The weather has been weird lately. The garden thinks the weather's weird, too. Camellia varieties that should all bloom together are opening their buds bush by bush. The cherry tomatoes are still cropping, about six small red fruit a week, a bit sour but still tomato tasting. The spinach I planted in early autumn didn't germinate till two weeks ago, a row of dark green leaves poking out of frost-covered ground. Spinach shouldn't do that. But it did.
When I was a kid the only weird thing about the garden was the lack of babies in next door's gooseberry bed. Rosemary's parents had told her that's where babies came from, contradicting what my parents had told me, so we decided to prove the matter one way or another.
I don't know what this summer will be like. I think it will be hot, dry and thick with smoke, because that's what's forecast by the weather bureau, but the Araluen gums are budding, which they only do before there's summer storms to come, and the Acacia melanoxylon didn't set masses of seed last year, which they usually do before a bushfire summer. Maybe it was just too damp and misty for them to set seed.
I'm still only going to plant seeds of never-say-die plants this year. This is the time to order seed, then pop those seeds into pots on the windowsill so you have early plants to put out after you've put away your Melbourne Cup hat or hangover.
Why seeds? Firstly, you have more choice - the seed catalogues just now will make you salivate at the varieties of veg rarely found in punnets, or daydreaming of your garden filled with just those flowers... 12 months of food and beauty for a few dollars, instead of $100 or more from punnets. Home-grown seedlings are also tougher. Nursery plants have been grown in perfect conditions. Your conditions might be perfect. Mine aren't. If the seedlings survive my pots, they'll flourish in the garden.
A few tricks will help. Use the best soil or potting mix possible. Dowse it with strong chamomile tea to kill the organisms that might cause "damping off", where the seedling rots at soil level. Covering the pot and its seed with a wide-mouthed glass jar (or yes, plastic) will help keep the soil warm, moist and speed up germination. Take the jar off once the seedlings appear, or they may rot in the moist air. Plant fruit seed now, too. They germinate best when "winter chilled". Seedling fruit won't be true to type, but good.
My planting is conservative this year. Gone-to-seed parsley and kale will give us this year's crop with no help from me. I've also saved bean seed by leaving mature beans on the dead plants. The fallen mini pear tomatoes will grow seedlings, many of which I'll give away - a stubbornly fruiting tomato should be cherished.
Pear-shaped tomatoes in either red or yellow are the most cold/heat/drought/hail resistant varieties I know, even better than the Siberian Tomato variety, which has never given us much of a crop in any weather. Try Italian 'Oxheart' tomatoes, too, because they are thick-fleshed and delicious and make the best tomato sauce or kasundi. I've grown Grosse Lisse every year of my adult life. It's not the best at anything, but a good all-round performer.
We'll also have apple cucumbers, silver beet ... I stopped myself from writing 'and' after that, and hope I have the same discipline come spring, as water may be scarce here. Try annual flowers that can stand almost anything, like spreading petunias or Californian poppies, both of which grow fast, cover lots of ground per plant and flower prolifically. Cosmos and zinnias are also 'never-say-die' flowers, easily grown from seed, but as they are tall, they can get smashed by windy thunderstorms or hail.
Actually the best thing about growing your own seedlings is that you can buy now, plant now - and dream of summer lavishness.
This week I am:
- Getting pots ready for early seedlings.
- Filling vases with camellias, hellebores in a dozen shapes and colours, early daffs, jonquils and the first white michelia.
- Reminding myself to water, water, water...
- Rejoicing that covering the coffee bushes with bubble wrap did keep them unfrosted.
- Still picking tiny broccolini heads every day to stop it going to seed.
- Finally eating loads of English spinach.
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