Zucchini's Doing Well

 Petal's crossed Zucchini is doing well and producing enough to keep her happy with a feed available most days and a few left over, which the worm farm are loving.

This is a bit of a glut she started off with.

Our Strawberries

 Our Strawberries are doing extremely well and we're eating heaps. It would appear that the Torrey variety are a bit better producers than the Red Gauntlet. The flavour is full on and we're both enjoying them.

Our First Ripe Tomato

 We finally got a ripe tomato in good time prior to Christmas, but things aren't good as the tomato is red and not the Japanese Pink Cherry I was expecting. Then to make things really bad, the blackbirds ate it.

 

 Moving on to Christmas Day, our first UK2000 tomato was ripening nicely, so Petal put a bag on it to keep the birds away, so it worked and I picked it probably a couple of days early.

Bagging Tomato Blossoms - My Hobby

 I love growing tomatoes and I have a task I do on them that people think I'm made for doing, but it is what it is.

I place organza bags over my unopened blossoms, so that they can't get cross pollinated - see I told you.

Here's what my plot looks like.

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We Have Roots

 The tomato seedling chewed off by birds has now started getting roots while in a glass of water.

Growing Well

 A few quick snaps of what's growing well in the vegetable garden. Most things are loving the rain, well except for tomatoes and strawberries.

Local Rain and Flooding

Well, we're wet here again after 65mm of rain and as you can guess we've had some local flooding too, which is a regular thing this year.

Having been laid up with a crook back for two weeks, we went out today to have a look around, with our first stop at Weirs Crossing where the Avon River is running very high after Friday's rain.

From the Stratford side.

We then decided to take the Llowalong Rd to Briagolong, but water over the road had us unsure on its depth, so we went back a little to the Startford Briagolong Road, back to Boisdale, then up to the crossing at Valencia Creek, where the river was high, but lower than the flattened grass and trees on the river bank shows a drop in the river of probably 1.5m to 2.0m.

 

 

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Jan's taken over this bed.

 First came the Sweet Corn, then came the Potatoes, so the garden bed is overflowing with growing plants.

Tomatoes are in.

 The picture doesn't show te true story, as I had room for 8x small plants when this shot was taken, so I planted them and the first night, two plants were attacked by birds, one went, the other chewed off at the ground. I'm trying to strike the chewed off plant in water..

Keeping Out The Wind

No damage here from the wind last week that caused havoc across the State. A few years ago I built a frame on my 7mx2.4m garden bed I use for tomatoes and I can quickly put up a wind barrier as in the photo, or I can cover it in shade cloth, roof and walls if it gets hot.

 

Growing in Pipes

Went to Cranbourne Saturday to collect some pipe offcuts that Jan's sister has been looking after for us. These were originally from a garden plant display at the Melbourne Garden Show about 10 years ago that Oasis Nursery (Floriana) had on their stand. We have five, but I think I sold five a few years after we got them. They make ideal planters for single vegetables etc.

 

Peas are Dry

 The two lots of peas seem to be dry, but we're storing them in netting bags, just to be sure.

1. Oregon Giant Snow Peas

2. Greenfeast Peas.

Peas - Drying

 The Peas are all podded and drying nicely, so we should have plenty for a Winter crop.

This is what we ended up getting.

Digging holes

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Our Garden

Our garden beds as of today.

Setting Out The Garden Bed

 Tomato growing time is here, so I set out where my tomatoes will be planted, enough room for 27 plants although some have just germinated. 

Peas off the Bush

 Jan took the pods off the bushes for both lots of peas, so they are drying well and we'll pod them soon.

New Seeds

 A friend of mine sent me some late seeds, so what do you do when you only get 5 seeds for a variety, you plant 2 seeds, which I did. I sowed them on the Friday and they were up on the Monday and I pricked them out Wednesday. So from the other seeds, so far I have nothing else come up, which isn't a worry as I am mainly growing these tomatoes for seed for next year.

Forgetting to Post

I've been a bit slack with posting, so hopefully I can add a few posts to catch up.

Most recently, we've pulled out the peas we left for seed, so on the airing rack we have both Greenfeast Peas and Oregon Giant Snow Peas, so hopefully by the weekend they should be starting to dry out so we can pod them and get rid of the waste. The peas inside the Snow Peas are quite large, so it looks like we may have done the right thing with them.

