One small seed at a time.

The speaker discusses their gardening experiences, including planting various seeds like stem broccoli, kale, onions, lettuce, and beans. They share insights on seed planting techniques, emphasizing the importance of using proper soil and providing adequate drainage. The speaker also mentions their dream of creating a sustainable garden with herbs for teas. Additionally, they talk about the upcoming Mother's Day and the significance of chrysanthemums. The speaker recommends chrysanthemums for their beauty and versatility in different colors. Hey hey and welcome to week two of KDM Gardens. If you hear pages flipping, I've actually done a little bit of planning this week, so we'll see how this goes. On this week's podcast I want to talk about my plant of the week. I want to talk about how plants eat, what my dreams and aspirations for my garden are, and the benefits of having chickens, what the most annoying pest is, and what I've been doing this week and what I'm going to do next week. This week I've been planting seeds. One thing I've learned with gardening is it's a lot of experimentation. I planted a bunch of seeds this week, but the majority of them are all in quotes, expired. Now, they expired in 2022, however, I don't believe that all seeds have expiry dates. To get a little bit technical, I suppose, with you, from my understanding, is seeds are what the plants obviously grow from. They've got an embryo inside a seed casing, and around that embryo, it sounds all about humans but it's not, there is what the embryo, I suppose, the nutrients, and what it can take up. Once the seed has given the right conditions, warmth and moisture, it will then crack open and then you'll have roots sent down, your leaves sent up, you'll get two sets of leaves, they're not the proper leaves, and then you'll get two, I've forgotten the name of it, those of you that garden will be screaming at me, they're proper leaves, and they're the ones that you can tell mostly of what the plant will be, but if the seed is stored in dry conditions, and not too hot, not too cold, in the right conditions, that nutrient around the embryo will actually last a lot longer than what a seed packet says, so don't go throwing out your seed packets that say they expired in 2022, because I certainly didn't. I haven't had any hits yet, but it's only been about four or five days, and it's also been really weird weather here in Taranaki, so yeah, just don't throw it out. This past week, I planted some tasty stem broccoli, scotch blue curled kale, shallot zabroon onions, yellow sweet Spanish onion, rainbow light silverbeet, geodesia, beetroot, cilindra beetroot, buttercrunch lettuce, little gem lettuce, going to give some goji berries a go, that'll be really interesting, I've never grown goji berries before, I've never actually seen a goji berry plant, so I'm going to probably have to do some more research, I only had three ruby red rhubarb seeds left, so I chucked those in, all year round cauliflower, I find all year rounds quite interesting to me, I don't know whether they're actually all year round, but hey, it's nothing worse than not trying, right? And some burgled dwarf beans, I'm kind of excited for the beans because I actually absolutely love beans, I don't know whether these beans are more of a dried add to stew type beans, or whether they're the actual like eat green beans, so we'll see how they go as well, because I get all my seeds from King Seeds, it's a New Zealand seed company, and they don't actually have pictures on the packet, but they have it all on the website, so I'm going to have to go back to the website and see what it is. Now I'm talking about planting seeds, and while I was planting them, it came to my attention that not everyone knows how to plant seeds, I know that sounds silly, but you know what? Nothing is silly in gardening, maybe naked gardening day may be a little bit silly, which was this week, but that's okay, you know? So for me, how I plant seeds, is I get a seed raising mix. Seed raising mixes do not need much nutrients at all, okay? This is the mix that you use to germinate the seeds, it is not about putting any nutrients into it, so it's almost a bit of a waste if you put a bit of nutrients in it, because what you do then, is you transplant, transplant, I don't know, I'm an Aussie that's still confused with my accent, you put it into a plant raising mix, rather than, like once it's grown its true leaves, you put it into a plant raising mix, or a composty mix, making sure that it's got enough drainage, and the aggregates or the size of the soil particles aren't too big or too small, they're a good size, because you also need airflow through that soil. Yes, so that's when you are planting on into a bigger