SOWING SEEDS 🌱 Explore a Warm Climate Australian Garden (Perth, Zone 10b)

So what are we planting? Um, I don't know, let's figure that out together. We've got the Puna Kera cucumber. A way more stress-free approach. Do I make my own seed raising mix? So which way up you plant your seeds kind of matters. And this is what they look like inside. And a squash from New Zealand. Of course I had to get this. Whether I'm going to be replacing the soil in these raised garden beds or how I'm going to manage the transition of going from winter crops into spring and summer. So those are some more finger lime seedlings. I've got quite a few of these. A little bit on the new little seedlings that are popping up. Welcome back to the garden. Spring has definitely come early here in Perth. Technically it's still the end of winter but I am definitely going to be following my garden's lead and if it tells me it's spring, it's spring. So we're going to be planting a whole bunch of seeds and I'll show you around what I've already planted, what I'm planting next, cuttings I'm doing, and how I'm going to be feeding my garden for the spring and summer season. My purple daikons have done exactly what I wanted them to do and gone to flower so I can save the seeds. I've been searching for a few years for the purple daikon and I ended up finding it and I managed to get a seed packet with just 10 seeds. So instead of planting those 10 seeds and harvesting the veggies, I've sacrificed the season of growing so I can save the seeds and I can get so many more because who knows, next year I might not be able to find the purple daikon. So just giving me that food security of having a bunch of my own seeds so that I can regrow an endless supply and I'm only letting the purple daikons go to flower and seed. So I have a couple of other radishes that I'm just going to make sure that I'm always harvesting those before they go to flower so that they don't cross-pollinate. My purple cauliflowers are starting to separate and go to flower but I've just been harvesting them, just breaking off a few of the stems at a time and eating them fresh rather than harvesting the whole thing and I found that so much better. I have really loved that because I mean I'm not going to eat this all in one go and I just feel like when they sit in the fridge they just aren't as nice. So I've left it here and I've just been picking it every day so I'll pick the rest of this to use tonight. That one's already bolted so I'll let that one go to flower and I'll probably collect the seeds off that. Again a lot of my lettuces with this warm weather are all starting to bolt and go to flower so we'll definitely be able to collect a few seeds but still trying to eat my way through all of this lettuce. More lettuce here and kale. Down here at the base where my grapevine is I planted a bunch of mustard greens that are all starting to pop up. I think I planted mustard greens and some red clover through here because one nitrogen fixing for the clover and two the mustard greens are going to help with root-knot nematodes and apparently grapes are quite susceptible to that. Now I obviously won't know if I have root-knot nematodes on my grapes unless I dug up the grapes which I'm not planning on doing but I just wanted to do that as a preventative method and I've done it around my papayas as well because apparently those are also really susceptible to root-knot nematodes and I know they're about, I know that it's definitely something to consider and it's been something I've been meaning to do for ages so I planted a whole bunch of mustard greens because they don't like mustard greens and then I can chop those back and feed them back into the soil which is also going to provide mulch, chop and drop but again help create an environment that root-knot nematodes do not like. Again this bed is like full of lettuces. I've been harvesting lots of these and some of my Asian greens have bolted and gone to seed. It used to be a little bit frustrating especially here in Perth it's a very warm climate, things go to seed all the time but now I just think instead of me harvesting this one bok choy I literally am going to get hundreds and hundreds of seeds so it doesn't upset me anymore I just think it's, you know, so much more abundance and lots of these radishes and these are the ones that I don't want to go to flower because I don't want them to cross-pollinate so I've already saved a lot of these seeds in previous years these ones are grown from my own saved seeds so I don't need to save any more of these black Spanish round radishes so I'm not going to let them go to flower and seed oh that's always a good sign there's worms it's always a good sign, we like to see that when you pull any of your veggies out it's also a good opportunity to take a look at the roots and see if you do have anything that looks a little bit suspicious like root-knot nematodes they'll be like little lumps all along like knotted roots but this one looks good which is a good sign but I have planted some mustard greens in all of these garden beds that I'm going to be just doing a bit of preventative method with that oh I can see this one is going to flower so we want to remove that and again this purple cauliflower has gone to flower but sometimes I leave these in because they're offering a bit of shade although this one has been completely attacked so there's not much shade being given but some of the ones in the other garden beds are their leaves are shading out the lettuces and it stops the lettuces bolting and going to seed just by having that extra bit of shade and cool this is also the first year that I have grown purple potted peas and they have been so easy I haven't found like you can see on the side these ones were the snow peas and they just get eaten they haven't done very well but the purple potted peas have been insane and if I grow something for the first time and it's worked out to be really good I do want to save the seeds from these so I do need to harvest as many of these as