Tomatoes

I just did a count up of all my tomato plants and I've got 23. Eight in the garden, seven in the glasshouse and the rest waiting to be transplanted somewhere there is room.

In the glasshouse are Black Krim, Juliet, Amazon Chocolate, Brown Berry (x2), Arctic and Sunset's Red Horizon.

Arctic is a cool-weather variety supposedly bred for the US military, to bear fruit in extremely cold climates. I've grown it before and it does ok, but not as well as I'd expect given that description! Sunset's Red Horizon is new to me this year, an heirloom variety from Bristol Seeds with "proven resistance to frost, blossom end rot and cracking". I like to plant at least one cool weather variety in case we have a cold spring. This year it's been warm and sunny, but even so Sunset is growing taller and producing flowers earlier than any of the others. Sunset and Arctic are the only 2 to have tiny green fruit so far.

Black Krim is a yummy beefsteak type that I've grown before and I love the flavour. The skin is a dark reddish black colour. Amazon Chocolate (also from Bristol Seeds) is also a beefsteak with a "winey, smokey, delicious taste".

Juliet is an F1 variety that I've grown before. It's a steady and reliable fruiter. The fruits are small to medium, oval shaped and very tasty. Brown Berry is also from Bristol Seeds (I like to try at least one new variety every year, so everything from Bristol Seeds is new to me this season), it's a cherry tomato, supposedly vigorous and yielding large crops. Semi-sweet, rich flavours and very juicy. I'm not sure how tall the plants will grow so I've staked them just in case, but I have noticed they look a bit more compact and bushy than the others.

In the garden I have Black Krim x2, Amazon Chocolate, Brown Berry x2, Juliet, Sunset, and Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln (Bristol Seeds) was limited stock and strictly limited to one packet per order, so I had to try it. Anything that limited must be good right? The description says, "High lycopene. Faithfully produces huge crops of meaty fruit." Another beefsteak I suppose. The reason I only have one in the garden and none in the glasshouse is that only one seed (out of 4) germinated, and it grew so slowly that it wasn't ready for potting on when I did all the glasshouse plants. It's catching up now though, so it will be interesting to see what it does.

Also in the glasshouse and just about ready to be transplanted out are another Amazon Chocolate, and some "bite size" varieties which I bought as seeds on sale at Bunnings: Green Grape, Yellow Pear and Red Fig (x5... must be a vigorous one). This afternoon when it cools down a bit I'll find somewhere to poke them in. I've got some pumpkin seedlings that need to go out too.

What tomato varieties are you growing this year?

Real Gardens #2

Jean and Graeme Holwell's Timaru garden might be small, but it is packed full of delightful plants and tiny treasures. On a sunny morning in early spring, mounds of green leaves are unfurling and buds are beginning to swell.

Everywhere you turn, there is something new and beautiful to see, like this little patch of crocus.

Even the street verge is beautifully maintained, with a patch of yellow polyanthus welcoming you to the garden.

This is a garden of contrasts, both in shape and texture. The path, formed of round concrete stepping stones and flanked by brilliant blue pansies, leads you towards the back of the property.

On the way you'll pass this clever bird bath. It's made from a saucer mounted on a piece of driftwood.

And end up at the pergola, which looks like a beautiful place to sit in on a warm summer's evening. There's even room for a small vegetable garden beside it.

The round stepping stones continue around the back of the house, where the rubbish bins, washing line and even a worm farm are tucked away.

Looking down, I noticed more lovely textures in the form of these groundcover plants scrambling over the round stones.

Here is a clever way of keeping tabs on tiny plants that die down over winter... a little bowl made of rocks. This must look so sweet filled up with little alpine flowers.

I hope you've been inspired by this tour - proof that you don't need a huge section to grow all your favourite flowers and plants. I'll be keeping an eye out for round stepping stones, and probably building a couple of rocky bowls for my cyclamen!

A big thank you to Jean and Graeme for letting me wander through your garden.

Snippets

I started work on the dreaded christmas presents this weekend. This is all I can show you for now, but after Christmas I'll do a proper show and tell. If you are looking for inspiration for handmade gifts, here are some of my previous years' round-ups.

I was busy in the garden this weekend, sowing and planting and transplanting. The potager is finally beginning to fill up. There are plenty of potatoes, rocket, lettuce, spring onions, and broccoli just about ready. I added tomatoes, chillis and capsicums, one zucchini, and sowed lots of beans. In the glasshouse I've got more tomatoes, chillis and capsicums as well as a cucumber and some strawberries. I've also sowed some flower seeds including love in the mist, linaria, gilia, alyssum, cosmos, calendula, scabiosa and echinacea (apparently hard to germinate so we'll see how that goes). Oh and verbascum, which was also hard to germinate. I've now finally got two miniscule plantlets peeking through - so I'm watering sparingly so as not to drown and willing them strongly to live, grow and develop some damn flowers!

