Marry Christmas

I just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!

Hooray Veggies!

I bet my mother never thought that I would be saying that haha! But today I actually managed to, I want to say harvest but I'll rather say pick cause it was so little really, but the best amount of veggies that I have picked so far!

 At first I thought that snails were eating my tomatoes but its actually the heat that makes them crack like this. I dont care they still taste good. My one tomato bush is doing very well so I think I will get a fair amount of tomatoes soon. I cant wait.

4 Marrows, 5 tomatoes and a cucumber not to bad considering how my poor garden has been suffering in the heat. (Not to mention the dog!!) cant wait for the rest.

I cant wait for next year to plant my pumpkins, butternut and water mellons. I am going to put them in raised beds so I will post pictures of the progress of those when I get started. :)

I hope everyone had a good weekend.

Pickled Cucumbers

Since this is my first real How-To please go easy on me and I will try my best to explain it well. So today I decided to pickle my cucumbers. I thought that since I am not going to have a mountain of cucumbers I will pickle what I have now while the cucumbers are still in season and pretty cheap so that during winter I have cucumbers. Now the recipe is one my family has always used, but its not really a family recipe, many many years ago my father found it in a book, but don't ask me which book.

Pickled Cucumbers:

• 3L water
• 1L white vinegar
• 3/4 cups course salt
• pickling spice 
• cucumbers
• onions (Optional)
• 4-6 (500-750ml) jars

First thing you need to do is the most important. you need to fill a large pot with water and sterilize your jars in rolling boiling water for 3-5min. Lids as well

While your jars are boiling. In another pot add the 3L water, vinegar,  salt and pickling spice. (This pickling spice I bought in a box already mixed, but its a mixture of :Pepper corns, mustard seeds, dill seeds, coriander seeds, bay leaves and crushed chilli) bring this mixture to a boil. The pickling spice will colour the water a slight yellow that's when the brine is ready.

 

You can cut up the cucumber how ever you wish, you can even peel it if you want to, I just slices mine in rounds and left the peel on. If you like pickled onions you can also slice up some onions and add it to your jars.

 

Once everything is ready place the cucumbers and onion inside the jars and top with the brine till almost full. and that's it. You have to leave it at least a month before its good to eat  but its at its best after 3 months. This will make about 4-6 jars if there is any brine left simple pour it into an empty jar and store when you have something more you want to pickle simply re-boil and pickle.

I only had enough cucumbers for 3 jars so I have quiet a bit of brine left over (Should have halved the recipe) but now its there for the next lot of cucumbers.

 

Herbs, glorious herbs!

So herbs is what I started out with and they are doing pretty well, their growth was stunted in the beginning because I had bad soil, potting mix isn't for planting herbs they need sandy soil so that their little roots can grab hold and grow. The four herbs that are doing the best inside are my Marjoram, Basil, Thyme and Chives which is really lucky because they are some of the ones I use the most. My chives I keep in the fridge in a zip lock bag to use fresh but the others I freeze in water in ice blocks so that I can just pop it in the food as I cook. the basil especially because you cant keep it in the fridge and drying it out is to hard since there is so much water inside the leaf. I have thrown out quiet a few leaves learning this.

I have bought some more top soil to mix into the soil I have for my herbs so that they can do better.

First Harvest

Finally the moment I never thought would arrive! I have picked my first three cucumbers and Tomato! Their not perfect but thats the sign that they are from the garden. Tonight I will make a salad and these will be included! I cant make a whole salad with them but I can add to one and make it divine.

And I also picked some of my beans, these were the Star 300 beans and they really didnt yield very much. Im not sure if it was the weather, the soil or just bad luck but I have bought the Green feast beans to try so I hope they do well. The Star 3000 I must say they grew fast and can take a beating but I only had 3 bushes and only got maybe 20 beans per bush. So you either have to have like 100 bushes or try a new variety.The Greenfeast is said to have a very high yield rate so I will see.

I am still waiting for my Zucchinis to get a bit bigger before I can pick those and have it roasted with some onions, pumpkin carrots and chicken. Hmmmmm I cant wait.

Also if you haven't already seen, I have added two more pages to my blog; tips and fertilizers. So go have a look at those if you have a minute to spare.

