Ep 001 - Wind, Our Gardens, Soil and Talking Shite.

Welcome to Seedy Chats, the podcast where imperfect gardeners, Averill, that's me, and Bernadette, hi, that's me, chat about our favourite topics, gardening and life. So whether you're new to gardening, a seasoned pro, or somewhere in between, join us on our journey to be mindful in gardening and life in general. So before we start today, I need to tell you about something that happened to me this morning. What happened, Bernadette? So it's 4 a.m.? Yeah. I was riding around in pain. I made my husband call mum and say, mum, you gotta come over, you gotta pick up Charlotte. Right, okay. That's my daughter. Got a babysitter, I've gotta go to the hospital. Oh, Bernie, what was wrong? It was wind. Oh no. Did your mom come over? No, yes she did come over. She did, that's what I remember. She'd already got dressed, she just came to check on me. And she'd done some bicycle legs. Moved your hips around, done a figure of eight in your tummy. She said to me, as a good mother does, she said, Wyn can be very serious. It is very serious, it is very serious. I remember after having Callan. So I had to have Callan via C-section. Ava, I didn't. such an amazing thing, like to have a baby exhumed from your body. I- Don't you exhum a corpse? Yeah. No. I just, yeah, it's amazing, but it's like- Oh, I had a C-section too. Did you? Yeah, yeah, in the end. It's amazing. And- I kept saying to them, stop, stop. I can still feel it. She goes, that's my hand on your arm. You're only numb from the waist down. I went, oh, okay, carry on. Stop. They must do something with your bail, this is gonna sound disgusting. They must, I think they- I think there's a lot of air. They have to move, manhandle it, womanhandle it, move it out of the way, do something, take it out, put it in, I'm not too sure. Because the next day, I was walking- I think they put it back in like when you make a Polish sausage, you know how they roll it around? I think they slowly roll it back into you. The next day I was dying with wind. And the only advice, that's why, you know, anyone with wind, I'd be like peppermint tea. Cause straight up, that's what helped me. That was the only thing, I was walking the carriage at, I don't know, two in the morning. But it is very painful. Oh my lord, it was more painful than the actual, like I had major surgery, obviously I was on pain, the pain relief wasn't helping with the wind pain. I'll never forget it, and bless my cousin who is like a sister to me. She came to stay with me in hospital and my husband stayed at home. He was there for the being, was like, it's just wind, you just need a good fire and you'll be fine. And like, obviously a very strong Irish accent, but yeah, now my heart goes out to Bernadette, like poor mummy though, coming up the road. Cause Bernadette's mom lives out in a farm, she doesn't live, like lives, well, about maybe 10 minutes away from me. Yeah, yeah, not far. But it's treacherous road, like there's potholes you can get lost in. I did like though, that having, cause I lived in Melbourne, which is in the state for so many years, I do like being home and being able to say mummy, I feel sick, come over. Okay, here we are, our first podcast. So today we thought we'd talk about how Averill and I met, why we garden, jump into our reoccurring segment, what's happening in your garden, our word of the day, which is germination. And then our main topic today, which we're talking about a recent seed swap and soil event that we did. So I'll kick it over to you, Averill. All right. So, Bernadette, how did we meet? We met, I am the chair of a local community garden. She's very important. A bit of a VIP in the local community. So someone's got a problem with the seedling. Someone needs a seed. Someone has a pile of. Crap. I'm glad you said crap, not just a pile. That they want to turn into compost. They come and find me. Yeah, so we met at our local community garden. You're the social part, the social, social. You don't even know, I'm a social, I don't know. The events coordinator. I'm the events manager. The events manager, yes, which we try and keep people. motivated and interested in gardening and share stories and yeah so. So yes we also it's really important that we tell people that we're novice gardeners. Yeah not beginners, definitely not experts. We're not professionals at all. And so we don't want this podcast to be a space where we tell you what to do because to be frank we don't know what to do. We want it to be a journey and we want you to I'd like to think that as time goes on that we can take people's ideas maybe and we can do experiments together. We can put it into practice. If things work, I'll put them on the Instagram. If things don't work, we can bounce it off each other, have people call in, maybe give us advice, write in, things like that. Yeah, maybe someone might think that they're a right fit to come and be