possible because I want the plant to keep producing for as long as possible if I don't harvest them this plant will be like okay I've done my job I've got seeds for a new generation I don't need to keep producing so I do need to get in here and really harvest a bunch of these but I will be saving at the end of the season saving some seeds from these because this is the first season that I'm growing these I only had one packet of seeds and I could rely on that one packet of seeds for next season but I could also save my own and then I have huge abundance and I don't need to worry about if having to buy more seed or if you know I can't find them next year or anything like that so these purple potted peas you don't eat the outside that's the only downside is you do have to shell them but they are so pretty and this is what they look like inside you can eat them fresh they are delicious just like a normal pea you just can't eat the skins how good are peas for a garden snack? honestly they've got to be up there with some of the best my south seeded tomato is going nuts and it's got lots of tomatoes on it and some of them are actually ready I do need to go through and just clean out some of these leaves it's so dense in there and I don't I want to improve the airflow and oh look there's a ladybug and a caterpillar I'll take him off so what I'm going to do is go through and just thin out some of these leaves let a little more airflow through and then all of these side shoots which I haven't been picking any of these I haven't pruned this I haven't done anything to it except put in a few little supports to help keep it up I'm going to prune off some of these and take a bunch of cuttings because this is the quickest and easiest way to replicate and get a whole bunch more tomatoes in the garden rather than me planting more seeds I mean I have all of this luscious vigorous growing plant I can take cuttings I can either put them directly in the soil or put them in a jar of water until they sprout roots and then I pretty much just get instant plants rather than waiting for the seeds to germinate so I will probably plant a few other tomato varieties but I'm literally going to have all the tomato plants that I could need right here on this one plant and you can see all the tomatoes are starting to come we've got them everywhere and even down here I noticed some of them are turning red so I need to pick these ones soon probably today before someone else gets to them but yeah so many tomatoes I'm excited to see how the grapes go this year and if I can try and get some actual shade cover up on the grapes now that they are a couple years old who knows we might even have tomatoes reaching the top the tomatoes are like just about as tall as me and I didn't even plant this damn plant so sometimes the things that you try and grow don't grow and the things that you literally didn't even plant are insane you can see the blood orange is loaded in flowers but these ones, these ones look a little bit different and that's because this is a different variety so I've grafted on here this is a pink pomelo I'm not going to be letting that hold fruit because pink pomelos are giant and I don't want this branch to snap but it's looking happy moringa is starting to wake up grafted some different varieties onto my loquat and it's starting to push through there's another one down here as many of you know that watch my channel I like to direct sow my seeds in the garden rather than seed trays just because I like a really carefree type of gardening I like to go away often and I don't want to be babying seeds and seed trays and then planting them out into the garden and then them just getting eaten so I prefer a way more stress-free approach of just planting extra so I have done that I've already popped in a few seeds in all the gaps there's always seeds in my soil that can pop up and regrow whenever they feel like it but I'm going to be sowing some in seed trays this year as well mainly just because I have a whole bunch of new varieties and I would like to guarantee that I get some of them up and going and direct sowing into the garden although it's super easy and like literally this is pretty much all direct sowing so I do get a lot of food it's not guaranteed and seed trays allows you to get the plants a little bit bigger a little bit stronger before going out into the garden and I can't even remember all the things that I have put into the garden direct sowing but I know I did put a few zucchinis and a few rock melons on the arbors behind me here but we're going to be planting those in seed trays as well okay welcome to the back to my seed raising corner where I don't show a lot but this is where a lot of my potted fruit trees are and also where I start my seeds and my cuttings I've got my mini greenhouse which is a old fish tank and I have a whole bunch of seeds and things already started in there so I'll show you those those ones are a little bit more tropical so they get the greenhouse I've also taken a whole bunch of cuttings I'm going to be doing something exciting with as well but in terms of seeds I do have a whole stack so firstly I'm not planting all of these seeds there's hundreds here and I have four raised garden beds so I am being a little bit the seeds are all blowing away okay that was not ideal try and keep hold of these so in the past I have I used to do live seed sowing episodes and I used to get very overexcited and want to plant literally everything so I am going to try and be a little bit more restricted on that what I'm going to be planting first are the things that take the longest so I like to start my season off with the things that need as much time to grow as possible so those are things like your melons and your pumpkins because they need to produce a really robust vigorous vine before they start producing male and female flowers to then get those pollinated and then those fruits take quite a long time to mature so if you plant your watermelons and your pumpkins too late in the season they won't