I'll probably end up going monthly with these at some point but at the moment I'm still in Newbie Gardener Mode and every week has something worth talking about, in my Newbie Gardener Opinion.
This week I have good news and bad news.
🌿 The good news is: my garlic chives are beginning to show themselves!
May they survive and live a prosperous, giving, fulfilling life of delicious garnishings!
🌿 The bad news is: some of my rainbow silverbeet has perished, as have some spanish onions.
My poor, poor onions. I barely knew ye.
What I really need, when we come across some extra funds and time for wood and building, is some more planters -- I'll keep the tomato and basil together how they belong, but it'd be nice to have one planter for brocolli, one for silverbeet, one for onions, one for carrots, etc. But that's future talk and I'm still learning.
I'm just happy at the moment that it appears one onion is yet to die. As are two silverbeet bunches. Kind of. Poor things look a bit sketchy; I still have some seeds though and I'm willing to try again, after investigating whatever it is I've done wrong.
The tomatoes and basil are flourishing at least.
I'm hoping the tomatoes continue to do well; I've read all about their common diseases and whatnot and have added more calcium to the soil.
This tomato bunch in particular looks rather healthy; it's shot up compared to its comrades. I almost want to move it into the middle of the planter, but not sure if I should. For the time being I'm just going to leave it where it grew up and not kick it out of home and into a more favourable position.
We'll see how it goes...
We also have this very happy basil growing in the inconvenient location of the corner of the planter instead of nicely in the middle. I've moved one of them closer to the middle of the row, hoping it'll like its new home away from the edge... but we'll see.
I don't really want to touch this very happy one until the others have proved disappointing.
While my seeds have been (partially) thriving, we've also been working on tidying up the front gardens attached to the house.
We cleared out all the weeds -- (yes, I know dandelions are useful, but, a beautification project is happening) -- we sieved the soil to remove rocks and assorted debris, and mixed in some food to help revitalise it.
I've planted some delphinium seeds on the left in that skinny garden area.
In the larger one on the right -- in the bottom bit is lavender, then at the top is a haphazard mixture of columbine and... statice. Not sure of their common name, despite googling. Sea lavender? I've never heard of it before but I liked the look of them on the seed packet.
I still have the Baby's Breath packet unopened, which I'm going to be planting in two terracotta pots that sit on the verandah.
Unpictured is the other side of the verandah where I was thinking some very large shrubs would look nice. Either that or convincing the new house-owners that a trellis would look nice there so I can grow a covering of mandevilla.
I do know they want to take the railing down and replace it since it's all rusting, but we'll see what happens and if I'm lucky enough to get a trellis there at some point.
All in all, apart from my silverbeet and onions, things are going well.
If anyone has any tips on growing silverbeet or giant yellow spanish onions, I'd love to hear them before I begin Attempt Number Two.
Cheers. 🙂🌿
All photos in this post are courtesy of me, 
