Saffron Crocus doing fine

 Our bed with Saffron Crocus in it is doing OK albeit very slow this year for some reason. The plants are clumping this year, with about 6X plants per clump, so the first three clumps have given us over 12 flowers to date. The slower growth this season will mean the plants stay longer and will also flower over a longer period.

Once the plants die back, we'll lift the Corms and replant the bed, so that the whole bed is full instead of just the middle.

Garlic is Up.

Well, my Garlic is starting to look like I'll get a full bed as planted. The rain is helping and well over half the crop are up, with Purple Stripe (top photo) well ahead of the other two varieties.

New Worm Towers

Jan is making a couple of moveable Worm Towers for her raised garden beds. These will feed the garden worms over Winter when they're less active. These will start off in the Saffron bed, then move to the Strawberries.

 

Today the towers were given some soaked Rolled Oats, which will show us if the worms are interested in using them. 

 

Garlic Coming Up.

When growing Garlic, it's always good to see the new shoots coming up in the garden bed. These are some I planted recently.

 

 

First Flower 2021

 Today we expect our first flower to open on our Saffron Crocus. We managed to get a few pop up earlier than the main bed for some reason.

Below are what we harvested from our first Saffron flower this morning, they are known for their orange-red stigmas, so this is what they look like. These need to dry now before being stored in an airtight jar.

Sprouting Garlic

Prior to planting my Garlic this year I placed it on a new bench in my shed, not knowing that a screw in the roof was leaking. The end result was that water dripped into the ice-cream container of seed garlic. When it came to planting, about 6 corms had sprouted roots, so I planted them as normal as I didn't have much of the variety (Purple Stripe).

 

When I watered the garden bed this morning, I noticed shoots showing from these few cloves.

 

 

Planting Your Garlic

Planting Garlic.

With your garden bed ready to plant, it's just a matter of sowing the seed along a line to distinguish the row when planted. Simply grab a clove (already separated) planting with the pointy end up/flat end down and away you go. Space your cloves as you go, then once the row is done, cover the garlic with soil. Two fingers spread over the row will allow soil to cover the row quickly.

 

 

 

Getting The Most From Your Zucchini's

Getting the most from your Zucchini plants. As mentioned earlier we still have three zucchini plants left with fruit growing on them. Here's a way to prolong the life of a plant, just by simply removing old spent leaves. In this video you will see the new fruit on the plant, then look at the stalky stem of the plant to see how it got this way. These plants went into the ground on 16 September as seedlings, so after 181 days as of today, they are still going.

Saffron Shooting

 It's March and the Saffron Crocus we have growing in a dedicated bed, is now shooting. Two years ago we planted 35 corms and we managed 35 flowers last year, with some multiple flowers in the many shoots that grew.

Today there are five plants that are up, with a few having up to 6 shoots, meaning the corms we put in back in 2019 have multiplied nicely.

More to come on these plants when we get more plants showing.

Garlic Now Planted

 Well it's getting close to Garlic Season, so with the garden bed prepared, I planted out three X 3.6m rows on March 13th just prior to 13mm of rain, then another two rows the next morning. Three rows of Monaro Red, one row of Tasmanian Purple and one row of Purple Stripe, all three varieties belong to the Turban family.

Now for the wait to see what the germination is like and how well the seedlings look once up. We've settled on just the three varieties this year, as there is no Meeniyan Garlic Festival this year to get different seed varieties, we're more than happy with what we've now sown.