have enough time to fully mature before we start hitting the cooler weather so those are the ones that I prioritize getting started first I still don't even know where I'm going to put the pumpkin patch so that's another reason that I'm putting them in seed trays first is because I need to figure out where I'm going to put this pumpkin patch and grow all these pumpkins I'll be keeping a very close eye on all my little seeds to see if they pop up and sprinkling coffee grounds so that's my number one tip number one trick for young seeds and seedlings is I get used coffee grounds from the cafe and I sprinkle those around especially when they're just popping up because that is when they're the most vulnerable but even if you go and get some seedlings and put them in the slaters and the slugs and the snails immediately can decimate them overnight and so it's just completely a waste and really frustrating so I always sprinkle them with coffee grounds and I've found that works the best compared to all the other things that I've tried so I always have a big bag of those to start off with I get asked what is do I make my own seed raising mix at the moment no I have done in the past but I don't do a lot of seed raising so I just went and grabbed a bag of the green life soil seed raising mix and that'll do me because I'm not going to be planting a whole bunch and I've just put it in this tub just so that it's easy to access and I can literally put the trays and the tubs in here fill them up and then I'm not wasting any soil so I've got a whole shed of recycled pots that I have been hoarding but I'm going to use these individual ones I'm always just trying to keep it simple keep it easy and low maintenance because I have a lot of gardens and I have a lot of plants and the more you complicate it the more the wheels fall off so I've always just tried to do that keep it simple do what I can use what I have and go from there all right so now I've got these filled with soil I'll give them a bit of a water so what are we planting? I don't know let's figure that out together so I have just gone and grabbed my cucumbers and some squash I did plant this already I sprinkled this all through the garden so this is red tulsi basil so I picked this up from down to earth life at the Nanup Garden Festival and sprinkled that all through the raised garden beds so we don't need to plant that so what have we got here? two types of cucumber rock melon two types of zucchinis and a squash from New Zealand thanks to Thrive Sustainability of course I had to get this and then I just need to find the pumpkins because I don't know where those are but they'll be somewhere so first up I'm going to do some of these coco zell these are my favorite zucchinis they're like a striped zucchini and I have already been in here and planted a couple directly into the garden but let's get a couple in seed trays so which way up you plant your seeds kind of matters and kind of doesn't so if you're not sure which way up a seed goes lie it flat like that because then it only has to go 50% so if you put it up the wrong way it only has to flip itself halfway not do a full 360 so it's a really good idea once your seedlings do pop up to take note of the seed casing and which way up it's facing so you know for next time but usually the rounded edge up and the pointy end down so it's going to grow up like that so normally the rounded edge up top and the more pointy edge down and that's how they'll pop out of the seed casing but if you don't know lie them flat in the soil like this and that way they only have to go right themselves up that way or right themselves up that way but if you do put them in upside down so for these ones if I put it with a pointy edge up the seed has to do a full 360 before it can even get going and so it loses a lot of its energy and it has a limited supply of energy to get growing so you do want to try and give them the best chance they'll grow a lot faster if you do get them the right way up so another thing we don't want to do with the seeds is we don't want to just force the seed down because it can do some damage to the seed so what we want to do is just gently pop it in like that and then we'll sprinkle some soil on top and again I've got these with the rounded end up and then I'm going to sprinkle some soil on top and the general rule is you plant them the depth of the seed so that seed was like a centimetre so I can put like a centimetre of soil on top and none of the chunks and to label these I've got these icebox sticks these are the fat ones because I have bad handwriting so I can't be bothered trying to fit that on a small stick so these ones were gotta remember what they were I've already forgotten so these ones were the cocosal zucchini I'm just going to put cocozook and if I was planting a whole row then I wouldn't need to individually label them but I'm only planting two so I'm just gonna individually label those next up I've got the zucchini yellow cookneck I've never grown these before so like I said if I grow them for the first time and I like them then I'll always try and save the seeds of them so that I have my own supply because usually in these seed packets you get like oh they're not in plastic these ones are just three in there you only get a small amount of them so I'm going to plant four seems quite excessive let's do four put them back in the right so these cucumber ones are much harder to see which way up they go so I'm just going to lie them flat because I don't want to get them wrong oh that one's gone missing so these ones were the punakera which is an Indian heirloom cucumber that does really well in hot weather it ripens fully brown which is super interesting round side up so this one I'm just planting a few tomato seeds in each pot because I've run out and I can split them later and these ones were the purple Cherokee so that's my first round of seedlings started in seed trays we've got the lemon cucumber we've got the punakera cucumber the crookneck zucchini the cocozelle zucchini