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I haven't been in the garden since early saturday, sometimes I like to have time away, that way I really notice changes that have happened. I'll be out there this evening, just before the sun sets to check on things. We may be having one of those cauli's with dinner tonight. Will be cutting back the unruly chives in the herb bed and adding that to some mashed potatoes, throw in some fried fish and we have dinner!
My flower seedlings are coming along nicely. the Lobelia seeds have all come up, they're so TINY! I'm not sure how I'm going to separate/space them. Sunflowers had to be started again, I had checked thru in the soil to see if any were germinating, only one seemed to be, kept that one and threw out the rest as the cardboard (toilet rolls cut in half!) had been placed too close together and had begun to go mouldy. So I should see at least one pushing thru in the next couple days.
I potted up my gladiolus' (april 28th) in a couple of large pots, they're on the patio for the moment.
I NEED MORE GARDEN SPACE! Now that I'm getting into flower growing. Hopefully I should get two 3x15 ft beds in the front for all my flowers. Will have to pave over the rest for parking space.
I'm having a birthday tomorrow and I plan on sitting in front of the TV watching the cricket world cup final (Australia v Sri Lanka) and eating lots of birthday cake. So I figured on one more blog this side of the weekend, hoping someone will answer a few questions I have regarding my alliums...
I was thinking about my onions, right now they're the size of golf balls, or maybe a little smaller, I noticed they have begun to brown up some, I'm not sure whether they need feeding or they are done growing? What do they like to eat at this stage? Nitrogen? I would really like them to get maybe twice the size they are right now.
I have some shallot sets that I saved/dried from my last planting but no where to put them right now, I LOVE growing these, will have to wait for the brassicas to finish first. How long can these sets last if kept dry?
My chives in the herb bed look awful, they are long and straggly and have brown tips again, should I just cut them back? If so how much, how tall can they be left?
I went to a slightly bigger garden centre yesterday, I was actually taking our youngest son to the barbers, left him with his dad and wandered off.
I bought some more plants for my herb garden: some flat leaf parsley (I've never been able to grow it from seed) and some fennel; not sure what I'll do with the fennel regarding cooking with it, it really does look a lot like the dill I just recently pulled up.
I planted out the mint in its pot, too. (thyme at the back, flat leaf parsley in the middle and the mint in the foreground)
I bought some Gladiolus - Blue Isle bulbs. I'm hoping I can simply pot these up and they will grow, any advice on growing these would be most welcome. They're not as bluey-purple as I would like them to be but, I guess, beggars can't be choosers.
Some of my seeds I sowed on Tuesday came up, (they came up yesterday actually!) it took only 2 days for them to show. The tall 'leggy' ones are the Zinnia and the tiny ones behind them are the Alyssum. One of the Balsam are coming up too. The covered seeds you can see are the Lobelia, really small seeds that have to be sown on the top with no covering, the plastic keeps them moist. I'm keeping them all inside for now, they dry out less quickly that way. The sunflowers haven't shown yet, the seeds are not as reliable so I decided to start them off first and then plant out the one's that show up. The variety is, I think, Giant Single, it has grown to over five feet in the past, with a huge, monsterous head that became so heavy it bowed down.
A bit windy and blustery today, raining on and off, the wind won't let it rain continuously. Lots of leaves blowing off the mango tree next door. I'm hoping the coconut tree won't drop anything today!
Young mangoes on the tree.
The cukes have male flowers that have dropped off, and also some female baby cukes. I'm pleased to see that the flowers are a good size, I never had flowers that big before on a cucumber. They're growing and developing really quickly. I'm still not sure why these are doing so well.
Cuke flowering.
Nice healthy leaves.
Some of the baby beets are taking off now, a lot stronger now, I'll give them another week or so before I move them nearer together to save some space.
Baby beets.
The lavender is taking its time growing, I have some in the sun and some in the semi (mango-tree-that-isn't-even-
mine-hogging-the-sun) shade. May move all into the sun.
I sprinkled salt on the gravel pathways again, I may have to try some vinegar too, to stop the weeds from growing. Trying hard not to use chemicals.
I saw some really pretty ideas at the garden centre for using up small cacti. They were in a shallow bowl terracotta pot, the arrangements were really attractive.
I may have to pull up the Polestar beans, they don't look good at all and are beginning to yellow. The Scarlett Emperor's are not fruiting at all! The 'baby bean' I had found is kinda shrivelled a bit. I'm hoping, in the future, that the potted flowers I'm growing will attract more bees and hummingbirds to my garden and maybe I'll have some success with pollination.
