Getting organised for Spring

Before we went on holiday I got myself organised, made pots then planted out my veggie seeds for this years garden. Since I got the wee portable greenhouses last year I realised I could get the seeds in much earlier and get a really good head start come spring.

I planted a lot of heritage tomato seeds, lots of chillis, courgettes, various different beans, gem squash, sweetcorn and aubergines. 

Come real spring I'll also plant some things straight into the ground, like peas, broad beans, lettuces and stuff like that.

After several years of veggie growing I've sort of worked out what works best for us and what we actually use.

Like this year I have planted 3 times as much sweetcorn as last year as it was a huge success and we could eat every last one.

Barlotti and snake beans

A courgette breaking through. This is actually the slowest one, the others all have leaves already.

 Lots of sweetcorn this year. I think I've planted about 20 and all bar one have come up.

Leafy courgette

I'm hoping we may even have edible asparagus from the new asparagus bed. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Now, the rest of New Zealand is pretty much covered in snow, they've even had some in Auckland which is pretty unheard of. We've never had snow up here, ever. Which is a little sad for me as I love snow.

However we just had a hail storm for about 30 seconds and that was pretty cool!

It is bitterly cold, though. Probably the coldest we've ever had in the six years we've lived here so we are making good use of this...

We went through that much wood yesterday afternoon!

A lot.

How to make a paper pot!

Firstly you do not need one of the wooden pot maker thingmies, but this is how I learned. Once you know how it's easy and you can use bottles, jam jars, anything cylindrical that's the size you want the pot to be.

Ok 

1. Start with a newspaper supplement - it's just the right size.

2. For small pots half the page down the natural fold, then half it again.

3. Fold the paper in half lengthways.

making sure the side with the fold is at the bottom.

4. Fold up a corner

5. Roll the paper round the wood, making sure the folded side it at the top. Start at the end without the folded up corner.  Make sure the folded corner ends up on the inside.

6. Fold in the bottom part - a bit like wrapping a present

7. Ram into the pot part to squish the ends down.

9. voila!

To make a bigger pot I got a bottle. This is a Barkers juice bottle and it's the perfect size to use half a page of a supplement. 

Fold in half and fold up a corner as above.

Roll the paper round the bottle the same way as before

fold in the bottom and just tap it against a table or something!

 tah'dah!

Apologies for terrible photographs - it was getting dark and the light was bad!