a guest on our show. Or if you're having problems in your garden. slide into our DMs, Seedy Chats and Instagram. Please do that to Bruna. She wants someone to slide into her DMs. Oh, that's, yeah. Yeah, so this is just a space for us all to learn together, to bring in people that do know what they're doing, but remember, just because something works for someone else or doesn't work for someone else or because there's a rule about something doesn't mean that you can't work for you. And I've done a lot of things. accidentally not realising that it wasn't the right thing to do, you know what? And they've worked and some things haven't worked but I've also had people say you should never do this because this will happen, these sort of gardening myths and you know what? They're not always true. So why is it important to you to get people interested in gardening? I feel it's in my blood. I was brought up in a garden store and I just want to share the knowledge that I have, which isn't very depthful. I would never class myself as an expert, but I just feel that it's easy, like it should be easy. People should automatically be doing things and they don't. I don't understand that. So yeah, just trying to get people interested. My whole life, yeah, my dad, with my dad and my mom. So there's a bit of nostalgia there too. Very nostalgic, yeah. And I think I'd be letting the side down if I didn't. It was a very different gardening. Mainly potatoes, I assume. Yes. No, actually, no, no, a lot of berries, like a lot of wildness like happening in the garden. So a lot of, you know, blackberries and not a structure, raspberries and not very structured. Like, yeah, my, my dad would and flowers. He was a great flower man. He loved her. He loves her baits, his borders. So just a border that's constantly changing and there's beautiful cottage flowers coming up. And so, yeah, he loved that and trees. And then we just always have lettuce and I always remember broccoli. And because we had a garden store, people would bring in produce to us all the time and people would grow seedlings and bring them in and sell them. And it just it just made sense, like in my head. That makes sense to me, you saying that, because something that you certainly teach me a lot in gardening is... not to overthink things, just give it a go. Less talking, more putting seeds in soil, just tap, give it a crack. Because you can overthink it, right? Oh yeah. Like you can really. Or people get intimidated or think everything has to be perfect, but you know, there's a lot of failure in the gardening that I do. We have experienced, I think everyone in the garden has experienced that and we get new people come and join the garden and they want to know and we're like, well, we can't really, let's just start simply and what can you grow? all year round and then you have experience from that. So, but yeah, what about your why, Bernadette? What's your why for gardening? So mine's a little bit different. I was living in Melbourne, Australia. We probably should say that the two of us now live in Canberra, Australia, which it's the capital, but no one knows where it is. It's a cold temperate zone. It is. Well, we don't actually live in fairness. We live just outside of Canberra. We do still live in New South Wales. Yeah, so we're just, yeah. Where were we? Cold, a cold climate. Yep, cold climate. So when I was in Melbourne, pretty similar climate. I was working a corporate job, living in an apartment. I didn't even, I had the tiny, tiny little backyard with maybe two metres by three metres of decking. And I was... worried that when I retired, so I'm a bit of a type, you could say I'm a type A personality. So I was thinking, when I retire, what am I gonna do? I need to have a skill, needs to be something I can transfer to when I'm older that's. not too physically demanding, yada yada yada. I mean gardening is very physically demanding though. Well, it depends, it can be as physically demanding as you need. That's very true. As you want. That's very true. So then I thought, well gardening, a lot of old people garden, could have a look at that. And so I just started with a 24 cell tray from Bunnings and some sugar snap peas. And away you went. Like everything I do, I went from zero to 100. So that was, and I started with those. I had a- You obviously had a good experience with them. I had them on a hot water bottle. Oh. I loved them. I photographed them. What's our word of today? You- Germination. I germinated those bad boys. 23 out of 24 germinated. So it was pretty good success rate. Yeah, that's awesome. Well done. And- I still think about that 24th though. Then I had a container garden, set them up and grew. I fell in love with the process. I fell in love. with being able to influence how these things worked. I mean, I had zero idea. I didn't even know that you had to grow certain things at certain times. So literally, I was starting everything