This is the first strawberry of the season, harvested last week. It was delicious... so lovely and sweet sweet sweet. The second and third strawberries were fattening up beautifully, then as soon as they began changing colour something decided to sample them, chewing its way through all the red bits. I suspect it's earwigs. Does anyone know a good way of getting rid of them? They must be hiding under the leaves during the day, so I'm not sure if spraying with pyrethrum will work.

Well, I need to get back to my studio and do some more work there. After a winter of not doing much in the way of handcrafts, it's nice to get back in there and be creative! Oh - and I've finally got the next Real Gardens tour ready. Pop back tomorrow to check that one out :)

How to make rustic plant labels

I made a batch of plant labels to put in my garden. They are cheap, easy, and - best of all - not plastic, so I thought you guys might like to see how I made them.

Snap the ends off some wide craft sticks (the ones that are about 18mm wide - that's wider than the average popsicle sticks). You can use your fingers, but pliers will make the snapped end a bit tidier.

Sand the ends to get rid of any splinters.

I like to paint a light wash of brown watercolour paint over the sticks, so they aren't quite so garishly "new" looking.

Use a fadeproof and waterproof pen to write your plant names.

If you like you could decorate the sticks further with stickers and rubons.

Use a small saw to cut a chopstick in half. Sand the cut ends.

Use a waterproof wood glue to glue the stick to the chopstick, with the tapered end pointing down. Let dry.

Seal with a coat or two of clear varnish.

Then pop in the garden. These have lasted at least a season in my garden, and as they age they start to blend in more with their surroundings. Much more attractive than white plastic labels!

Crochet ta-dah

Here it is... a crochet footstool!

Third time is the charm, so they say, and it was on my third attempt at making the sides that they finally took on the right shape. First I tried a mesh pattern, but it was too busy with the granny square top. Then I did plain dc, but it began to bulge and ripple most unattractively. Eventually I realised that the top square was too big, so I ripped out the extra row of granny clusters that I'd put round the whole thing and began again in dc. After that, it mostly did what I wanted it to.

I thought about painting the legs, but decided I like them fine the way they are.

Pretty granny flower garden... The cover comes off for washing (which will be useful once Lui discovers it).

I'm very happy with my lovely spring flowers.

Labour Day labours

This post is almost a week late. It's been on my mind all week, I've even had the photos uploaded, but I've just been too tired to actually write it! But after a nice relaxing weekend at home, I can finally sit down and show you what I did last weekend.

I took the crochet outside to my "seating area". (Formerly brick storage area - but I heaved them all to one side, put in a couple of pots of colour and decided to ignore the dandelions.) As for the crochet, I was wishing all along that I'd gone with one of the suggestions offered in the comments of the last post instead of what I had planned. My idea was great but it began to develop an annoying and unintentional ripple, so I ripped it out and restarted three times... Urgh, lucky the surroundings were so peaceful and calming! (I'll show you what I made soon - ta-dah post coming up!)

From my seat I could see this view - the part of the garden where I'd spent the previous days laying the curved path, then digging over the bed. I also built a fence for beans to climb up.

Here's a better view of the fence. I'll plant my pink-flowered runner beans here, and some cannelini.

Here are the spuds before earthing up. I'm growing Swift, Heather and Desiree and I have some Karuparere that I really really need to get into the ground...

The most established corner of the garden - broccoli, pak choi and garlic at the back and spring onions in the front. I've since sown a row of carrots in front of the spring onions.

I put the glasshouse tomatoes into their pots on Labour Day. The rest are still in punnets and will wait another few weeks before I put them outside. The strawberries in their hanging baskets are doing well - I don't think the first ripe one is too far away!

This little blackbird has been turning up lately whenever he sees me digging. He gets himself a tasty lunch that way! He is quite fearless and likes to make a point of coming up really close behind me.

So that was last weekend. This weekend has been nice but not so photogenic - I've mostly been weeding, and digging up the garden to lay bricks for the last quarter of the circle path. I'll be so glad when that's done!

Crochet and my favourite tree

The big tree outside the lounge window is leafing up. I don't know what kind of tree it is but it's my favourite - it has small and slender bright green leaves in summer, which change to a glorious yellow in autumn and then drop off, just when the sun is getting low enough to shine through the window again. It shelters rhododendrons at its feet and the bird feeder in its branches. All in all a very considerate tree.

