After any number of winter and autumn sowings, I’ve ended up with a mixed bag of seedlings on my plant stand. Saturday was the day to put some/more/some more of them in the ground.
The main desperation arose from the tomatoes (top shelf in the photo above) which are well beyond seedling stage. This is the 3rd and final planting of seedlings from the same sowing done in late August. I also had a bit of basil and marigold that I wanted to intersperse between my tomatoes – companion planting, don’t you know.
Those spring onions sown in early September weren’t ever going to spring in their bin-lid seed tray so they went into my new onion bed (formerly lettuce – crop rotation, don’t you know). I finished off the bed by sowing 3 rows of red onion seeds with 3 rows of radishes in-between them. The onions will take almost 6 months before I can harvest them. I’m not sacrificing an entire bed for that much time to the lowly onion so I’ll get at least one radish crop in the interim.
A few lettuce seedlings went in to fill holes from earlier plantings. Ditto kohlrabi and broccoli.
Finally, I moved the last of the thyme and chives out of their seed tray. Frank is convinced that thyme will be a great plant to fill holes in the wood (old fence palings) he’s used to make the veggie beds. I’m pretty sure they’ll be shaded out (or tampered with by the chooks if they aren’t behind the fencing) but I gave it a go in 5 holes (1 of which is chicken-exposed). Another lump of thyme seedlings went into the herb bed (which the chickens have, at least for now, stopped using as a dust bath) with a few chives and I made a pot each of chives and thyme. I left those pots on the planter stand outside hoping to minimise transplant shock but they’ll end up in the kitchen (if they survive).
Everything new was watered with liquid seaweed and I’m quietly confident they’ll do well.
There is almost order in this chaos. I’m closely watching for the right month to sow and I’m trying to plan beds so I don’t plant the same family 2 seasons in a row. I’m also getting better at not interspersing perennials in the middle of annuals. I understand the concept of permaculture but I find that being able to empty a bed and then turn over manure and new compost into the whole bed makes for much healthier soil and hence healthier plants. Of course the biggest determination of my planned plantings is that this year I have almost double the amount of space in my veggie beds thanks to Frank’s creating a few new ones – or I will have double by the time he finishes his spring building spree.
Laura Rittenhouse's Gardening Journal 