and sand surrounded by long grass and they didn’t like it.

One lot of baby starlings seem to have grown up. I think it was them scrambling and scratching around on the roof this morning. At least one other lot are still babies and were crying noisily then and again now. This was fine since it was still cold last night and we had a snuggly sleep in the flannel sheets and were ready to get up.

The Scilla Natalensis have been lovely. I have 3 now and would like some more. They are a little like a blue eremurus, but shorter.

I would love to have foxtail Lillies but I have been told by Terry Hatch that they won’t flower. Not cold enough.

The deciduous azaleas  are still going, and the new Rhodo nuttallii have finished. Beautiful large white lilly shaped flowers, but not as strong a scent as I had hoped.

The light orange pokers (knifofia) by the gate are still looking good as well; I think they are shining sceptre, and the two new roses are looking lovely. The Compte de Champagne has lovely round goblet shaped flowers of a beatiful soft champagne colour. This is the Austin one to celebrate Tattinger, so it seems very appropriate.

On Sunday I planted the sweet corn, and one row of each beetroot and 2 rows of Daikon. We tied up the tomatoes, mowed the lawn and raked it up for the compost heap and planted a Black Mulberry and trimmed the hedge for the neighbours.

Cold Spring

On By CathIn Vegetable Garden, Weather and SeasonsLeave a comment

The photo is from September, showing where the peas are.

We were away last weekend. Back in the city I made about 100 small paper pots and planted them with Florida F1 Sweetcorn. It’s been cold and hailing last week, but many of them have come up as I was able to give them turns on the heat pad. They are up to 2 inches high now, not even a week later. My plan is to plant them in the garden below the greenhouse.

I plan to do this for the flour and polenta corn as well, since over the past years I have sometimes had to replant entire crops. The earth is wet here at this time of year, and in some of the beds there are still clumps of clay. I will make more paper pots tonight.

This year we have peas next to the Louisa plum.  The soil was nice and friable and I spread lime around them. Carouby mange tout with their purple flowers were the strongest growers again, they have tiny peas and  lots of lovely purple flowers on them now.  The sweeter sugar snaps have been slow and needed 2 sowings, nd the normal peas even worse with about 8 plants coming up out of a whole packet.
Parsnips and carrots are up in the same area.

Tomatoes are in front of the greenhouse and in the top garden right side this year.
I will have to draw out some garden sections so I can refer to them by name. The garden below has been dug but needs hoeing.

I also transplanted another batch of tomatoes into 3″ square pots last weekend. These are the Orange high lycopene ones for eating raw. This year I have tried Golden Grape, Gold Medal, Moonglow, and Elbe from Bristol seeds in Whanganui. We will see what grows well and what tastes good. I have put one of each in the greenhouse an the rest will go in up top next week. I think they are better grown into at least 5″ pots in shelter.

The Beefsteak, Albenga Ox, and Brandywine tomatoes went in 50 x 2 weeks ago, the rest 3 weeks ago. The weather has been insanely windy and quite cold as it was last year at this time.

We used a different type of staking system, which we tried last year for one row. This is a long row of Macrocarpa stake triads connected by wire. This is what I used for the peas this year, covered with netting to protect from birds, which I removed yesterday as the peas were tangling into it.

We also used stakes to fence the tomatoes with wind cloth, thank goodness. More strong gales and rain today and it’s cold enough that we needed the heater last night and it would be nice now as well.

The tomatoes that went outside were a good size, all in 5 or 8 inch pots. We have lost one so far, one of the early batch before we had the complete wind cloth fence up. The bigger ones have been strung up with green jute twine. The others need to go up soon they are starting to grow lying down.

In with the toms I planted a few zephyr and Italian courgettes and some cucumbers. They are all a little miserable, and I’ve lost one of each, but they are alive and one is trying to make a tiny zephyr zucchini.

In the greenhouse I dug all the beds and planted 3 toms, Brandywine mix and Beefsteak in them. They have developed small tomatoes in the last 2 weeks. They were very dry yesterday after 2 weeks without water. I also put in a few of each pepper type – Ancho, Little Hat, Bell Colours, and Topepo and some sugar baby watermelons, tomatillos, and eggplant. They are all doing fine. I have planted some banana melons but they haven’t come up yet.