I have been out in my garden this morning after a wet week here in Sydney. While my jobs are not all complete, I am happy that I have got my main jobs done, allowing me to get a head start on my summer vegetables that I want to grow.

I started with sowing seeds for my summer vegetables that I want to grow, as I want to be able to get them outside when the weather starts warming up next month at the start of spring. While there are still more things that I want to grow from seed over this coming season, I have sown the following today:

• Tomatoes: ‘Green Grape’, ‘Tommy Toe’, ‘San Marzano’, ‘Blue Berries’, ‘Jaune Flamme’, ‘Wapsipinicon Peach’ and ‘Pink Bumble Bee’.
• Chilli: ‘Maui Purple’, ‘Joe’s long Cayenne’, and ‘Padron’
• Capsicum: ‘Sweet Chocolate’ and ‘California Wonder’
• Beetroot: ‘Heirloom Mix’ and ‘Bulls Blood’

I am keeping these seeds in my living on a table by the widow as it still gets cold overnight. These widows let in a lot of sunlight during the day, so I will hopefully see some seeds germinating over the next couple of weeks! Hopefully, form there, I will have some seedlings ready to go outside permanently by the end of September or early October.

Three weeks ago I did some seed sowing of onions, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet peas, echeveria, aloe and mixed cacti mix seeds. Of all of these the broccoli and cauliflower have germinated the best so far, with a few eaten by a snail overnight or early this morning (and who I saw moving slowly away over my shoes). I have potted up my remaining brassicas, of which there are still plenty, thankfully. Several of my onions have also germinated, but only just so I will leave them a bit longer in the hope that we get more sun, germination and growth over the next couple of weeks!

With my succulents, many of them take up to ninety days to germinate, so I am not expecting much yet. In saying that, there is one very, very small seedling that has germinated over the past two or three days, which is exciting. I can’t tell what it is yet, but it is still progress. With the echeveria leaves that I have laid out on the soil, with the hope of some new plants, there is also some signs of success. Again, it isn’t a fast process and has no guarantee of success, but there is the first hint of some new leaves and roots forming on a couple.

As I’ve already mentioned, this month has been a rather wet one. So far this month, at 147mm of rain at 11.15am today, with it raining again currently, with 6.1mm so far today. The current temperature is 11.6 degrees Celsius, with it getting cooler outside in the past hour or so. The past week has reminded me of winters growing up in the north-west of England where it rains for weeks, at times, feels never ending! Looking at the forecast for the week, it should start drying up from tomorrow, which is a good thing!

So that is my gardening week. While I need to do some tidying up outside in preparation for my summer growing, that can wait until it is dry again, as it will be easier to do the sweeping then and I don’t really fancy getting wet today either!