Starting with seeds

It's mid-August and here in Melbourne it's still cold and wintery, but I am itching to start getting my spring garden going. Most years I leave it too late, and by the time the plants have grown big enough and are starting to flower, the hot temperatures tend to kill everything. My other problem is that everything tends to ripen at once, so I'll have a few weeks of vegetables and nothing for the rest of the year.

This year, I am thinking of doing things differently and plan to plant several crops, each about a month apart. While it's still too cold outside to get things growing in the garden, I've decided to start the first batch of seedlings early and keep them inside until they are strong enough and the weather is warm enough to move outdoors. I'll only plant a few of each variety and if they don't grow then I've not really lost anything and will know what not to do next year!

The other benefits of starting seedlings inside is that:
a) They are free from the pests that usually get to young seedlings
b) They are out of the wind (I've had seed trays blow away in the past)
c) I can water them daily without having to go out into the cold
d) Out of the wind they are less likely to dry out
e) Having them in my living room means they'll get a lot more attention, I can see how they're progressing each day, and if I'm feeling lonely I can have a chat with them :-)

I started with 4 seed trays and filled them with some seed raising mix. Amazingly, they managed to fit perfectly on a square tray I had lying around, so I don't have to worry about any water dripping onto the floor.

Round one seedlings include:
- Cherry tomatoes
- Zucchini
- Dwarf beans
- Climbing beans
- Coriander
- Spinach
- Basil
- Rocket

These will now sit by my back door, hopefully receiving enough light and water without getting too cold. I also picked up the perfect watering accessory last weekend at The Diggers Club - it turns any water bottle into a gentle watering can, exactly what i need for watering seedlings!

Where has the day gone?

I got a bit distracted at the garden shop today, so by the time I'd got everything home and unpacked there wasn't a whole lot of light left. However I did manage a few jobs that have piling up over winter.

I've FINALLY repotted my lemon tree. I'm sure it will grow out of this pot eventually, but for now it has somewhere to live.

I also refilled the water tank. A garden without a tap can be rather annoying, and I mostly end up filling buckets from the house. The other option is a hose over the fence, but this means walking out the front door and around the building to turn the hose on, then running back around, through the house, out the back door - to try and catch the hose and release the pressure before it explodes! Followed by the same in reverse when I want to turn it off again. There have been a few annoying water explosions doing this! So - my solution so far has been to fill a plastic water tank from the hose, and use this to fill a watering can. I still need to do the sprint around the house when its been hot and I want to give the garden a really good watering, but for the occasional drink when its not raining the tank and watering can work just fine.

Finally, I've put some more lawn seed down to fill in all the holes that have appeared over winter. There is rain forecast all week so it seems like a good time to give it another go. This time I've gone with a self repairing variety, Kikuyu, to see if this works better. The ground is almost all clay, and the previous varieties I've tried have been so thin that it's time to try something different. More on the lawn another day.

I'll leave with a glimpse of some of the mess I'm going to need to deal with tomorrow. Hopefully now this photo is up here it will motivate me to actually get to it all!