Has it been that long?

 

Hi everyone, how have you all been keeping? It has been a while since I last posted anything here at Garden Amateur ... *checks* ... has it been that long? Really? Just a few months short of two years? How time rushes forward slowly sometimes.

The reason I'm back here for at least an update post is that one of my readers, Jenny, attended an art class run by my darling girl, Pammy, and Jenny asked what was happening to my gardening blog.

I've wondered the exact same thing myself sometimes. All I ever intended to do when I wrote my last posting at the end of 2018 was to take a break, a sabbatical, and get back into garden blogging again "one of these days", as the saying goes. And here we are, with me starting up blogging again due to popular demand of one. Thank you Jenny.

Well, the short version is that all is well with Pammy and me. Both of us are healthy (which has risen in importance in 2020 in particular) and both happily occupied in a variety of different ways.

Pam is particularly busy as an art teacher these days, doing all sorts of watercolour art classes in a range of venues. You can check her out at her website, https://pamelahorsnell.org but if you are in Sydney some (but not all) of her courses are listed on Eventbrite.

Me, I'm retired! Hooray! Which means more time for gardening of course, but also more time for reading and cooking, but lots of my time is also taken up as being Pammy's support person, as I can drive a car and she doesn't. So we work as a team, which is what we've been doing for the last 30 years anyway. The teamwork never stops, but the projects are always changing.

"But what's happening in the garden?" you ask, as, after all, this is a gardening blog and not a Christmas-time catch-up letter sent out to all and sundry, whether they're interested or not.

The garden, like us, is happy. Right now it's the beginning of springtime, so it's time for a few photos with captions of random gardeny things that have either happened in the last two years, or are happening now.

All the garden favourites have flowered right on schedule, such as this
blue Louisiana iris, which has just started to bloom this week.

However, I am still impatiently waiting for the white Louisiana iris
to pop out. It always does its thing a week or two after the blues begin.

Last year (2019) I tried sweet peas for a change, and the results
were lovely. I've planted even more this year, and they are just
starting to bloom, but won't be in full bloom for another month.

Last year's Shirley poppies were all razzle dazzle, but for no
good reason I never got around to sowing their seed this year.
Never mind, there's always next year (I hope).

I was very pleased with my purple cauliflower. The seeds were
given to me by a wonderful gardener, Kerryn Burgess, who I met while visiting
friends Amanda and Mike in Kyneton in 2018. I'm a keen follower of Kerryn's
amazing Instagram feed at @kerryn.burgess where she is a virtuoso of all
the gardening arts. Superb espaliers, wondrous orchard and much more ...

Our succulent patch continues in its own quirky way, with oddball
dazzlers such as this stapelia bloom. But, to tell the truth, the supposedly
easy-care succulent area is a lot of work, primarily because of onion
weed and a rotten, fast-growing grass that can take over in no time. 
The succulents themselves need little attention, but the weeding!

I've just realised that this 'update' posting could turn into a marathon if I'm not careful, so I'll finish off here with a final trio of photos that summarise what I have mostly been doing during the COVID-19 pandemic. I've been growing lots and lots of things from seed. 

It's slow, it gets easier the more you pick up the skills, and as I have oodles of time on my hands, raising plants from seed is a perfect garden project. I can guarantee you no instant gratification whatsoever with seeds. You have to learn to be patient, and savour the very real pleasure on those mornings when you first discover that your latest sowing of seeds has produced babies.  

This is our second pot of seed-grown coriander this cool season.
We ate the first lot, mostly in curries and stir-fries.

The chives are belting along, just a week or two away from ending up
in their favourite dish, Sunday morning scrambled eggs.

Baby spinach and yet more lettuce. The spinach is great in sandwiches.

So that's your update for now. Once I get my act together with photos, I'll fire up the Blogo-Matic 3000 ideas generator and will post something on seed sowing soon. 

See you then.