Sickly looking Polestar bean.
Here's some more pictures of various veggies..
Cabbage and cumber getting along nicely with each other.
Mature beets.
Really messy, long chives, not sure how to make these neater!?
Sweet pepper.
Cauliflower.
Shy flowering eggplant (wouldn't look at the camera!)
Nice healthy cabbage, growing bigger by the minute.
Monster sweet pepper...tree? In its 2nd 'season'.
Scotch Bonnet, hot pepper, still green.
I went to a small garden centre yesterday looking for parsley seedlings, ended up buying some peppermint instead. After reading up on mint in general I found that I need to restrict the roots to stop in from taking over the whole bed. So I have potted one plant and will be sinking it into the herb garden.
Not sure what to do with the rest, would like to put them out in the veggie garden out back. Will have to get some plumbing tubing and plant them in that. I would love to get my hands on some chocolate mint seeds.
The question is: is this really a peppermint? I looked at pictures online and the peppermint I saw didn't look like this. I also read somewhere that it should have purplish leaves? Maybe it will change as it matures?
I finally sowed some flower seeds today.... Lobelia, Alyssum, Zinnia, Balsam and 9 Sunflowers - in trays. See picture above.
I checked my baby bean yesterday, it hadn't grown any and I didn't see any more growing either. I think I'll just let it get on with it by itself. The polestar variety over on the other side is not doing too well, not very green and growing/flowering very slowly.
Cukes are still doing well, never had leaves this big before, gotta watch out for bugs all the time.
My cabbages are doing really great, I wish I'd planted more, I'm thinking to get more seedlings, you can never have too much cabbages, it's a pity they take up so much space though.
What else?.... oh yes, I'm getting a lot of sweet and hot peppers flowering and fruiting now, amazing how quickly a pepper grows, I'm giving them lots of water in the evening and they're producing well, compared to previous years.
My oak leaf lettuces that I let run to seed are now flowering, pretty little yellow flowers, hoping it will be straightforward to get the seeds from it.
I think this blog is becoming a 'note to self' . I'm hoping that I can organize my garden by looking back on this gardening diary and make good choices regarding when, where and what to plant and how I have dealt with problems when they have arisen. Sounds good in theory...!
I bought some strawberry seeds from the UK, still trying to figure out what to do with them, so much is against this project being successful, and I only have 13 seeds! (I was given some hope when I heard that they have been grown in the Blue Mountains in Jamaica! )
Another seemingly impossible project is getting rhubarb from seeds to grow here in the caribbean. Those of you in 4 season climates must think I'm nuts!? It can't hurt to try I guess.
On doing my usual daily rounds of weeding, feeding or watering I found a baby bean still on the vine, it's maybe 2-3 inches long and very skinny but still a pollinated bean nevertheless!
I'm not sure if it's one of the one's I tried to hand-pollinate or it did it of it's own accord, boy do I hope so, the prospect of having to pollinate beans (of all things!) by hand seems really daunting, to say the least. I guess later down in the week I'll know.
The eggplants are flowering now, despite being rained on by giant coconut tree leaves (fronds). It's a good job their kind of flexible and give way so easily. They have really beautiful pale purple flowers, I LOVE purple flowers. So much that I've been gathering picture of them (and white, cream and yellow flowers) in an album so I can dream and plan which one's would grow well in the climate I live in.
I pulled up my sweet basil out of the herb garden, way too invasive. I also cut back my sage, I then found it had something yukky growing on it, looked like dry cottage cheese with orangey-red tiny egg-looking mush inside. Cleaned that up, not sure what on earth it was. I need to keep an eye that it doesn't come back. I pulled up my dill also, it was looking spent and sorry for itself. I will be planting coriander in it's place.
I lost a lot of the baby beetroot plants I planted out, I'll wait till what remains are bigger/stronger and replant them more together to save some space. The sun was a bit too much for them.
My lone cauliflower is forming curds now. I loosely tied some of it's leaves around it to shade it from the hot sun. Hoping to get a less 'yellowly' head when it's ready to harvest. This is the first time I've tried this, hope it works.
I heard about some place I can get miniature fruit trees from in St. Andrew. Apparently these trees will bear in the first year and the fruit is sweet and delicious, the price (around $4 each) is pretty good too! So I'll be looking into that. I like the idea of 'miniature', that way I can easily net them to prevent the monkeys chomping on them.
