Planting Out All The Garden Seedlings
Hello friends,
The last couple of weeks have been very busy in the garden, with the weather now being warm enough to plant all the seedlings, plants, and dahlias in pots, out into the garden. This was super important, as the glasshouse was completely packed with plants, and my tomato, cucumber, and chilli and capsicum seedlings really needed to get planted in their final positions in the glasshouse.
The first plants to go out into the garden were the dahlias I had in pots, and also all the dahlia seedlings I'd grown from seed, which I put into two of the new side garden beds.
Next to plant out were all my natural dye plant seedlings into another new garden bed in the side garden, including tango cosmos, calendula, and Japanese indigo seedlings.
The vegetable garden beds also had to get weeded and dug over, so the corn, black turtle bean, lettuce, cabbage and bok choi seedlings could be planted into the garden.
After that, it was time for all the flower seedlings including cosmos, calendula, and pansies, to be dotted around the garden areas to fill out
empty spaces I leave for annual plants. This took about a week as I was very enthusiastic in sowing seeds this spring.
The last of my Floret zinnia seedlings (Unicorn, Precious Metals, and Dawn Creek Blush) went into two spare vegetable garden beds so they can self-pollinate with each other in blocks this growing season, to give me a stash of Floret seeds of my own for the coming years. There is no guarantee that Floret seeds will be imported into the country again any time soon, and I wanted to keep some seed stocks of these varieties for my garden.
And finally once the glasshouse was all but empty it was time to add compost to the glasshouse, dig over the soil, and plant out all my tomatoes (Pomodoro, Juanne Flamme, Hera, Island Bay, Lebanese, Grosse Lisse), capsicum (Marconi Red, Candy Cane), chilli (Serrano), and cucumber (Mini Me, Crunchy, Medici) varieties, and erect their climbing frames. I had some leftover plants which were given to family members.
Once the bigger plants were in place, I planted out my basil plants (Genovese, Gustosa, Lettuce Leaf) into the empty spaces. With that all done I scattered fertiliser, added Saturaid to help with water retention, replaced the yellow sticky traps to catch plant pests, and gave the glass house a good watering.
There are two more vegetable garden beds to be weeded, have compost added, and dug over for planting, but they are for special projects that will be dealt with by the time you read this blog post.
It's been a lot of work to get to get my garden to this point, and I've been neglecting weeding the garden to do this, so that will be my next big gardening job leading into summer in a couple of weeks.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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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.
Floret Zinnias
Hello friends,
I just thought I'd share with you how my Floret zinnia plants have fared over the summer, and all the flowers that have been produced from the various varieties.
This is how the zinnias looked like when I planted them out in the garden in late October 2024. I sowed Floret Dawn Creek blush, Floret Precious Metals, and also Floret Unicorn Mix zinnias that I bought from Emerden Flower Farm back in August 2024. I had 100% sowing success from all the zinnia seeds.
First up we have the Dawn Creek Blush Zinnias:
There's a mix of creams, buttery yellows, and pinky blush tones, they are really beautiful and understated.
Next we have Floret Precious Metals:
The Floret Precious metals, are more pink and purple toned, and when the flowers get older, there is a cool metal sheen on them.
And lastly we have the Floret Unicorn Mix:
The colours for the Unicorn mix are much more bright pinks and yellows and lime greens, and they really stand out in the garden.
All in all, I'm really loving all the varieties that Floret and Dawn Creek have developed. The seeds were super expensive, but the uniqueness of the flowers are worth it in my opinion. I still have some seeds left over for next year, and I plan to seed save from the zinnia varieties when autumn starts in March (on Saturday). If more Floret zinnia seeds become available from Emerden in spring, I plan to pick up a couple more seed packets to increase my seed stash of these beautiful flowers.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Floret Dahlia and Zinnia Sowing
Hello friends,
A couple of weeks ago I sowed my zinnia and dahlia seeds from Floret, that I purchased from Emerden in New Zealand. And yes, if you may have noticed, I ended up ordering a third zinnia variety from Floret, their Unicorn Mix.
I sowed all the seeds in dome propagating trays, along with dahlia varieties including seeds from my favorite Lucky Number dahlia growing in my garden, and also two Keith Hammett dahlia varieties (NZ dahlia breeder), NZ Gardener mix (from the NZ gardener magazine), and also Dahlia Beeline II. I'm considering crossing the Keith Hammett and Floret dahlias to see if I can come up with a new amazing variety.
The seedlings all popped up super quick while living in our warm dining room, and within a couple of weeks they were ready to be potted on into bigger individual pots with potting mix. The seed sowing strike rate was higher than advertised on the packets, so I'm really happy with the investment.
They're now safely growing in my glass house, and are covered in frost cloth each night for protection. I can't wait for when they get big enough to plant out in the garden.
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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