I have finally had the time to do some seed sowing and other garden bits this weekend, which is great as I’ve either been far too busy or too tired to do anything about the garden in the past three months or so. While I have only spent a couple of hours doing my gardening, it has been really nice to get out there gardeninging and pleasing myself with what I grow and do there.

I have sown a mixture of food seeds and succulent seeds. Last weekend, I gave a longer list of seeds I want to sow in the next few months, but many of those need the warmer weather and longer days of spring to actually start growing. As it is winter here in Sydney, I have sown my chosen seeds that can either be sown in winter or at any time of year.

The food seeds sown are:

• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Several varieties of onion

The succulent seeds sown are:

• Seeds from a mixed collection of cacti mix, although I can’t find the mix of species that are included, so it will be a nice surprise!
• Aloe valbalenii-Val Balen’s Aloe
• Echeveria peacockii
• Echeveria cante

Last time I attempted to sow these succulent seeds, I failed miserably at getting any results whatsoever apart from nothing. This time, I have sown the seeds completely according to instructions-I do often just wing it and see what happens but that didn’t work last time, hence following instructions! I have also kept the seed tray containing these seeds inside-I have a table in the living room that gets plenty of morning sun, which is where this seed tray now lives. It will take all these seeds up to three months to germinate so I will potentially have a long wait!

On top my seed sowing, I have also potted up another Echeveria that was in my son’s room. I has had a fair bit of growth so far since he got it, so it is hopefully happy again in its bigger pot. While I was potting up this plant, several of its leaves fell off, as they are prone to doing, so I have placed all these leaves on the potting mix surface and hope they produce some new plants for me too. When I have got plenty of my new succulents, of all varieties, growing well, I am going to plant a nice display of them in a fancy pot, but that won’t be for a while yet.

I could just buy the cacti, aloes and echeverias and plant up a nice display of them in a pot, but that is easy. I love the process of trying to grow them from seed, even if I do have some failures. I actually learn new things this way, and that is something that I really enjoy doing, especially the practicalities of gardening (theory is interesting, but if you can’t apply that to the practice of gardening, there is no point learning the theory behind it).

Beyond my propagation this weekend, I haven’t finished all my garden jobs yet. I still have to tidy up my patio area-it needs a good sweeping up and there are pots that need to be emptied and cleaned too. That will be next weekends main job as I have other things to do with the rest of my Sunday!