Seedy habits

The therapists say that the first thing to do with any addiction is to admit you have one. Good advice, but I'm not sure if they know what they're doing after that point is reached. Anyway, here goes: I am tragically addicted to growing plants from seed, and my success rate is OK, not brilliant, but getting better. There, I've said it. I'm feeling better already.

And so at the latter end of this hot, windy and rather unpleasant Sydney Saturday afternoon in January, I've brought out my seed tins, taking stock of the lovely little packets of tragic temptation lurking demurely inside, and I'm planning my autumn seed-raising campaign now. Oh what fun, must put on the kettle to make a calming slug of green tea while I plan out my gardening future.

Here's the hot candidates, all vying for attention. With some,
I'm just waiting for this rolling series of heatwaves to be over
before I get any plants growing again (rocket, lettuce and chervil
all hate the heat and wouldn't be worth bothering with right now).

But there's another category of seeds which is demanding
my attention now: those plants which really only are happy
when sown as seed in the spot where they are going to spend
the rest of their little lives. These are the fuss-pots which don't
like being transplanted as seedlings. Here, there's Florence
fennel, Shirley poppies, carrots, parsley, rocket, beetroot, chervil
and parsnips. I'm already starting to play favourites, though.

While I do of course like to eat parsnips, there
is something extra about them that I like. Being
slow and a bit haphazard in the way they come
up from seed has its 'challenge and reward' buzz
when you see them finally come up, but I just like
watching them grow, and of course harvest
time is lucky dip at the carnival time: you never
know what shapes you'll get (but my second
crop was much better than the first, and my
secret of success is deep, maniacal soil prep).

Call me sick, but I just like parsnip foliage.

If you think having a crush on parsnips is worthy
of referral to a therapist, wait till you hear my
Shirley poppy problem! Total failure last time,
complete duds. I rescued the situation by buying
and planting some Iceland poppies in their place
(and Icelands are easy-peasy, lovely from seedlings).
But here I am planning to have another go. Of
course I don't have a clue where I went wrong.
Tragic fools rarely do. But I'm going to try again.

Florence fennel also needs to be sown direct
into the soil. No transplanting seedlings, please.
As I mentioned a couple of postings ago, I
currently have a little 'test batch' sown and
growing well. Pam and I love to blend sliced 
fennel and potatoes together (more spud than
fennel of course), sprinkle with olive oil, grinds
of salt and pepper then toss, into a covered dish
then bake slowly for as long as you like. The
fennel caramelises and becomes a bit sweet
and the result is utterly delicious.

Oops! A seed spill in the bottom of the tin.
Whose are they? Not the fennel! Yep, the
fennel, recognise those seeds anywhere.
Thank goodness for stocktakes and stickytape
fennel seed packet back in good order now.

Two last little asides. Seed packets give old tins a meaning and
purpose in life. Most of my seeds are in the cricket-crazy-kids'
Weet-Bix tin, but the retro-themed Yates commemorative
125th anniversary tin is doing fine service, too.

Last but never least, I amazed myself by actually checking the
'sow by' dates on the back of all the seed packets before I did
anything else. It is a bit depressing to carefully till the soil,
prepare the seed beds, sow the seeds and water them for days,
then weeks, on end, only to have nothing happen. At that point
 you wonder where could you have possibly gone wrong.
Then you finally, belatedly glance at the seed packet only to
discover it says: "You should have sown them three years ago,
you fool". So take it from a tragic fool, read the packet first!

Suddenly, nothing much happened

I know that on many occasions I have sung the praises of growing plants from seed, because it's very satisfying fun to do so, but in the interests of fairness and balance, let me kick off this little posting about seeds from the other, grumblier end of the paddock.

Seeds can be frustrating things to work with at times, for various reasons, and out here in Amateur Land I am coming face-to-face with some of those frustrations. Let me explain...

First the good news. The coriander seeds have sprouted. (What's that organic looking brown packet of coriander seeds doing floating in mid-air? Have I discovered levitating seeds? No, it's worse than that. I have discovered Photoshop, and how to make all sorts of dastardly changes to simple, innocent garden photos.) Anyway, back to the seeds...

