Late to the party

Gardener:Stacey

Date:14 Sep 2023

Blog Type:Vegetables

Hey everyone! I'm a bit late to the challenge this year but it's so good to see so many familiar faces, and some newbies to the challenge too!

I'm Stacey, and I live on a 5 acre lifestyle block on the outskirts of Invercargill. My husband and I have three children - Miss 19 who has fled the nest, Master 8 and almost Miss 6.

We have had a pretty emotional start to spring, with missing out on our dream property. I won't bore you with the details but we missed out by a measly FOUR hours, just when we were beginning to think it was ours. So that's taken a bit to get over. 

But all is not lost, we got to keep our beautiful home, and I don't need to leave my garden that I adore and have put so much hard work into. 

Because of all that, I have started my seed sowing a bit later than my normal this season. But I'm no way near panicking as its still early in the season. And the weather this week has been absolutely misreable and so so cold! 

I had sown all my giant pumpkins, capsicums and tomatos just under two weeks ago, along with half the cucumbers I want to put in. We got home from school pick up yesterday to find the culprit in the photo had knocked over a tray containing half the tomatoes and everything else! In Harvey's defense, they are on a heatmat which is the perfect spot for keeping warm on a cold Southland day. I've read cats don't like tinfoil, so I've scrunched some up hoping it will do the trick to keep him off it. 

Some of the seedlings that we're up were salvageable, but I want to keep a good record of varieties that we like, so I think I will just sow the lot again which will be this weekends job.

I'm looking forward to watching all your gardens flourish this season and I hope the weather is kind to us all. 

Late to the party