The Fantastic Idea That Went A Little Soggy

Rain rain go away! It's another dreary day in Tassie but that's not unusual at this time of year. I'm keeping myself busy with lots of insignificant bits and bobs today, one of which I thought you might be interested in.

At the start of the year I showed you how to save tomato seeds for the next season's crop. Well, I've decided to plant the seeds and see if I get any results.

This is my first time at this so it's going to be a good experiment. For some reason I thought that it would be a good idea to start the seeds off in old egg cartons (as I didn't have any old pots) but I have to admit that my "fantastic idea" is already coming apart from the seams a bit! You see, I planted them with the mindset that the egg cartons are biodegradable and I could just separate the tomato plants when they were bigger and plant the whole lot, egg carton and all into the ground. Problem is, that when the egg cartons get wet, they go soggy and tear! I think I'm going to have to put them all in a flat banana box/crate or something just in case the egg cartons don't hold up (which I don't expect they're going to!)

After a few hours of rain...soggy egg cartons...doh!

So step one, DON'T use egg cartons but if you do have some old solid boxes like a banana box or some old plastic pots, you can start to plant your tomato seeds now. HOWEVER you must have a warm sunny place to keep them indoors for the next few months until the frosts are over and the weather warms up a bit.

You can plant the seeds in groups and separate them later when the plants grow up a bit. As you can see, in the lid of the egg carton, I simply buried the tomato seeds on the brown paper that I'd dried them on!

Use a good quality seed raising mix too as you want the plants to have the nutrients they need to sprout.

Fingers crossed I get a good result. I'm hoping that within the next 3- 4 weeks, I have lots of little tomato seedlings.

I also thought I'd show you my winter veggie garden. Sadly it has seen better days.

I'd let it fend for itself for these past few months and unfortunately "the divas" (my chooks) decided to raid the patch so everything except the broad beans are looking a little ravaged! There's still some hope they'll survive so on the weekend I fenced off the chooks from the garden, gave the veggies a little TLC, weeded and wished them all the best!

"The Divas" are staging a protest in their new confines, they want to rule the back yard as they've been doing for so long! The lemon tree is looking good though as you can see.

Anyhow, that's another project ticked off my list. I'll show you the progress of the seedlings in the coming weeks. Now I'm off to jump the neighbours fence and steal a branch off their magnolia tree...that or I could go ask them for it, I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige!