Garden share collective - September 2014 - Welcome Spring

Hello there, thank you for visiting and for reading my GSC post for September 2014.

Part of the Garden Share collective, hosted by Lizzie over at Strayed from the Table.

All of this months posts from other contributors are here

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ETA: At the bottom of this blog post you'll notice I've added an InLinkz button, there you will be able to link to other GSC members blogs. Clever eh!

It's the first day of Spring here in New Zealand and it's raining! But never mind the garden needed a bit of a drink and it's supposed to clear by the afternoon. I hope you enjoy seeing what's happening at our place. 

The Greenhouse and other growing areas

Joe put some pavers around the greenhouse, hopefully it will be easier to walk down and less maintenance, we were constantly weeding the bark mulch path.

The greenhouse

A work in progress

And finished, apart from one or two small jobs, but it's ready for use once Joe has dug out some of the old soil and topped up with compost and manure.

Moving raised beds

The beds we had outside the laundry don't get enough light in the winter, so we moved them

The bed made from sods of earth cut out from a new bed will be a pumpkin bed, it needs to be filled with compost & muck.

Other maintenance

I sprayed the stone fruit tress with copper and fed the citrus trees, weeded the beds with crops in and the raspberry canes were cut back

What's growing and what's being harvested

Broad beans are flowering, the silverbeet and spinach is finally taking off...

 ..as is the kale

the strawberries are flowering, they will be need to be replanted next year, apart from tidying up they will be left alone this year.

Since I weeded the leek bed the leeks have made some growth, we will need to get them in much earlier next time if we want to use them during the winter.

The satsuma tree is still producing and I've used some of them in Marmalade

I was also given some lemons, so they and grapefruits from our tree were also used

My one lone seville orange, used specifically in marmalade. This one will end up in the next batch I make.

 We've started harvesting some of the green leaves....

 ...and had to use some of the parsley

 so made a parsley sauce to serve with some fresh fish and wilted greens.

It was delicious......

What's being planted?
We bought a lot of seeds from one of our local garden centres, they are changing their packaging on their own seeds so were selling them off half price!
I've planted seeds from these....

Other seeds planted: Crown pumpkin, butternut squash(from seeds saved from a shop bought squash), sweet fennel, celery, basil and a selection of lettuces
....others still to plant...

Planted in peat pots, covered with vermiculite. They can be direct sown into the place of planted, pot and all. As soon as we have some shelving in the greenhouse they can be moved in there.

Covered with damp newspaper and polythene sheeting, the pots don't dry out this way.

As of the other day a pumpkin and cucumber are popping their heads up..

 
 Other seeds.....

 

The potatoes are in egg trays chitting (sprouting)

When we moved the raised beds we had to replant the garlic, earlier bulbs hadn't sprouted at all. Also reduced at Oderings were some garlic bulbs, we planted those and already they are sprouting. We'll leave planting them until later next year.

In the rest of the garden
Back in the June post I mentioned that some changes were to be made with the herb garden. We got around to making those changes this past week or so. We emptied the raised bed which was moved to the area by the greenhouse and transplanted the plants into the ground. This area is right outside the kitchen. I want to add a few more herbs that we regularly use and I also plan to puts some salad veg in here such as toms, cucs, lettuce etc

 We did it this way as we wanted to echo the shape of the rose border

 In the rose border we planted box hedging behind the roses. 
The buxus I managed to grow myself from cuttings

I saved us quite a bit of money doing this, we just have to wait for it to grow.

I still have lots left that need to develop their root system a bit more

All of these have been either taken from cuttings, transplanted or taken off other plants

The work force!

I hope to get around to reading more of your GSC posts this month
So until next month, happy gardening.