…. But something exciting happened. The postie delivered my seeds! It’s like all my Christmas’s have come at once – even though I know what is in the package. It’s all about what the package represents: Summer and all the sights, smells and flavours it has to offer.
Summer is hiding in these little packets!
As I sit here, wrapped up warm, watching the heavy rain come in horizontally and listening to the roar of the thunder, I can – for just a wee bit – lose myself in everything good about summer!
I was lucky enough to receive a gift certificate for $50 for my birthday last year (Thanks Dad), but as it was at the start of the growing season, I was already set up for my seeds for the year, and as it wasn’t the seed company running the competition, I couldn’t use them there either, so now as I prepare for a new season without restrictive brand constraints, I redeemed my voucher for a whole lot of goodies!
I try not to purchase hybrids where I can help it so I can collect seeds and re-sow the following year, and for evermore, for free, allowing me to spend my money on adding to the collection – not replenishing it.
So this parcel is exciting, because apart from the corn, which I haven’t tried to collect seeds from, everything in it is something I haven’t tried before.
I grabbed a couple of onions: Borettana are really cute small flat ones that would look cool in a pickle jar; and a shallot seed – to try making sets for next year, because this year they were really expensive and the quality was terrible.
As much as I hate mixed packets – because you never know what you will get – especially with tomatoes, when you go to all that effort to find that you have grown 3 of the same kind and the one you really wanted to get is taunting you from the photo on the front of the packet. But this time I took a chance and got Easter Egg Radish. With such a short turnaround to eating time – I’m sure I’ll get to try them all.
The cucumber I chose promises to have a thinner skin and not need peeling, unlike the one I normally grow.
Judging by the zucchini that wouldn’t die this year (in the end it drowned in early June) I decided it must be ideal conditions for squash here so I thought I’d try spaghetti squash and see if I could get it past the kids where I failed with the zucchini!
I thought I might brighten up the patch with Rainbow Lights Beets and hope they taste nicer than the boiled to death silverbeet we had as kids! Something that sounds like it illuminates the way for unicorns has to be good – surely?!
Despite the fact I have more varieties of tomatoes than a person really needs, I couldn’t help it when I saw a friend on you tube harvest hers – I just had to have some. Check it out here.
I decided to add to my melon collection, because you can never have too many in the heat of summer so I chose a green one and an orange one that promise to deliver a fine bounty!
I also want to make a “Tea” garden this year so I got some super sweet Stevia to try out, some sage and some lemon balm. Well it’s a start!
And because I have previously ignored the flower garden, until I got the hang of the veggie patch, I grabbed a couple of flowers to try. I know 2 flowers don’t make a flower garden, and they probably don’t go well together – one is Blue Globe Echinops because I loved the shape, and a dainty Campanula blue bell – which is a swap out because they didn’t have the one I wanted which was like a campanula – only more colourful. So here begins my flower gardening attempts.
So now all I can do is put the packets aside with all the others and wait….
Come again soon – I can feel a crazy plan coming on.
Sarah the Gardener : o )
SARAH THE GARDENER 