the wrong time a year after that, doing all these, had like failing here, there and everywhere whilst I figured it out. And then a weird thing happened. The more I garden, the more I cared about the world and the environment and things like that, which is not, you know, it wasn't. part of my life at all before that because I was, you know, I didn't want to waste the scraps in the kitchen because they were nitrogen and I didn't want people contaminating soil because you need soil to grow and then the more I research things I would learn that we don't have an infinite amount of soil and all these other things happen then as a consequence of the gardening. So now I'm at a point where and then to sort of compound everything we've had we had COVID hit so this all ago, three years ago technically, but then we had COVID hit and all of a sudden we weren't able to get the kind of produce that we're used to getting. So there was a bit of... to be honest, a bit of fear there on my part, but also in response to that fear, I thought, right, well, I'll grow up myself. I wanna be able to do things myself. I wanna be more self-reliant. So yeah, there was a big part of that self-reliance came into it. And then I guess the last part of that chapter is when I moved from Melbourne back to the outskirts of Canberra and got involved in the community garden, meeting people like yourselves and learning the community aspects. So it'd been a very... personal individual journey before that. And then now I sort of appreciate the community aspect and how it can help you. It's important, right? I think it's important because you can, whenever you don't grow well, someone else might grow well and you have the possibility of swapping and. Yes, because. Is that an interest to you? You're never gonna be able, well. It is, I guess, possible, but realistically, you and I are probably never gonna grow everything we need for our families. But that's where that bartering comes in and swapping, and not to mention something might grow better for me than it does for you. Yeah, and people might have a microclimate in their garden that we don't have at home or... in the community garden. So yeah, I think, yeah, those microclimates do happen. The wattle, Bernadette. Wattle. Talk to me about wattle. Okay. Wattle. Well, a waffle about wattle. And it's amazing and I really want to cut it and bring it into the house. I nearly brought wattle into this recording session. Really? Because I thought it would be so inspiring. Is there any scent? I mean a begonia gets me, but also a wattle that just is captivating. Why aren't Australian natives used more in perfumes and things like that? I mean I know a rose is another one of my favourite scents, but far out when you get a good wattle. It's beautiful. The other thing I love about wattle is it's flowering just before everything else. Look we've got some daffodils at the moment. Isn't it clever? This is, you know... There's the excitement of spring, but more than that, there's the anticipation. So we've all waited all winter. Things are still happening, but you're really just waiting for the main event. And this is these first signs. The wattle just goes, it's coming, baby. So I think it's a very clever plant because nothing really else is in bloom. Probably very important for pollinators, getting them, limping them through. That's right. And then, well, we've also got all of the cherry blossoms And raspberries are starting. You said that you're a raspberry. Yes, the first little leaves coming on the raspberries. What else? I've got all the daffodils. I've done lots of daffodils this year, lots of tulips. Obviously we're in that cold climate. So we've got that beautiful opportunity to have all those things over winter and then just explode. They do explode. We've got Florriard coming to Canberra, which is back after COVID. Yes, and tulip top gardens as well. Tulip top gardens. Just on the highway outside of Canberra, which is fantastic. So we are, it's very special, we're very lucky. So yeah, so that's the little story on wattle. I feel like I wait all year. And this is something that sometimes stresses me out about gardening, I wait all year for spring, and then I freak out like a seedling dies, and I'm like, I've stuffed it, I've ruined the whole season. But you know, are winter growing, people forget that, people forget that you can grow so much in winter. I showed you a picture of my winter garden, of my alliums and my lettuce, which actually zero fuss, zero input. I have just put them in the ground, set them for get, and they're just there. So are they related to the onion family? Alliums includes onion, garlic, Oh, it's the whole- Chulips, in fact. Yeah, right. Yeah, okay, well, I mean, it's an awesome why. I think a lot of people have that why. Yeah, so the why was all about me, and then now it's sort of changed not. It sounds very cliche, doesn't it? But all about the