Welcome to the weekly discussion thread for the Gardening Australia community. Use this post to dscuss anything garden related that you don’t think justifies its own post.
With many days of rain forecast in Mellbourne I don’t think I’ll be doing much gardening for a while. The plants are loving it though - there is a lot of new growth happening outside which is great to see.
I have a parsnip flowering at the moment, and I hadn’t realised how tall it was going to get - it’s taller than I am! The bees and hoverflies are enjoying the flowers at the moment, and once the seeds set I may be in danger of parsnips taking over the garden.
With being busy and a dive in my health I’ve been neglecting the seedlings a bit. Some spinnos battle bravely on. The carrots are clustered inefficiently… that will be even fewer after thinning than if they’d been sown more evenly. Oh well. Call that practice. The cat grass is kind of inching up.
A few rosemary cuttings in a glass of water have gone mouldy but sprouted roots above the water line… ok? Maybe they can be salvaged if I cut the affected bits off and cut off the curving tops. Two thirds of them will be gone.
I had a tiny bit of potting mix left so planted some more wild grass for Melbcat while she isn’t here to doordash, and I hope these ones don’t die. Hopefully the rain settles them in well so they’ll soon be strong enough to come in and get munched.
The seedlings are still alive but looking a bit sad.
The spinnos seem to have dried up enough to stop damping off but the survivors are looking a bit twisted and stunted. A less fungi resistant heirloom variety, self watering pots with a water reservoir (ie not enough drainage) and not thinking to constantly drain their flooding through the rainy season were a really bad combination. I probably won’t plant more spinach as summer heat is approaching and they don’t seem to get enough light inside (which had been my original plan).
Something nipped the tops off a couple of carrots. They were so crowded and bunched that it was probably affecting their thickening so I thinned and replanted the pulled ones into the empty spots of the spinach pot. More went into the empty areas of the same pot to space them a bit more evenly. Probably not great and might affect their growth but I didn’t want to just rip them out. If they grow it’s a second chance.
Some of them were thickening into tiny carrots though. I’ll probably need to thin it again as they grow properly round.
Large deep seedling trays could have been a really efficient choice for these shallow round varieties, but the only ones I have are solid bottom and being used as larger accessible litter trays.
The rosemary sprigs have been planted. There was no potting mix left so I salvaged some from a few old dried pots, trimmed off the mouldy bottoms and the bent tops, and watered them in.
The parsley however is looking very happy and healthy. When it was first planted it did wilt dramatically for a second and I had to pull off some yellow leaves a few weeks ago but that has basically hit the ground running.
The new cat grass seeds don’t seem to be sprouting but the existing growth is slowly coming along.
My arms sting a little. It comes to me that I wandered out there and did a few things with no sunscreen on. That was silly.
It always takes a while after winter to get back into the habit of thinking about sunscreen again.
I can’t say I’m having much success with my spinach at the moment - one lot was growing well initially but has now gone to seed, and I have one plant that is growing really slowly, it’s barely bigger than a seedling and it has been in the ground for weeks. Fortunately the lettuce seems to be doing much better - I have some under the climbing beans, so hopefully the shade will keep them from getting too hot with the increase in sunshine.
Rosemary is fairly hardy, so hopefully your cuttings will go ok. I have a prostrate rosemary which was growing up some lattice so that it looked like a standard bush, but it has now thinned out at the bottom and is just branches with no leaves, all the leafy growth is at the top of the lattice. Fortunately I have another plant growing in the ground from a branch I pegged down which is taking over as ground cover, and I have bought a pink flowering and a white flowering bush to fill in the middle (the original is blue flowering) so I will hopefully have what looks like one rosemary bush with multi-coloured flowers.
Fingers crossed. I have them on the windowsill so I remember to water and hopefully they turn to the sun to correct the slight bend.
Maybe pinching the tips off or a light prune might bush it out? I’ve never had prostrate rosemary