hails best rock melon the zatar rock melon the kamakamu squash the purple Cherokee tomato Rosa Bianca eggplants I've also got a few in here that I'll show you next and also like I said I have direct sown some in the garden as well and then I'll just keep plugging in seeds here and there for the next couple months so down in here I've got some cuttings these are my Azerbaijani pomegranate and these ones are all finger limes so those are all finger lime seeds I planted a bunch of finger lime seeds in one pot they all sprouted so I've just separated them out I've got some pigeon peas back there down here we have got some more pomegranate cuttings these ones are my guava my Malaysian guava seeds and in the fish tank we've got black cat raspberries I've got some moringa we've got there's a mango back there down here we've got some white alpine strawberries and some cape gooseberries that one there is a little nashi pear seedling more guavas custard apple big one on the end is all kiwi berry seeds so those are some more finger lime seedlings I've got quite a few of these like with everything in my garden I like to not put all my eggs in one basket so I do direct sow and then in seed trays I will plant some now I'll plant some in the next few weeks and so on so I'm not just doing it once doing it in the same place and putting all my eggs in one basket because so many things can happen the pests can come and eat them or we can get some really cold weather I am going to direct sow a few more things into the garden because we're about to get some rain and it's really good for planting seeds right before the rain so that they can get watered in and get some natural nitrogen and they just grow so much better after the rain so we'll be planting a few more things in the raised garden beds as well so these are the used coffee grounds and then I just sprinkle a little bit on the new little seedlings that are popping up and this deters those slaters and a lot of the slugs and snails my black petunga is covered in flowers everywhere hopefully we get some fruit off this year and see what colour it is because it is a seedling so it could still be red these sweet peas are adding some stunning colour to the garden I've planted these last few years and I saved the seeds so I'll be doing that again this year I feel like they're now like an essential part of my garden because of the colour in the driveway patch we've got the low chill nectarine which has got flowers and leaves we've got a new addition to the driveway patch I've planted some rhubarb because this area is going to get enough shade in summer so the big leaves don't get burnt but in winter we've got lots of light I'm still waiting on the papayas to ripen up I could eat these green but I've waited this long so I'm gonna be definitely waiting a bit longer till I can get these at least the first two or three to ripen up so I can enjoy those no signs of life on the kiwi fruit yet or the kiwi berries but I feel like it won't be too much longer the apricots are waking up this one is the bolita and then I do have another one grafted on there a little poppy seed that I've made room for with all the New Zealand spinach and I did want to jump in and talk about whether I'm going to be replacing the soil in these raised garden beds or how I'm going to manage the transition of going from winter crops into spring and summer although we're half doing that already I don't always do a full reset on my raised garden beds each season I tend to do a big one every couple of years when the soil levels drop quite a bit I'll get a trailer load of fresh soil to put in here but at the moment the soil level's pretty good I'm pretty happy with it so we just need to add a bit of extra nutrition I find the transition from winter crops through to spring and summer quite a gradual because I've constantly got things popping up and growing I've got tomatoes here like I'm not going to rip everything out and start again but I do find that I want to do that at the end of summer after the garden's been through a hot dry period it's looking pretty ratty at the end of summer and during autumn so that's the time of year that I do feel like I want to sort of start fresh take everything out collect all the seeds and replenish the soils after they've been through that really harsh hot summer because I've found if I try and wait until my winter garden's finished and put more compost in put more soil on top the season just gets later and later because I just have like so much food still growing and I don't want to just rip it out and start again I'm going to be pouring with rain tonight so I'm going to be collecting as much rainwater as I can then I'm going to add some compost and some worm castings from my own worm casting worm farms and compost bins and I'm going to soak that and then apply that as a liquid fertilizer to all of these gardens to add more nutrition back in so that my spring and summer garden still gets enough nutrition so I'll try and avoid the things that I'm eating like the lettuces because I don't want to put the castings and the compost directly onto the food that I'm eating in the next few days but there's lots of gaps in here I'll be able to feed the soil and I'll do that a few times throughout the season so that I'm constantly adding things I don't like a set and forget type of soil care I like to continuously add things like all year long I'm picking the older leaves like this the bug bitten leaves and chopping and dropping that into my other garden beds so there's constantly nutrition going in it's not just like set and forget I'm always doing what I can to encourage the soil life and continuously feed it another thing that I'll do is I don't always rip everything out so some of the plants that are here that are growing at the moment I will be just cutting them at the base and letting the roots rot down in the soil and that's going to be providing nutrition as well especially things like the peas the nitrogen I will be leaving all of those roots still in the soil