Getting Bigger

 UK2000 are my biggest tomato plants, partly because we had two weeks of rain and overcast conditions which slowed them down, but with 3 weeks until planting, I'm sure they'll be just fine. I'm planning a staggered planting this season in the hope of getting more seeds to sow a later couple of varieties before I think it will be cut off time.

In The Hothouse

 I took these photos so I'd remember what I had quantity wise of each variety when I decide to make a grow list. In this lot, they're mostly tomato seedlings, along with a couple of Moon & Stars Watermelon, some Candy Cane Capsicums from a glued flower,  some Red Panama Passionfruit, and finally a stray zucchini left from our recent planting.

Today in The Garden

 I'm slipping, by not keeping up with what's happening in the garden, so here's a look at what it's like as of today. The Zucchini's are in and mulched, the Strawberries are also mulched and some Parsnips have been pulled, although a few were very immature. Plus the Royal Gala Apple tree is bursting with leaf and blossom.

 

 

 

 

 

Zucchini Cross Planted Today

Today is Zucchini planting day, where our zucchini cross moves on from its current F2 status. These are Gold Rush X Jade Numbat and hopefully will give us some nice zucchini's again this season.

 

A Mixed Lot

 Here are a few photos of what's growing here, both in the garden and hothouse. The first photo is a raised garden bed 3.6m x 1.5m with a row of Parsnips and two rows of Greenfeast Peas.

Next are some photos in the hothouse, with potted seedlings starting to kick along nicely.

Here the last of the tomato seedlings are emerging, with these a type I called Macalister, an orange tomato I crossed in 2019 and I'll try again this year with F2 seedlings.

Macalister Tomato Seedlings

Last but not least are these Peas we picked from the garden. These are Greenfeast peas and if they make it inside they are nice cooked, although someone eats them raw without any side effects.

Feeding Strawberries

I had a Spring reminder set to fertilise my Strawberries which are waking up after Winter, most noticeable are the Torrey variety I got at Goodman's Seeds moths ago. With no access to Bunning's at the moment, I ended up using the liquid Dynamic Lifter Fertiliser, which is high in Nitrogen, which is what's needed.

My Contribution

About 20 years ago I came upon a Correa growing in a Maffra garden that really took my eye, being a Correa grower for many years. I asked the owner about the plant and was told it was a plant found by the late Bill Cane, Nurseryman from Maffra, so asked if I could get cuttings from it. Since that time, the original plant had died, so I had the only one of these plants known to exist. Since moving to Maffra 4 years ago, I now have this plant growing in my garden and it is doing well.

Now, the Sale Botanic Gardens is planting a new garden bed in honour of Bill Cane and they'll be planting known plants of Bill Cane. Mitch from Woolenook Nursery in Maffra contacted me about 6 or 7 weeks ago asking for cuttings to grow plants for this garden in Sale.

To say I'm happy would be an understatement

Correa Bill Cane

Macalister Again

I sowed a couple of seed today for my tomato cross 'Macalister' which I did the year before last (2019), between Nicoleta X Sweet Ozark Orange an F2 if they germinate. I didn't like it last year as it produced soft fruits when ripe. I'll try again this season, nothing to lose I suppose.

 

 

Passionfruit Seedling?

 A bit over 3 weeks ago I sowed some Red Panama Passionfruit seeds from a fresh fruit, thinking it wouldn't grow, but I was wrong. Yesterday I noticed a green shoot appearing, from the first seed to germinate. We've tried so many times to get a plant to grow here, without success, so maybe growing our own from seed will change that.

Here's the emerging seedling.

New Seedlings

Here are a few seedling tomatoes that have recently germinated in my hothouse. I was going to restrict what I grow, but that's gone out the window now.

Glued Flower

Over the past few years, I've been experimenting with gluing the flowers shut on Capsicum & Chilli plants, keeping them to self pollinate. Here are some Candy Cane Capsicums from a glued flower, which will be interesting to see what it actually throws. 

Theoretically it should be slightly different to the F1 original plant and should exhibit some traits of one of its parents.

 

New Ladder

 A new to me extension ladder turned out to be a bit different to what it was advertised as. Rather than an aluminium extension ladder, I ended up with a fibreglass ladder. It's a lot heavier than aluminium, but it will do just fine. It's 2.4m to about 4.5m when extended.