Firstly, I wish you a Merry Christmas to you and your family.

As we have a quiet Christmas at home, with little fuss and just the three of us, I thought I would get the gardening gloves on and sow some seeds that my son bought me for Christmas, along with some other seeds that took my fancy while I was at it.

I have always fancied growing succulents from seed, so asked my son for some seeds fo Christmas. He bought me some Aloe vanbalenii seeds and a mix of cacti seeds. In this mix, there are the seeds of the five following species:

• Carnegia gigantea
• Echinocactus grusonii
• Echinocerus enneacanthus
• A random Ferocactus species
• Ferocactus wislizeni

Apparently, germination for some of these seeds is between 21 and 90 days , so I could be waiting a while! This is all part of the fun of gardening and sowing seeds, you never know fully what you are going to get (even with seeds you have sown before).

Other seeds I have sown include:

• Blue borage
• San Mazarno tomatoes
• Tommy Toe tomatoes
• Orchid Cream Nasturtium
• Purple Emporer Nasturtium

The weather today is warm and not too hot, but in saying that, I don’t have to work in it-I’ve been able to potter leisurely (which is sheer heaven and not to be underestimated as a nice thing to do). As I finished, it was 29.7 degrees Celsius, with 43% humidity, according to my weather station. It also said that the UV levels were high at 7, light levels was 790 Watts per metre squared (a measure of the power of the light that arrives at that square metre), and no rain. Wind was 0.7 km/hr from ESE. The forecast was partly sunny and cloudy.

I am a bit of a geek-I like looking at weather stats, which is why I got my weather station last year. I also wanted an accurate weather reading every day, something which the Bureau of Meteorology doesn’t seem to do for my suburb (they can’t get it right everywhere all of the time, but it is often out by quite a decent margin, especially when its raining).

In terms of seedlings from my other seed sowing sessions, the seeds sown a couple of weeks ago will soon be ready to pot up (at least the ones that have germinated). From the ones that I sowed last Saturday, none have yet germinated, but I wouldn’t expect them too yet anyway.

That’s about it for my gardening adventures today. Until next time.