size pot, once your seeds are germinated, so, and got their true leaves, that's important, you don't want to transplant them when they're only the first two leaves, otherwise it will be too small and won't necessarily continue on. Also protecting them from slugs, in the back of my mind I'm a bit worried that where I put my seeds are perfect slug slash snail territory, so I'm going to potentially move them where they won't be eaten by those, because they're a nuisance, which surprisingly is not my pest of the week, but they're my pest of every single day of the year, one day I will talk about them. I did discover a massive slug inside my house this week, so I assaulted it, in other words I threw salt on it, because I don't like touching them, they make me grossed out. Anyway, so back to seeds, I got distracted, sorry. So yeah, those are the seeds that I've planted this week, that's what I've done this week, and that's how you plant seeds. Well I didn't really tell you how to plant seeds, I just told you what soil to use. So I'll tell you how to plant seeds, get your soil, putting it into a seed tray, it doesn't have to be a seed tray, but it doesn't have to be too deep either. I used a little kebab stick, I think I used it for plant labelling or something, I'd broken it off and I found it, I was like, this will do. So I made a little hole, it doesn't have to be super deep, probably about the size of, depends on the seed, so if it's a bigger seed, excuse me, it needs to be two, like the seed and twice, stacked up on top of each other deep, which not many seeds are huge, I mean there's only the one seed that's gigantic, but we don't see those here in New Zealand. I can't remember the name of it right now, but it's a palm or something, something like that, so we don't need to worry about that. But yeah, so I'm thinking the rhubarb seed, so the rhubarb seed and enough to put that much soil on top of it, because it needs to be surrounded by soil and moisture to be able to germinate. With some of the tinier seeds, so like my lettuce seeds, I put it more in a singular tray rather than a, what is that, they're like, I can't think of the name right now, modular tray. So I put those in that and then I sprinkled some of the seeds on top and then I sprinkled a bit of the soil on top, so it doesn't have to necessarily be like super deep for those ones. And I think I did the same, no I buried the broccoli ones. I can't remember what other ones, oh the goji berries are tiny. Yeah, so I did the same with those and the onions as well. And I find that with doing onions that way, it's a little bit easier. So this is probably only my third time growing, trying to grow onions. But yeah. Yeah, then you put it in a nice warm spot. For me, I put it underneath a sort of a greenhouse type cover. It's just a lid really, my one, but yeah, make ensuring that these seeds can drain of water. You don't want them sitting in water. Yes, they need moisture, but they need to be free draining. I think that's with a lot of plants other than obviously your aquatic plants. Making sure that they've got sunshine and that they've got water. So yes, that's now that's how you plant seeds. I wanted to talk about quickly my dream for my garden. Now, I think I mentioned last week that I have a bit of a small garden. She's not too small. But I think I mentioned last week that it's a bit of a moat around my house, obviously, with the lack of water, but it's sort of like a yes, that around my house. And, and I mentioned a little bit about me wanting to have a sustainable garden, but I want to be able to, I've been watching a lot of videos recently about having my own herbalism garden. So like having plants that I can bring inside and like herbs and you know, using barks and things like that to be able to make my own teas and those sorts of things as well. So I feel like I mentioned this last week a little bit. I haven't really listened to my own podcast. I kind of just record, don't really edit all that much purely because I feel like if I were to listen to myself, I'd be like, oh, not gross. And then not post. I'm too self critical, I think. But yeah. So part of the week. This Sunday is Mother's Day. And ever since I was little, a chrysanthemum is the plant for mothers. I don't know why. It's also the November birth flower and I'm born in November. So it makes sense for me. I also wanted to mention it because I've actually got this beautiful bush out the front that is absolutely stunning. Okay, well, I want to look up a bit more about it. So I can tell you a little bit more. And I went to this book that I have here. It's called bulbs and perennials and New Zealand handbook of bulbs and perennials edited by Hugh Redgrove. Okay, I'm going to look this up. And then I learned that