Harvesting My Own Sugar Beet Seeds
Hello friends,
Back in the Winter of 2024 I was perusing the Kings Seeds website looking for seed packets to buy for the upcoming spring season. One of the packets I was looking to purchase was Sugar Beet seeds, which Kings Seeds had supplied for many years. As you may have seen in my blog, I grow Sugar Beet plants as a source of my own sugar. You can read all about my Sugar Beet extraction method in this blog post from 2023.
Except there wasn't any Sugar Beet seed packets available on their website. So I contacted Kings Seeds and asked them if they were going to be selling Sugar Beet seeds that year, and they told me they were no longer going to be stocking them. I had a little panic, but then went online to see if anyone else in New Zealand was selling Sugar Beet seeds for the home gardener. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any Sugar Beet seed suppliers, and all of the big commercial seed companies were only selling fodder beet for farmers.
So now I was panicking big time. All I had left was one packet of Sugar Beet seeds, and it was only half full. The expiry date had run out as well, and Sugar Beet are biennial, which meant that seed harvesting from any plants was two years away.
Determined not to give up, in Spring I direct sowed all the Sugar Beet seeds I had left, and impatiently waited for them to germinate. I managed to get a small number of seedlings dotted around the vegetable garden, with each plant growing under slightly different conditions, with the hope that some of the plants would survive the two year wait to collect my own Sugar Beet seeds.
A number of Sugar Beet plants managed to survive the first growing season, including a very cold winter with -6˚C frosts, and then started growing again in their second year. The Sugar Beet plants began bolting over summer, and started flowering in February of 2025. By this time the plants were very tall, about 1.5 m high, and were prone to toppling over in the wind. A number of plant supports were erected to keep the plants upright until the Sugar Beet seeds were ready to be harvested.
In late March 2025 it was finally time to start harvesting the Sugar Beet seeds, and I made the decision to harvest them by hand, picking off each of the seeds one by one as they became brown. This long and drawn out period of harvesting the seeds took around two months, and then once they were nice and dry, I stored them away over this winter.
Now I have my own Sugar Beet seeds to use year by year to make my own sugar, and to collect my own seed in Autumn, whenever I need to. And I'm also pleased to say that I have enough Sugar Beet seeds at the moment to sell my excess to other home gardeners through my small business Hearth & Oak. If you are interested in buying some of my Sugar Beet seeds so you can grow your own Sugar Beet, and then collect your own Sugar Beet seeds in the years to come, please follow this Sugar Beet seed packet link to my Felt Store.
I had not intended to use this blog commercially to sell anything through my small business Hearth & Oak, but the thought of home gardeners in New Zealand not having access to Sugar Beet seeds and plants in the coming years, was too much to bear. Rare and interesting seed varieties in New Zealand deserve to be saved, and this is my attempt at doing this for Sugar Beet at least. I hope that if you do buy some of my seeds, my blog posts on Sugar Beet will help you grow your own plants, and then collect seeds, so that you can grow Sugar Beet every year.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
A Pair of Socks Finally Finished
Hello friends,
Back in May of 2024, my friend Karyn and I traveled down to Gore for the 45˚Fibre Festival. And while we were there, she bought me a 100 gram skein of 4 ply
Bluefaced Leicester sock yarn in the colourway Meadow Mornings (Almost) from the company Purple Sprouting, as a gift for hosting her for a week.
I really loved the shades of pink, teal, and lime green, so of course I turned the skein into a ball of wool straight away, with the intention to knit them into a pair of socks using my plain sock pattern I've developed over the years.
But when I started knitting the socks up, I wasn't happy with the progress I'd made. I really didn't like how they looked knitted up in this pattern...so I frogged the sock I was working on, and put it away for many months. In the meantime I knitted and finished my On the Porch blanket by Fifty Four Ten Studios, and also my Gro Hat by Fiber Tales.
After I finished those projects I pulled out my sock knitting bag and looked at the Purple Sprouting sock yarn once again. Over the coming weeks I did a whole lot of searching on the internet looking at various sock patterns to see what would fit the yarn. I eventually settled on Tin Can Knit's Rye Light sock knitting pattern, which I had already bought previously. It's a simple sock pattern that I've always wanted to try.
Once I got started the socks knitted up very quickly, and within 3 weeks I had a new pair of socks. The socks ended up being a little big for me, but they're perfect as slouchy socks for around the house. I think next time I use this knitting pattern, I'll go down a smaller size.
The socks are super warm, and very soft, and I really liked knitting up the Blue Faced Leicester yarn.
I haven't had a chance to wear these socks yet, but I'm sure they'll keep my feet toasty while wearing them in gumboots while gardening.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Side Garden Project - Planning and Building Raised Garden Beds
Hello friends,
After we had taken down the old aviary/berry cage, it was time to get to work turning this space into garden beds.
The first task was to weed the area, tidy up the fence line, and move two concrete pavers. Once I pulled out all the weeds and then tidied the fence line by putting old pieces of wood up against it for protection, hubby and I maneuvered the pavers into the space next door, where I have my worm farm located.
With all that done I ordered macrocarpa sleepers from our local garden centre for creating the new garden beds. The sleepers are 1.8 m long, which was the exact size we needed for that space.
The next step was to first put up some old trellises for our raspberry bushes, so we could train them along the fence line. We then create 90 cm wide beds using the macrocarpa sleepers, with 50 cm pathways in between for easy access to the garden beds. It was a lot of hard work considering there was a lot of river pebbles in the area. We transferred those river pebbles into the pathways between the garden beds when we were finished.
