The Sweet Pea Project: Sowing the Seeds for a New Gardening Year
Hello friends,
Although the garden may seem quiet in the middle of winter, now is the time when preparation for the next growing season begins. For me, July is peak sweet pea sowing season, and I always save this job for cold, rainy days when it's too wet to work outside. Sweet peas prefer germinating in cooler temperatures, so sowing them in winter gives them the best chance of producing armfuls of fragrant blooms in late spring and early summer.
Sweet peas have always been a favourite of mine ever since childhood, when my grandfather used to grow them in his back garden. Their fragrance would drift through the backyard during the warmer months, and ever since then I've dreamed of having a dedicated sweet pea patch of my very own.
Until recently though, I simply didn't have the space in my garden to do this. That changed last summer when our old lilac tree finally succumbed to the damage it suffered during last year's big spring storm. Once the tree had been removed, a section of the backyard fence opened up to full sun from early morning until late afternoon, creating the perfect place for a sweet pea patch. With the space finally available, it seems like now is the perfect time to turn a long-held dream into a reality. So let's begin, and I'll show you the little patch of garden where this year's sweet pea project will take shape.
My sweet pea patch will run along the western side of our backyard, beside the boundary fence that used to sit in permanent shade beneath the old lilac tree. This section of fence line is approximately four metres long, providing plenty of room for this new project. My plan is to install metal mesh along the fence, and let the sweet peas scramble their way upward, hopefully filling the space with flowers and fragrance throughout spring and summer.
With the growing area planned, it was finally time to pull out my sweet pea seed collection, and decide which varieties to grow. Over the years I've accumulated a large collection of sweet pea seed, so narrowing down the choices was no easy task. In the end, I settled on a collection of mostly Keith Hammett varieties, along with a few other favourites, and some homegrown seed collected from my own garden, all selected for their beautiful colours and sweet fragrance.
The varieties I chose and sowed were:
- 23 × Hammett Blue Butterflies
- 15 × Hammett Blue Shift
- 10 × Hammett Blue Reflections
- 15 × Hammett Brilliant Fragrance
- 10 × Hammett Burlesque
- 15 × Hammett's Surprise
- 2 × Hammett Licorice
- 6 × Hammett NZ Gardener
- 10 × Hammett Somewhere
- 15 × Hammett Sapphire
- 9 × Hammett Triple G
- 10 × Hammett Turquoise Lagoon
- 25 × Homegrown seeds from my garden
- 10 × Nimbus
- 10 × Swan Lake
- 10 × Sweet Pea Original
In total, I sowed 195 sweet pea seeds, which should provide a beautiful mixture of blues, purples, smoky pinks, bi-colours, and wonderfully fragrant blooms over the coming spring and summer.
Although 195 sweet pea seeds may seem like a lot, some of the seed packets were older, and experience has taught me that not every seed will germinate. The seeds were sown into seed-raising mix that had been sieved to remove large stones and wood chips, before being placed into four 50-cell seed trays.
After sowing, the seed trays were watered well, and placed onto shelving in my glasshouse. The shelving is covered with some shade cloth, which helps protect the emerging seedlings from strong sunlight, and it also prevents them from drying out too quickly.
There is always something so hopeful about seed sowing. In the depths of winter, seeds are a reminder that spring is never too far away, and that every gardening year begins with the promise of new life.
For now, the sweet peas are sown, and the waiting begins...
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
If you'd like to continue the conversation, you can find me on Instagram, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook.
I'd love to hear what you're growing, making, or enjoying in your own garden.
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
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
A Week of Extreme Weather In October
Hello friends,
October is usually a tumultuous month for us here in Dunedin, with the weather swinging in extremes from hot north westerly gales, to cold southerly fronts, including the threat of possible snow and frost, and this October was definitely no different from previous years regarding this.
In the third week of October we were warned of a spring north westerly wind storm approaching, and the resulting weather watches and orange wind warnings from Metservice had me worried.
In preparing for the north westerly wind storm, it first meant picking up anything outside that could go airborne, including my frost protection buckets (I lost one in the wind, but I eventually found it days later), taking down our bird feeders, moving our patio furniture to a more protected spot, putting our wheelie bins into the woodshed, and tying the glasshouse doors shut as they face the North West.