they're not actually called chrysanthemums anymore. They're called didranthema. I'm like, what? Since when? I still didn't figure that out. I don't know why or when but um, yeah. So anyway, didranthema also known as chrysanthemum are just a gorgeous plant. They do well in autumn, which is why they're flowering. So these particular ones. Yeah, this is why they're flowering so beautifully. Now I think I need to get a few more because now that there's, you know, autumn interest, it's lovely to have. I picked some last Saturday because I had a housewarming party at my house. And they're still flowering or you know, they're not dead on my table in a vase and I haven't even changed the water, which is, you know, bad plants and shit, I suppose. But yeah, but yeah, I totally recommend chrysanthemums. You can get so many different colors. The ones that I have are pinky white. And also, shout out to all mums. Not just chrysanthemums, but just mums in general. We do an awesome job. It's so hard being a mum. And I guess some of us gardeners are also kind of like mothers or fathers to our plants. So I guess that's a tie in, a weird tie in. So maybe I don't even know. It's been a busy 12 hour shift for me for the last four days. So I'm a bit tired and a bit a bit spacey today. So please excuse that. I don't know if I mentioned, but I have chooks. I have four chooks. They're highlines. They're beautiful. I call them my little raptors because that's what they look like. Little velociraptors. They're very dinosaur like to me. But this kind of ties in with my pest of the week because this week I've been finding white butterfly caterpillars, that makes more sense, on my brassicas. And they've actually been turning them into lace. They've been eating so many holes in them. So I was like, that's enough. I'm going to take all these caterpillars off. And then I gave them to my chooks, the caterpillars to my chooks. And that was a little schnick. And they absolutely enjoyed it. They went nuts. And every time now I've been doing anything in my garden that's been coming out and wanting more of the caterpillars. I was calling them caper tillers, just because my kids were joining me. And we were having some fun. Looking for the caper tillers. But yeah, the joys. Yeah, but that's my pest of the week. And why you should have chickens because they eat anything. If you do any weeding, anything, they'll scratch it up, turn it into manure. And then you can put it on your compost like me or around your garden. So good. Um, what? Oh, so my plans for next week are not many. I will keep looking after my feet. But I am taking it easy. This weekend, as I said, it's Mother's Day. So I'm going to just be hanging out with my girls and potentially I'm going to go to a plant store with the intention of buying indoor plants, not outdoor plants. Because as many plants as I want outside, I want to plan my garden and see what it does in the next year before I plant anything. One exciting thing I did notice actually, was that some of my daffodils are coming up. I didn't even plant them. But I've noticed some daffodils coming up by my bins. So that's kind of exciting. And it's really cool to see what other people have planted in the garden. It's like, ooh, a little present for me. Thank you. Yeah, that's pretty lame. But the joys of what we do when you first move into a house and just taking so much self control not to buy anything, like I had an offer to buy some Camellia sinensis. Oh my gosh, I wanted to buy them. If you don't know Camellia sinensis, it's a plant that they use to make tea. And that would have been absolutely amazing. But I want to know what I'm going to do first. I don't want to just jump into any situation. So yeah, no plans this week. Just pottering along. I will be cutting more firewood because it's getting cold. It actually snowed last weekend, which was lovely, but also really cold. Today's are supposed to be, there's like major storm warnings. So I thought I'd get this podcast out before the storms came. And so you didn't have to hear my, the wind or the rain in the background. So if you hear me sounding a bit distant, I was looking out the window. It's only raining at the moment. And a little bit windy, but nothing, nothing insane. Um, but yeah, so my quick word of encouragement for this week is keep going. One little thing at a time, plant one small seed at a time. And that's all it takes to start a beautiful garden. Be patient with this. You've got this. I believe in you. And I would love to hear your gardening stories. If you've got any, if you've got any houseplants, any questions, anything, hit me up. I will, if I don't know a question, I will research it for you. Now that's commitment. All right. Love you guys lots and I will see you next week.