These are seeds I saved from my coriander plants last year, and they're sprouting at the rate of about 60% good 'uns, 40% duds. Not a bad germination rate for an amateur seed-saver. In fact I'm quite proud of the little dears. I have plenty of seeds left over, and I'll be sowing another batch a month or two from now, as coriander is a much better winter crop here in Sydney than it is a summer crop. Lasts for months in winter, does coriander.

However, that's the first frustration I have with seeds: germination rates. I won't bother showing you the boring little paper pots I have filled with brown potting mix, and no parsley seedlings where there should be parsley seedlings. How about a germination rate of 0%? I know parsley seeds are super-slow to germinate - around three to four weeks is average – but I'm up to five weeks now and not a sausage. Not one! So, all I can do is start again (with a completely different packet of seeds, of course). Next slide please, projectionist!

In the top right corner of this pic you can see the packet of the Shirley poppy seeds which I scattered here about five days ago. My Pammy loves poppies, and in previous years I have grown Iceland poppies for her. This year I'm trying Shirleys, which several keen gardeners have strongly recommended for their better colours. The trick with Shirley poppies is that you really do have to grow them from seed, as they hate being transplanted as seedlings. No worries, I can do that. But that's where I have encountered a few more seed-raising issues. See those bamboo skewers poking up out of the ground? They're to stop the pigeons and doves enjoying a dust bath. Any spare patch of bare, dry earth and they're down there spreading their wings (probably trying to get rid of lice, if the truth be known) and making a mess of my neat seed-sowings. They terminated an earlier sowing of parsley seeds with precisely that habit, and so for my Shirleys and other seeds I'm onto them this time.

This levitating seed packet of parsnips represents another plant which hates being transplanted and must be grown from seed. I'm having another go at parsnips this year, as my home-growns from two years ago were the sweetest, tastiest, tenderest parsnips I have ever enjoyed. While I know it's the cliche to claim that everything home-grown tastes better than the shop-bought stuff, I really haven't found that to be invariably the case. With tomatoes, definitely yes; parsnips, most assuredly yes; freshly harvested herbs, yes; English spinach, yes; potatoes, yes; citrus yes; garlic, yes.

But for vegies such as carrots, leafy greens, beetroot, shallots, cucumbers, eggplants, silver beet, beans and broccoli the real advantage to me is their tenderness and fresh quality, plus the knowledge that they really, truly have been grown organically. This latter group have never tasted especially superior to the high quality shop-bought, fresh equivalent. I just know mine are healthier. But my home-grown parsnips were a revelation in flavour and tenderness. I want to eat them again!

Besides, parsnips aren't a bad looking plant, either. Very nicely green and leafy, and they are part of the garden for a number of months as they slowly grow through the winter. The only problem with getting parsnips started is that even the seed packets suggest you sow the seed thickly, as germination rates are a bit iffy. I can live with that. And I've done the bamboo skewer trick to keep the doves and pigeons away, too.

Here's an evening meal's worth of parsnips harvested last time round. One interesting little snippet about my parsnips is that here in Australia at least there aren't all that many varieties to choose from. By far the most popular variety is 'Hollow Crown', and it has been around for generations. It's a bona fide Heritage or Heirloom vegie, but all the major seed suppliers have it too, and it's not marketed as such. The best Yates Seeds (the biggest seed company in Australia) can do is call it a 'traditional favourite'.

So I don't really have much to grumble about with my seeds. I just hope all that heavy rain we had over the weekend hasn't washed the teeny weeny little poppyseeds away, but the soil there doesn't look too disturbed. I should be seeing some action there maybe next weekend if I'm lucky. But with the parsnip seeds, I'll have to wait. They're every bit as slow as parsley seeds to get going, taking three to four weeks to come up.

And that's both the best and the worst bit about seeds: the waiting!