It is time for an update on my progress in Melinda's 'Seed to Seed Challenge'. The mustard spinach, rocket, silverbeet and broccoli seeds I direct seeded into the garden are doing well. They were so thick I had a lot of thinning to do. I regretted not making a 'baby greens salad' after feeding the sacrificed seedlings to the chooks. I saved some by transplanting into pots for planting out later.
My hand made seed raising mix using recycled Styrofoam worked really well and I have now transplanted some of the Cauliflower and Brussel Sprouts seedlings to larger pots (top shelf below).
I'll be planting these out soon into the new straw bale garden seen in my last post. My clay garden soil tends to get very waterlogged during winter, so I am hoping this style of raised garden bed overcomes this problem. It was really easy to make. Using these instructions as a guide, I simply placed the bales in place, and then filled the center with garden compost and mushroom compost. The garden has been sitting vacant aging for a few weeks and I may give it a few more before planting, as I am worried about planting directly into the rich mushroom compost. The garden literally only took me an hour or so to make and materials were only $21 in total given the availability of cheap hay and mushroom compost locally.
I recently collected some Native Spinach (Tetragonia tetraganoides) seeds and after a few more weeks of drying will attempt to germinate some. Other future plantings are to include carrot, cabbage, onions, parsley, and snow peas.
I was a little slack and bought a punnet of celery seedlings, as I probably left it too late to grow from seed. But I guess one punnet is better than buying everything in punnets as I used to!
You can read my previous Seed to Seed update here.