Once the basement apartment is completed we'll be leveling out the rest of the back garden, then (if all goes as planned) I plan on having a deck with some lounge chairs, a bbq pit, shading, plus some bermuda grass and huge pots for the fruit trees and some medium sized pots for my flowers. Sounds like a plan!
My six cucumbers are coming along nicely, (she said tentatively!). some of them have tendrils, they haven't flopped down and begun crawling yet, I can see flower buds forming too. After so many disasters maybe April is a good time to grow cucubits in my garden.
This piece of information I gleaned today might not be that interesting to many but it's worth my taking note of...
Monkeys don't like:
1. Stepping on newspaper.
2. The smell of Jeyes Fluid (a popular disinfectant here)
3. The smell of chicken manure.
Mmmm, very interesting.
Here's some photos of 'The Barbados Green Monkey'
Well, my latest challenge is to get my 'Scarlet Emperor' runner beans pollinated. The flowers have been dropping off because of the serious lack of bees around here. I went out last evening and 'landed on the keel' like a bee would. I'm not really sure if did it right or whether they will 'take' but I did try. I'm not looking forward to this task. So if anyone has any seeds for runner beans that are self pollinating PLEASE let me know so I can trade something for them. I have tons of passion fruit seeds that are very reliable.
If I'm successful, I'll post pictures of my baby beans!
Well, I was out early in the garden taking a few photos of various things, I'm not that great a photographer as you can see, or do I blame my crummy 3.0mpx camera?
Well, I planted out the lavender. By the time I'd pulled it apart I had around 15 separate plants with really long roots. Hoping that planting them late in the day and watering them in will give them a jump start. I'm not too worried about them though, I heard that they grow pretty easily in any type of soil, just about. I'll feed them tomorrow with an all purpose fertilizer. They smell great already and they're only around five inches tall.
I've gotta get some flowers planted now, I've been putting it off for ages. I feel a bit intimidated at the thought of growing anything that's not a vegatable. But I guess I'll learn as I go along.
I have these seeds: Lobelia, Balsam, Poached Egg Plant, Sunflower, Zinnia, Salvia, Alyssum, Aster and Marigold.
I'm thinking to grow them in trays first, as apposed to straight into the ground or into large pots.
Thinking about the herb garden I have out front, I'm missing my favourite: coriander (cilantro), this has to be the best smelling and tasting herb I've ever come across. I LOVE it! It goes great with fish dishes and indian food. I had it growing before but I used it so much that I stripped it pretty quickly, then it ran to seed. It grew really easily from seeds I bought.
In fact everything in my herb garden grows well.
Right now I have in my herb garden:
Marjoram, Dill (flowering now!), Sweet Basil (also flowering!), Chives (yellowing tips are gone, doing much better with all the rain we had), Sage (growing well, may have to cut back, also, seems to be attracting stink bugs along with the Sweet Basil), and Thyme that is growing slowly but surely.
I also have some oak-leafed greenish reddish (not sure of the variety) lettuce growing in this bed, I've used a lot of it and am leaving this final few to run to seed so I can plant some more. Though having said that, I've never tried to get seeds from a lettuce before. Should be interesting!
I have a hot pepper plant (scotch bonnet) in this herb bed! The logic being that it's 'just there' when I need it (and any herbs) for cooking. All the regular veggies are out in the back.
Right now my favourite veggies to grow are simply beets and onions. I just bought some beet seedlings, I think I split them too soon, the sun is not being kind to them at all. I should have left them together a bit longer. I had to chicken wire my onions as they seem to be a favourite with a family of monkeys near by. They had pulled them up and bitten the bottom off them. When I put up the chicken wire they decided to try something else and pulled up one of my beets, and bit into it, they obviously didn't like it because they didn't try again. What a relief!
I have some small english lavender plants in a pot, I'm going to plant them out in the vegetable garden, on either side of some raised beds. I'm hoping that a combination of this and my planting various brassicas far apart will help to confound the cabbage butterflies that seem to love laying eggs constantly.
Planting them apart has reduced their activities somewhat but planting out the lavender should help even more, I hope.
What's planted...
Cucumbers, Runner Beans, Cabbage, Broccoli/Cauliflower, Sweet Peppers, Hot Peppers, Beets, Onions, Eggplant,
Eggplant above, constantly gets squashed by falling coconut palm fronds!
And in the Herb Garden...
Chives, Marjoram, Sage, Sweet Basil, Thyme, Dill
Here's my majoram above, progressing nicely.
Also...
I have just bought a four foot Weeping Fig. (ficus benjamina) I fed it and repotted it, hoping it will thrive and thicken up.
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