The indoor plants

It occurred to me that I haven't blogged much about the indoor plants. We are lucky enough to have a fairly large conservatory (it would feel a lot larger if it didn't have a hulking great defunct spa bath taking up most of the floor space, but we just have to work around that until we have the money to get it ripped out and the floor rebuilt) with glass on three sides and a clear plastic roof, so it is very bright and sunny in there. For the last few months it has been my greenhouse as I planted seeds and pampered seedlings.

Right now it is home to 17 pepper plants, eight tomato plants, a tub of lettuce, a small lime tree, and a number of seedings and germinating tomato seeds.

 

Most of the tomato plants are very small still, but the Early Girls have lots of flowers and a good number of baby tomatoes on them so I have high hopes of an early harvest.

It's coming into summer and the weather is warming up, so it gets very hot in the conservatory during the day, and it won't be long before it's too hot for the tomatoes in there. I'm moving some of them out onto the deck to see how they fare.

The green tubs are great, aren't they? They are relics from before Christchurch got a wheelie bin system for rubbish and recycling, and we got them all for free. They've got built-in handles and drainage holes and are a really good size for planting things into while still being light enough to lift.We've got seven of them so far and I'm still scouting around for more.

Germinating like crazy

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, but that does not indicate a lack of progress. The weather isn't settled enough to plant much outside yet, but in the conservatory I have many little seeds germinating quite happily. Here's what I have growing indoors:

• tomatoes (Better Boy, Early Girl, Green Zebra, Moneymaker)
• peppers (California Wonder, Yellow Banana, Purple Beauty, Chocolate Beauty)
• sweetcorn
• lettuce
• cucumber
• and a variety of flowers, including gilia, cornflower, larkspur, swan plants, and many others that I've currently forgotten.

There are seed potatoes waiting for the current wet weather to pass before I plant them in bags outside:

• Purple Heart
• Ilam Hardy
• Red Rascal
• Agria
  

Planted outside are some slightly hardier crops:

• red onions
• leeks
• spring onions
• radishes
• lettuce
• strawberries
• raspberries
• broccoli
• spinach
• silverbeet

Those last two belong to my husband, who has his own beds to look after this year. I am taking the very organised pre-planned approach, and he's taking the approach of, "Plant what seems like a good idea at the time, wherever it fits," so it'll be interesting to see which of us produces better food!

I also spent about $80 setting out the start of our irrigation system. It'll cost us maybe the same again to finish it, but that should make things a lot easier for us this summer. The system won't cover all the plants but it'll cover the raised beds and leave the neighbours with a lot less to water for us if we go away for a weekend here and there!

Of course, not all the vegetables will fit in the raised beds, not by a long shot. I'm going to need at least eight tubs for some of the tomatoes and all the peppers. We had no luck with peppers last year because it wasn't quite warm enough for them, so I'm going to keep those in the conservatory and see if that improves things. Just need to find the space for them first!