Once all the beds were in place, hubby did the hard work of digging over the garden beds and adding compost. The first bed closest to the garden shed was set aside for the strawberry plants I had put into pots in the glasshouse before the aviary was removed.
The next garden bed was set aside for my natural dyeing plants including Madder, Woad, St John's Wort, Tomentil, and Lemon Sorrel, which I had squeezed in another garden bed down the side of the house. While transferring the plants I was able to harvest some of the madder roots for natural dyeing. I have enough space leftover now to put more natural dyeing plants in the other half of the garden bed this spring.
Garden beds 3 and 4 are currently empty, and they still need to have compost added, before being prepared to a fine tilth for spring.
My plan is to grow Linen and Japanese indigo plants in bed 3: I have my own homegrown flax linen seeds in storage from last year, and I bought Japanese indigo seeds from Growing Textiles last autumn with the intention to grow my own indigo plants for natural dyeing, and also for indigo seed production.
In bed 4 I want to start my own breeding experiments with dahlias. I've wanted to do my own plant breeding for ages, and I now have the space to start this. I have dahlia seeds set aside from last year's plants to do this. I'm very excited about this project and can't wait to get started in spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Tour De Fleece 2025
Hello friends,
The month of July is known to yarn spinners all over the world as Tour De Fleece month, where spinners who want to join in, prepare their spinning supplies and spinning wheels for spinning along beside the Tour De France. On the days that the cyclists spin their wheels, so do Tour De Fleece spinners. It's an online spin-along, and spinners from all over the world often share their spinning on social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and Ravelry, during the 21 days of the Tour De France.
You don't need to officially sign up to anything, or pay any money, or join a team (though some people do), just spin when you can during the Tour De Fleece and make whatever yarn that appeals to you. My goal this year was just to spin every day of the Tour De Fleece, using whatever roving and fleece I had in stash, using both my drop spindle and spinning wheel.
The first project I spun up was a 100 gram roving of Union Fibre's fine Haunui breed sheep in shades of pink, purple, yellow, green, brown and teal.
I spun up the singles on my Majacraft Suzie Pro on two bobbins, with the intention to make a 2 ply yarn. The plied yarn was so pretty, coming out at an approximately fingering weight/4 ply yarn with a total of 237 m of yarn. I don't have any plans for this yarn yet, so it'll just go into storage along with all my other spun yarn.
Next up to spin was 200 grams of Ashford 80% Merino/20% Mulberry Silk roving in the colourway Gelato. I just love to periodically spin up some of Ashford's beautiful colourways for fun, with the intention to use the spun yarn for handwoven and handspun scarves for my Felt store Hearth and Oak.
Once the two single bobbins were spun, it was time to ply them 2-ply style. The resulting yarn was approximately fingering weight/4 ply and had a length of 423 m.
After a quick warm soak to set the twist in the yarn, my gelato yarn was all finished and ready for weaving.
I just love the shades of blue, pink and white, and I think it'll make a pretty nice scarf when it's all woven up.
I just loved making so much time for spinning in July, it's such a cold month and it's really cozy to spin on my spinning wheel on freezing winter nights. I already look forward to next Tour De Fleece next year.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
New Peonies and a Rose Bush
Hello friends,
Recently I purchased some wish list plants for my garden, three peonies, and a recently released rose bush.
When NZ Bulbs released their peonies for the 2025 - 2026 season, I bought Duchesse de Nemours, Dr Alexander Fleming, and Sarah Bernhardt.
Duchesse de Nemours has ivory white double flowers and the sensational scent of Lily of the Valley.
Dr Alexander Fleming is a double, sweet smelling, pink peony with strong stems and a very good vase life. A very reliable peony variety for cutting.
And finally Sarah Bernhardt has classic double blooms of deep pink petals, which are lighter toward the edges, and has occasional flecks of raspberry throughout.
I also recently bought the floribunda rose bush 'Cuppa Tea' from our local garden centre. 'Cuppa Tea' was released for the first time in 2024 as a pre-order online, and it was sold out before it even reached garden centres that winter. I was disappointed to not get one when it first was released, and was pleased to find out our local garden centre had one available for me to buy this year.
'Cuppa Tea' floribunda rose has clusters of antique platinum blooms open into changing shades of warm lilac hinted with lavender pink. Bushy, healthy growing habit with
mid-green foliage. It was bred in New Zealand by Bob Matthews from his popular for picking creation 'Cappuccino'.
Now having acquired both peonies and a new rose bush, the problem was where to put them...but luckily I had an idea about that.
At the very front of garden alongside the driveway was a small section of garden which had two problematic plants, a rhododendron and an azalea. Routinely while growing, they impinged into the driveway, and make it too narrow for us to drive our car down the driveway without brushing up against them with our car. I'm also not fond of azaleas and rhododendrons, so I was more than happy to dig them out over a number of days.
It was a battle to remove them, but it was finally done. After removing both plants, I added compost to the soil and then dug it over.
To that space I placed the 'Cuppa Tea' rose bush and the Sarah Bernhardt peony off center, so they stayed well far away from the driveway.
To even the garden bed out, I then dug back into the lawn by 10 cm, to increase the size of the front garden area. If I had to choose between more lawn, or more garden to work with, I'll always choose more gardening space.
After removing the turf, I then planted out the Duchesse de Nemours and Dr Alexander Fleming peonies into the new space in the front garden.
With that all done, there is nothing do do but wait for spring, for both the peonies and rose bush to start growing. There is also more space now for other plants to be planted into the front garden. And as for the space between the Cuppa Tea rose and the Sarah Bernhardt peony, I plan to plant two dahlias when they arrive in spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram
or Mastodon or Bluesky.
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