environment and other people and... Not really, because in between that, you had a baby. Yes. So that would make a huge difference. I mean, I think even though my why was that it was in my DNA, I grew up in a gardening store, it was a very different type of gardening. So it was very chemical. Yeah. So where I'm at now, like I've had to go on my own journey to realize, and a lot of that came from when I had my first born. seven years ago was that things meant that I was putting on the soil, like it meant a lot more to me. Like it just, as you thought about it. Because you think about what's going to be left for that generation. That's right, yeah. What's gonna be, and what are they eating? Do we really need that chemical? How far is it traveled? Yeah, how far is it traveled? And I'm very much buy local. If you can buy local and support local, you've got more of a supply chain locally than... than what we've seen happen. So that's where the community comes into it for me as well because you learn those things from other people. Like your world starts off as a tiny little seed and then it expands as you take all this stuff in. Yeah, so it's very mature. We are very mature. We're maturing beautifully. Like a blossom. We're blooming. So I think maybe it would be a good opportunity to move on to what's happening in our next topic, which is... What's happening in your garden this week? This week, this week. this week, yes. So what's happening in my, oh, there's a lot, because I've got two gardens. I've got my community garden, and then I've got my garden at home, just like you. Talk through, just very briefly, what are they? So what I have at home is a setup of four high rise beds, I just bought in Bunnings, and I have them covered in with Annette, because I've got a lot of wildlife where I live. Yeah, you're on a rural, a rural, We're semi-rural, we're not completely rural, semi-rural. And we've got a lot of rabbits and kangaroos, birds. It's great having all this wildlife, but it does affect produce. Yep. So yes, I garden at home. And then in the community garden, I have some plots that I co-op with a few people. So we tend to all plant all different things and then we'll harvest and we'll share, and which is lovely. Yeah, that is lovely. I mean, but the thought of someone else being anywhere near my ceilings, it's not always for me like someone trampled on my broccoli. I'd be like, you're dead to me Ethel, don't renew. Yeah, look, I have had a few feelings of don't come past my line, but that's that, I, it has taught me a little bit with. So my nickname for Averill is Saint Averill because she is just about the kindest and nicest person I've ever met. So you are much more patient. Thank you, thank you. I think I probably had to become more patient because I have a seven year old. So your little girl is, how old is? Yeah, she's one. Charlotte's one, but I think she's, yeah. I guess that is, you do get another perspective because you think how would I like other people to treat? I think my patience has grown in the last seven years. Yeah, yeah. So yes, I garden, and they're very different gardens. So like water at the community garden is freely available. Whereas my water at home, we're on tank water. I don't water as much. I've tried to do a bit of a layering system in my. Raise beds. Raise beds. what are the beds called where they're... Who go culture? Yeah, like they're, I've tried to just do them that they'll retain water a little bit more than say up at the garden, but the community garden. So yes. Oh, a self wicking bed. Yeah, like a wicking bed. Yes. Yeah. They're not, they're not true wicking beds, traditional, but I've tried whatever I had at hand because I developed these beds in the height of COVID as well. So it was like, I couldn't just go to the store. Yes, yeah, yeah. And I just used what we had and my husband, he's a plumber and he just had loads of white PVC pipe and he just joined it all together and... made a full structure and then I put, like there was like little offshoots. I'll post a photo on our Insta page, Brenda. There's little offshoots where I can plant in herbs and I filled the PVC with soil and then done these little offshoots so I could put things up high, like plant up high herbs and strawberries and so that was the theory behind it. But it was just what we had during COVID and we just ran with it. go to the shop so you may do. I actually enjoyed trying to engineer something with what we had. Naturally, because naturally that's how you garden, like how I say you garden, you just get on with it. Yeah like if I overthink it it doesn't get done so I'm definitely not a Mr. McGregor beautifully lined garden person. I wanted to be so much but I learned if I thought about it so much or it visually annoyed me I would probably not do it or... at doing it so I would just and then my kids really would get in there and yeah not very good at doing lines so I just kind