Post-Labour Day Post

Labour Day was last weekend in New Zealand. It’s traditionally celebrated by spending lots of money at the local garden centre and planting the first round of summer veges in the garden.

My parents arrived for another working bee and by the end of the weekend we’d mowed, cleared yet more rubbish, dug out one enormous stump, built a new raised garden bed in the area that I’ve decided is going to be my main vege patch, planted tomato and courgette seedlings, dug over a potato bed and planted the potato bed.

This is what it looked like on Monday evening:

Today, I discovered that everything I planted two weekends ago (remember – peas, beans and mystery seeds) is pushing up through the dirt! Hooray! It sure takes my mind off those Peak Oil Blues.

Still No Digging

A month after being planted the garden is growing! I’m very excited even if the peas appear to have some kind of disease. I won’t be surprised (when I finally find my garden problem solver book) if it turns out to be something caused by excessive rain.

It has been a very wet and windy spring in Wellington so far. However I did get outside for one day last weekend and, with my parents’ help, build another bed. We planted three kinds of beans, more peas, calendula, Italian flat leaf parsley, and some mystery seeds from a seed swap a couple of weeks ago. They’re only “mystery” because I forgot to label them though. I’m pretty sure they’re some kind of flower, but I guess I’ll find out soon enough.