Catch-up planting for Spring

Simon bought some tomato seedlings this week: a black Russian, beef steak and some Roma seedlings. We've popped them in with a light sprinkling of lime.

Also got some potatoes going. We ran out of garden space so have 3 tubers in a foam box and a plastic crate! Hopefully they'll do okay.



Planted them with lots of compost and sugarcane mulch. Am hoping they won't be "overcooked" and end up with hollow, black centres! We shall see.

I have also just planted some marigold seeds around our orchard trees - apple, plums, olive. A good companion plant that brings in helpful bugs.

The weather is starting to heat up now with this week in the high 20s to 30s.

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Mulching up a swale

Did a bit more mulching today and Simon built up a swaleso as to catch more run-off especially around the gate.

The are doing so well we've done a second lot of divide-and-transplant with them. They look fab!

Here's a little pic outlining the swale.

Tomorrow is another sunny day!

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Understanding horseradish

Here's our first piece of harvested horseradish! Our friends John and Jess gave us this horseradish to look after and it's doubled in size in about twelve months. The smell is amazing! It's quite herbacious compared to the processed kind. I read that the longer you let a cut piece oxidize, the more fiery the taste.

I also found a cranberry relish recipe which uses a bit of horseradish, so will give that a go. Ah, that nose-clearing sensation!

Technology comes to Hackett

Warning: this is not gardening related!

I bought an iPhone just the other day, which means I have big plans for recording what we are doing in the garden! I've downloaded a blogger app and a photo blog app to be able to capture our hardening activities and post them quickly without too much double handling. As you can imagine with a one year old, that's pretty ideal!

So this is my first iPhone post with many more to come!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Spring vegies: carrots, snowpeas and beetroot

Remember the seeds we propagated this time last month? Well, the snowpeas are now planted out. Around the same time last month, I put in some carrot seeds and they've sprung up well too.






Today we planted some beetroot seeds; organic 'Detroit' variety. Last season we put in some baby beetroot which went off - so let's see how these ones go. We planted these in our middle bed, where we had the green manure crop. We dug this in about two weeks ago, so hoping the beetroot doesn't fork out underground!









Did a round of native fertilizer on our shrubs and grasses - hoping for some ran later in the week (fingers crossed but looking warmer than first forecast). The prunus is in full flower as are our plums.

Spring has most definitely sprung!