I also took the precaution of moving my most precious plants out of the glasshouse and into the garage for extra protection. I just couldn't risk losing our tomato plants, and dahlias in pots due to something unforeseen happening, like our glasshouse blowing away.
The big north westerly wind storm itself was frightening, and our house shook and shuddered for hours, first with the North Westerly gales, and then the Southerly front behind it, which took out our grid power for 8 hours. Luckily, we have solar panels on our roof, and a solar battery in our garage, and this system kept our house powered during the blackout (our battery has a storm watch function, and as soon as Metservice sent out the orange wind warning, the system began charging the battery to 100%). We are now very glad we invested in a solar system a couple of years ago.
All around Dunedin mature trees were blown over, trampolines went flying, fences were blown over, and the roofs of houses were lifted off. Many people in the lower South Island lost power for hours, and some for days, and even weeks.
Unfortunately, there were two casualties in my garden from the north westerly wind storm. My Avalanche camellia in the backyard garden snapped off at its base, killing the plant. It was only a year old, and didn't have a thick trunk yet, and it looks like it bent over in the wind until it just snapped. The only good thing about this happening is that it has given me one extra spot to plant a dahlia in this summer, but I am sad that I lost a beloved plant...
And the second casualty, was that my quince tree lost two north west facing tree limbs. They snapped partially off, so I had to trim them back to the nearest healthy branch on the tree. My quince tree is only 3 years old, so it won't suffer from losing a couple of young tree limbs. Thankfully the quince fruit forming on the tree didn't fall off during the storm.
With the north westerly wind storm over, it was time to clean up the garden of plant debris, reinstate our garden furniture to the patio, return the bird feeders to their rightful places, and transfer my precious plants sheltering in our garage back to the glasshouse.
The weekend after the north westerly wind storm was Labour Weekend, the traditional time to plant everything out in the vegetable and main gardens, but I was wary of doing this because Metservice forecast a cold southerly system occurring, with the potential of snow to low levels, and a frost afterward. I refused to risk planting out all my plants into the garden that weekend, only to have to frost cloth them for nights afterward.
So instead of spending the entire Labour weekend out in the garden planting out everything, my plants stayed safely inside the glasshouse where it was definitely warmer than outside, and I watched as the cold weather arrived...
And thank goodness I listened to the Metservice forecast, because the predicted low level snow fell, and settled to about 200 m above sea level in the hills surrounding us, and our temperature dropped to 1.1˚C overnight.
The dahlias growing outside were protected by their frost protection buckets, and all the plants in the glasshouse was protected by a number of layers of frost cloth. After a couple of days the weather warmed up back to early November temperatures, and it was time to plant stuff out in the garden, but it adds to my growing evidence that late October/early November is a risk to my Labour weekend gardening plans.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Planting Out Hardy Annuals and Hostas
Hello friends,
The glasshouse is super full at the moment with all the seedlings growing in preparation for planting out into the garden. I recently began planting out some of the hardier annuals when I ran out of potting containers to grow more seeds.
First up was my collection of different Keith Hammett sweet peas. I basically planted them wherever I found vertical growing space for them.
Next up was to plant out my three Calendula varieties, Calendula officinalis, Calendula Sunset Tones, and Calendula Strawberry Blonde. I already have a lot of Calendula officinalis growing in the front garden, so I planted those out in the back garden that has just been redesigned. I then planted the Sunset Tones and Strawberry Blonde varieties in both the front and back gardens. Eventually they'll all breed with one another and set seed, and I'll have heaps of different coloured Calendula everywhere.
And lastly, I went to a local garden center and bought two hostas that were in the back garden redesign plan. I bought the varieties Purple Heart and Sleeping Beauty for underneath the deciduous magnolia tree.
It's already been a couple of weeks, and both hostas are already growing strongly after some protection from slugs and snails.
We've had a frost already this week, and one more is possible, so the rest of the seedlings will have to wait until next week at least.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Social Media
Archives