Crystal Beauty Red Fringed Tulips

My Red Fringed Tulips from Tesselaar have poped up in the last week and they are beautiful! Last year my tulips got attacked by aphids and I didn't see any, but I've kept a close eye on them this year and no aphids so far!

Seed Progress

It's almost been two week since I started all my seeds and half of them are already up and growing.  I do have mold growing on the outside of the peat pots and the pots made out of news paper which is a bit concerning. All the Tomato seedlings have sprouted as well as the pumpkin, marigolds, nasturtiums, chamomile and rocket. The eggplant, capsicum, lemon balm, malabar spinach, tomatillo and basil are yet to sprout.

My first set of successful seedlings!

The seedling set up in the garage. 

Progress Report

Here's a look at how the gardens going at the moment:

The over grown dwarf snow peas are slowly coming to an end; they got badly bashed around in the last storm we had. The potatoes have sprouted through and the wheel barrow has been planted up with edible flowers and herbs.

The hyacinths are long gone, but the tulips are just popping up.

 The red and brown shallots have all sprouted and are looking healthy so far. Unfortunately all my garlic has failed to thrive, gone limp and is now dying. This was such a blow to me because mum said garlic was fool proof!

The collection of mint living in the re-purposed cookware is thriving minus a small scale attack. There's common mint, apple mint, Vietnamese, spearmint and after dinner mint. Also the strawberry plants that I planted in May now have the biggest strawberries I've grown thus far.

Seed Starting

Spring is officially here! The long awaited September has finally rolled in and I've gotten straight to work on starting my seeds. I decided to try and start all of my summer veggies from seed this year as it's much cheaper. I've read plenty of books on how to successfully start seeds and I've almost perfected the art with lettuce and spinach seeds over the winter. Fingers crossed all goes well!

Here is a list of the seeds I've started in the garage under fluro lights:

• Basil: Sweet, Thai & Lemon.
• Chinese Giant Capsicum
• Eggplant; Listada Di Gandia
• Wrinkled Butternut Pumpkin
• Cherry Tomato: Cherry Roma, Brown Berry & Yellow Pear
• Standard Tomato: Tigerella, San Marzano
• Purple Tomatillo

 These are the seeds I started in the green house outside:

• Wild Rocket 
• Malabar Spinach
• Nasturtium
• Lemon Balm
• German Chamomile
• Marigold: Citrus mix & Red marietta

Even more mushrooms...

I know I've already blogged about my mushroom succuess but I just had to share the latest and first harvest from the white mushroom box. The harvest ended up weighting a total of 750g.

The previous posts can be found: here, here and here.

Determined

I was re-potting my lettuce seedlings yesterday when I discovered this little fighter. A discarded trimming had sprouted roots and was growing into the cardboard underneath!

Pretty Purple Flowers

It's been really pretty in the garden at the moment as I have quite a few flowers in bloom. In the house I grew up in the garden floor was carpeted in violets and I've really missed that this year. I couldn't find and seedlings in the nursery so I went over to my friends house and took some out of her front yard and replanted them into some pots. I never thought they'd flower so soon but they're all in bloom!

 Here are some pictures I've taken recently: The violets from my friends, My newly planted hardenbergia, some cheap but effective potted colour and my hyacinth bulbs.

I swear I didn't give it Steroids!

I've already shared  the success I've had with my swiss brown mushroom box, but I never thought I would get anything as big as this coming from it! It took about a week for the mushroom to get to this size. It's cap is 17cm in diameter and the stalk is 5cm wide!