I know that its probably best to get your growing tips from an expert gardener whose been gardening longer than 8 months. But sometimes its nice to get some tips from a novice whose getting down and dirty doing it and messing up from time to time.

Hope everyone has a good week. This week I have to pile the sand up on my potatoes, deweed (I seem to do this so often its like weeds rain down with the rain drops!) and also give my plants some sea grow.

Update 8 December 2013

So another quick update on some of my plants outside:

 So the garlic chives are starting to flower, these are great because they seed themselves year after year and each year they come up they are thicker and more tasty. This year I am going to save some of the seeds, so that if anything happens to these I can grow them again. They have grown well in a full sun place that gets more than 10 hours of direct hot sun. I don't water them they only get water when it rains and I dont often give them fertilizer either and they are thriving. I think some plants need to be treated like weeds.

At the top, my thirst back of carrots have finally sprouted up yay. Then my second batch of carrots are doing extremely well, with tiny carrots on the way. These carrots are about the size of a pencil now. I needs to give them some sea grow to help them grow big and fat

 These three plants are all tomato plants, a cherry tomato plant, red roma and yellow roma all are resilient to the viticulium wilt that killed everything else. I didnt know this that was just dumb luck that they were resilient.

 This is my best tomato plant that has survived. There are three others but they are about half the size of this bush.

 Some of the first tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, these bushes are a giant heirloom variety but the tomatoes are only about the size of a tennis ball. But thats due to the bad state the bushes were in for a long time. :(

 My Zucchini bush, I had no idea that the bushes got quite so big. And also there is Fred, my basset that is determined to eat everything that I plant. But hes been pretty good lately

And Finally one of the Zucchinis that are growing. I'll get to pick and get them soon. I cant wait

New seeds, couldnt help myself

Lavender Haven was having a sale on their summer seeds so I bought a few more. I got leeks, spring onions, pumpkin, watermelon, onions, butternut, gem squash, beetroot, zucchinis, peas and green beans (A different variety than what I have)

Since our summer started off very hot and dry my plants suffered from it. Not to mention that most of my tomatoes were killed off by Verticulium Wilt which is a bacteria that cant be killed by a fungicide and most likely came with the plants when I bought them. (So annoyed but cant blame the nursery you dont notice until the plant is a bit bigger) But after calculating the days till harvest of my cucumbers and tomatoes I have decided to plant again and pray that I beat the frost. I had dreams of filling up jars and jars for canning but I dont know if that will happen this year. Keep your fingers crossed.

Back to the seeds, so I bought all those seeds I'm not sure where I will plant all of them because my garden space is limited so I am going to have to buy containers. But those are vegetables that we use and eat often and I really would love to try and grow them. Not to save money but for the sheer better taste of home grown vegetables. And Its a hobby, how long do you have to garden before you can say its a hobby? Well I think its a hobby. Im not sure which seeds I will try to grow now or if I should wait until next year? But I am going to try and grow a plant or two indoors in winter So I'll see how that goes. The plants that I plant in the containers I will move indoors when the frost starts and I think that it will do well in there, at least I hope so

Hope everyone is having a good weekend

Herbs

Many of the herbs that I planted came up to small seedlings and just died or didnt come up at all and no matter what I did this happened. The lavender, chamomile, lemon basil, sage. I googled it and the answer seemed to be that the seeds were old or not stored well. So I was sold dud seeds. I know that its a risk of buying seeds over the internet but its very annoying! So I will try with new seeds from another place next year.

Even though my herbs have been growing a while they are still small because they got off to a rough start so they were a bit stunted. The reason was because truthfully I had no idea what I was doing and I believed everything from pinterest. While there are a lot of good ideas, theres also a lot of information that is just wrong and I learnt the hard way. The best soil is not the fake soil or potting mix but a mixture of 1:2 potting mix and top soil and Plastic pots work just as well as clay. Plating your seedlings in cardboard egg boxes then in the garden doesnt work because the cardboard doesnt devolve away and the roots get root rot. So research a lot and expect some of your plants to die.Well there are a bunch of photos of some of my herbs that are doing the best. I had a glutton of garlic chives so those I shopped up and froze in water in ice trays. It tastes amazing. Once you taste fresh you never go back to dry.