Here's what I've been working on at night lately. These little granny squares are quick and easy to make. I can even get through two on a good night, if I haven't spent too long wandering in the garden (as my wind-down after work) or wandering in blogland.

The pattern is called Summer Garden Granny Square, from Attic24.

They are all ready to be sewed together into something pretty... anyone want to guess what it is? Hint... not a blanket!

I'm so glad it's the weekend, I'm really looking forward to some quality pottering time in the garden, and hopefully getting this crochet project close to being finished. I'll share pictures as soon as it's done. What have you got planned for this weekend?

My potting corner

I had some quality pottering time in the garden this weekend. Above is the potager, half completed. The right hand side is done... the circle paths are laid and (most of) the ground is planted. I have potatoes in the big patch closest to the camera, and chives alongside the central straight path. I know, they look like overgrown grass, but that's only because the overgrown grass growing over the unlaid brick path is making you think that! Once I get those bricks in and the grass tidied up, the chives will look charming and rustic. 'Kay?

Basically the whole left side is still unplanted, because there's no point doing that yet when I'll be trampling all over the whole thing putting the paths in. (The bricks are laid out on top of the ground, but not yet set in.)

Anyway. See back in the corner of the property behind the shed? That's my new potting corner. It's been designed to be home to all the useful but unsightly, or currently un-useful, things that don't fit in my shed.

In the bottom right hand corner is my apple tree "Baujade". It will hopefully screen that area off even more as it grows. Weeds are a major problem in this area of the garden (especially the dreaded convulvulus and oxalis) so I covered a lot of ground with weedmat. Around the apple tree I spread some dirt and sprinkled grass seed and a few wildflower seeds. If it looks like the picture in my head, I'll have a romantic mini-meadow here.

I've got some sweet peas growing in front of the trellis which will help with the screening too. When I put that trellis up, I was imagining hanging bunches of garlic and onions up to dry on it in autumn. Looking forward to that day...

Here are my compost bins. I just love making compost! The act of literally turning rubbish into a product that you usually pay money for really appeals to me, and it's such an easy thing to make. I have three bins so I always have something to be added to while the rest is brewing. I put my compost bins on tarpaulins to stop vigorous weeds from growing through.


This area is also a graveyard for spent bulbs, where they can gather their energy to bloom next season. The green metal stick on the left is my compost turner. It has sort of a corkscrew at the base and as you turn the top it burrows into the compost, which makes it easy to stir and turn.

This side still needs to be organised - I'm going to put a shelving unit up to tidy up all those pots. Then I'll actually be able to reach the potting bench!

This is a sort of avenue, or it will be once the trees grow! There are 2 apples and a feijoa.

Here's the part of the potager I've got planted up - from left to right are green broccoli, purple broccoli, pak choi, and garlic interspersed with some pak choi. In the small wedge shaped garden at the front is a row of spring onions and a tiny little rosemary cutting. I haven't quite decided what else to put here but it could end up being herbs.

This post was brought to you by the letters p-o-t... as used in the words potager, potting corner, pottering, compost and pots. And that makes me think that I've spent a bit too much time thinking about this post and it's time to go sautee some leeks for tea.

Spring posies

When flowers are abundant in my garden, I love to pick them and scatter them in vases throughout the house. I put them in places I'll be sure to see and smell them... the hallway table, dining table, kitchen windowsill, beside my bed. If I get a particularly nice bunch of something gorgeously scented, I've even been known to carry it with me from room to room. But basically I'll pick anything that's flowering or looks interesting... parsley, branches from shrubs, seed heads... it's all good!

Above is an early spring display. I just adore the look created by grouping several glass vases together and filling some or all of them with flowers. It's harder than you might think to create a good grouping of vessels though and mine still looks a bit sparse, so I think a bit of second hand shop trawling might be called for to find some more little bottles and things.

This cute little espresso cup is my favourite vase at the moment.

Here it is again with some pansies. They surprised me and lasted several days in the water.

My neighbour gave me some freesia bulbs and I planted them in my front garden. Behind are some poppies ("angel wings") and some tulips which I thought were going to be pale pink, but turned out red. The yellow freesias were also a surprise, but they became my favourites because of the long graceful stems and elegant structure.

They look so pretty in a vase, and smell divine too!

I just came across a new blog dedicated to sowing, growing and arranging flowers. Have a look at Flaming Petal for lots of inspiring ideas (there is also a seed giveaway on!)

How is your flower garden looking?