Thyme

Garlic chives- growing up again

wild strawberrys (For the hamster)

Chives

Cinnamon basil

Basil

Star anise

Paprika

French beans

Outside plants

 Green beans, I love these because they produce a lot and quickly, I planted this green bean 2 weeks ago and these are the first beans already, the plants have a short life span though. So I planted 2 every 2 weeks 4 times. The beans are so sweet and tender!

 These green peppers come from bushes planted 6 years ago! I hate green peppers and much to my disappointment they just dont seem to die.

 Potatoes! I am trying potatoes to this year and they grow so fast I'm amazed!

 Tomatoes are still growing steadily

these are carrots planted about 16 days ago.Some already have tiny carrots on the ends.

End of the road for the carrots

Well this is the last for my very first carrots. And they were just amazingly delicious! This dish had carrots, onions and green beans all that came from the garden and it was so good. And I also tried my hand at a Focaccia Bread and that came out very well too.

I was going to use the onions from the garden but apparently my mother bought somethings called pearl onions which are the ones used to pickle with so they were tiny and I just put them into the stew.

Cucumbers and Tomatoes

 After such a mission to get my Cucumbers to grow, we have some cucumbers that are about gherkin sized. The plant still isn't as big as it would have been by now. But its producing fruit and I'm very excited that its still alive even. They are demanding a lot of water and fertilizer now.

 The tomatoes are making tomatoes but the bushes arent doing very well. I think that there might be a lot of chlorine in the water that I used to water because everything isnt doing all that well. And maybe a combination of heat as well. But we've been getting a lot of rain and they are looking better.

I have giant red heirloom tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes and then black cherry tomatoes growing but so far only the giant red tomatoes have made tomatoes.

They other two bushes seem to be doing better than the red ones but we'll see how they go. I wanted to make canned tomatoes but maybe not this year. I really wanted a variety of tomatoes so that I can make salads more interesting. Cant wait.

Carrots update

So I just wanted to give a quick update on my carrots and after being washed and having taken off the stems (Stems is that what you call it? Their leaves?) I have enough carrots for only one meal. 6 months for just one meal! So now that I know this I know that you have to plant a lot, much more than what I planted so I have planted more. Hopefully these new ones will get bigger and then there will be a lot more to be eaten. But as I said before my carrots were purely for the joy of growing it.

Carrots!

Hooray for carrots. Even though their R6 a kg it's not a vegetable that is going to save you money for growing, but it's worth the experience. They do taste 100% better than the bought ones but these took a long long time to grow. We started them in winter, 6 months later and halfway through summer still waiting for some to grow. But I decided to pull them up today and planted some more carrot seeds. These didnt get off to a good start. First frost, then white fly and bad weather.  If I was depending on these I would have starved to death long ago. I found that carrots are quiet easy to grow, they dont need much care but they need fertilizer when they start growing. The soil can be needs to be a bit loose but nothing like potting soil. Anything to hard and they become deformed. Hopefully the new batch wont take so long :)

It's been so long

I haven't posted in such a long time. But things take a long time to grow and I was also struggling a lot with my garden and I was quiet disheartened. But things are looking up. As a first time gardener I can't expect it to be smooth sailing. So I have a few additions to my garden and many subtractions. But I'll post a full update on all of that tomorrow. For now I want to show you that my cucumber I the pot despite all the trouble I had with it and it coming back for the dead twice it's finally made two small cucumbers! This is like a beacon of hope for me. Since my main goal is to see if it's possible for me to grow all of this in winter inside a spare room in the house. 

This poor cucumber has survived all the abuse and it's still producing fruit. Took a while but it did so cucumbers for beginners are A++!

Growing seeds

Since I have decided to grow my plants from seeds because its a lot cheaper than buying seedling from a nursery, I can plant as many or as little as I want, which was nice since I was planting in pots that can only take about one plant. But also that I can keep seeds for a few years to come.

I thought that I would sit and write down how I have started my seeds for the plants that are going to be planted outside. Its very simple. Plant your seeds 2-4 weeks depending on your plants before the last frost. and here's how to start:

Containers:

Smaller plants I have in egg cartons because its a quick way to section off your plants and not have to worry that you have planted them to close together. I dont plant the cardboard with the plant as I have read on the internet because I have done it before and my plants died since the cardboard didnt melt and the roots got damaged. But I found that the soil pops out of the egg cartons in one nice clump of sand with the roots which can then be planted easily. For my flowers and chilli peppers I used these.

Larger plants I like to use old yoghurt pots or I take an old cardboard milk carton cut it in half and then you have two container. I fill with soil and then you can plant them in the pots, dont water to much or add drainage holes in these. I find that the soil also pops cleanly out of these holders.

Soil:

I like to use soil, the seedling mix from the nursery rather than the soil-less mixes that you can buy.
Then add a tiny bit of fertilizer to the soil. I add epsom salts about 1 teaspoon- 1 liter to the water that I water the soil with, I add my seeds and I cover with a bit of soil before water a bit more. Then I place them in a large clear plastic container with a lid. This creates a mini green house and keeps the humidity high so you wont have to water as often and it will help the seeds sprout sooner.

The mini greenhouse is places in a sunny spot and dont forget to crack the lid so that here is ample air circulation inside otherwise mold can grow.

Hardening:

Once your seeds have sprouted and grown a bit you need to harden them to the sun. This can be done by taking your mini green house outside for a few hours each day and open the lid so that your seedlings are exposed to the sun. I have read that you should do this for a week. So my plan is to harden them for 1 hour each day and increase the hour each day. To make more sense:

day 1- 1 hour

day 2-2 hours

day 3-3 hours

and so on until you have gotten them to 7 hours, you can go longer but I believe that this should be long enough for the seedling to withstand being transplanted.

Transplanting:

When to transplant a plant has always been my main worry, but I have read and found that you should transplant it after the seedling has grown its first 2 true leaves. A true leaf is the first leave that it grows that looks like the leaf the plant is meant to have. If you're not sure what that looks like then another way to time it is to wait until the seedling has at least 5 leaves and then it should be strong enough to transplant. Dont forget to fertilize the soil and water well before transplanting.

And that's the plan. Hope it can help and give you some inspiration.

Finally getting somewhere

Finally I'm getting somewhere with my garden. My fencing is keeping my basset our the garden so I can really get cracking. Today I did a lot in the beds at the back. I sprayed for cut worm and ants (I don't care much for going organic I know these homemade things don't kill the pests and I will be damned if my hard work gets eaten!! Anyway) put fertilizer and then I dug up the ground a bit and added some compost then I watered it all in.

I discovered that one of my cucumbers I had planted outside was still there, a bit trampled on but it seems to be doing better after a good watering. So my soil is ready for my plants. 

I checked up on my other veggies that I have in large pots in our pool area. And they too are making a good recovery. My gardening year has really started out roughly. But finally nothing is eating them and they seem to be doing well.

I have some carrots growing in a pot and I am so impressed at how well they have grown. I decided to pull one up to see how they looked and was pleasantly surprised when a tiny carrot appeared. (It was really crunchy and tasty too!) 

I planted 9 coli flowers of which only 2 survived but the one is finally making a coli flower yay! 

This is the one I'm most proud of. 

I even finally have a small strawberry finally growing. These plants we got from cuttings of a friends plant. This was the first time I had used cutting and of course most of it died.

And then another thing is my red onions they are finally starting to make little onions too. I read that you can grow onions during winter. But it turns out not just any variety can. So have a look at the different varieties an your needs before you plant. In these containers I also have lettuce and celery but they are still o the fence they will either die or flourish, I'm hoping the latter of course.

My cucumbers inside (the pot one and spare one) have finally made their first true leaf. I finally read a place that have a better detail of how and when to transplant your seedlings. If you started them with a grow light then you need to harden them to sunlight for at least a week. But if you started them in a sunny window you just need to acclimatize then for a day or two. And the best time to transplant your seedling is once they have made two true leaves. This is true for almost all vegetables, fruits and even flowers.

In my herb garden inside my cone flowers have sprouted finally! 

As you can see my seeds are doing very well I their seed box. I open it once a day for a few hours so they can get some direct sunlight.