of put things in let them grow and try not to remove everything at the one time. I try and do a bit of companion growing. So what is happening in your plots and your beds now? So in my, when at home I just still just have all my winter crops, they've failed. They're my broccoli. I'm like please, the leaves are beautiful, which you can eat. But I'm waiting on them to flower for me. I'm not getting any florets of broccoli. It was minus three degrees centigrade. Beautiful frost this morning. We had snow yesterday. We had snow yesterday, so it's still pretty cold. We had snow yesterday, yeah. And it was still on the mountains this morning, so I don't know, towards you. So the suburb we live in is Goongung, and then a little bit back, and we've got some, I think it's the Tindri Mountains that kind of are coming into the back of Goongung there, but you could see snow on the mountains, it's amazing. Yeah, but it's cold. So maybe those things will catch up. All my brassicas failed for the third year in a row. Did they? Did you get any? I don't know if I'm doing it right. I put them in, I need to be starting them earlier at the end of summer so that they're more established when they go in. No, look, they haven't all failed, but a lot of them got just completely eaten by caterpillars or slugs or something. You mean those beautiful white butterflies, that? Cabbage. Cabbage moths. Cabbage moths, my nemesis, although all part, an important part of the ecosystem. We will talk about that at another stage where even snails, people always have an issue with snails. both garden organically. Yes, we tried. Yeah. No pesticides, no herbicides, those sort of things. So I tried exclusion netting, and so I netted all of my crops at home, and they all still got eaten. So I must have just netted whatever was in there and just trapped it in there. I think it was slugs. I was gonna say, didn't you put your net on and then say, you said they're in there. They're in there after trapping it in a party. I think it's like, yeah. Yeah, so look, what's going on at the moment, I'm thinking about my soil. about my soil and how I can prepare that for spring. So I yeah I'm waiting on my winter herbs. My winter herbs. Do you till? Dig or no dig? Oh dig and yeah we've been talking about that a little bit. Dig, D-I-G. Yes, tillage, tilling. I have been trying not to. I've been trying to leave the soil and not to disturb it too much because that's really important for everything to work well under under what we don't see, the iceberg theory. Yeah because when I first started gardening I didn't get that especially when I started at the community garden. I till till tilled every deal with squillion weeds that came up as a result of that. Now, now learning to look after the soil more. The land sees that as a wound. Yes. I've got an ex-career and I used to work in wounds. And I get that because your body wants to heal a wound. So it starts the healing process and that's what the earth is doing. It's trying to heal and grow and weeds and then grass comes along and all of a sudden you'll, there'll be brambles and briars and then a tree might pop up It just wants to heal. And you don't see that anywhere naturally in nature. That tilling, that's just not a natural thing, is it? Right? So, but. And then learning the inputs. So you're saying at the moment you're preparing your soil for spring, what are you doing to do that? So I'm trying to eliminate a lot of my winter crops. So hoping and praying and talking to them that they'll just flower and then. Have you tried singing? I do, I sing a lot in the garden, yeah. Yeah, I do. Talk to my seedlings. We'll get some of it on the podcast maybe. And I blow on them. Like Prince, do you ever see, didn't Prince Charles, doesn't he talk? to his plants in his greenhouse. Anyway, Google it, I'm sure. So yes, poo. Poo. And compost. Poo and compost. What poo? We at the garden are getting a large drop burned out of sheep poo. It's called Gunninggold. So we bought into, it was a beautiful school fundraiser where the local farmer let them into the shearing shed. And let us buy a pile of shit. I know. So kind of them. Actually something I didn't value when we first met. Cause I was like, I just don't want bags of shit around the garden. We have a funny story. We have, so we had, so COVID. hit and we ended up in our local town ended up with a zoo stuck. So our local town is Queenbyan and the zoo was trapped. in town, the zoo. The circus. The circus. It's a circus, they were trapped. Did I call it a zoo from the beginning there? Sorry, oh God. Sorry about that. Anyway, we got a message. Nikki, our plot manager, whom we will have on the show one day. Shout out, Nikki. Thanks for everything you do at the garden. Nikki had an email from the circus saying, would you like our camel shit? No, the email said, do you want a trailer of shit? Yeah, and I was like. Specify what shit. Oh, was it not? No. And I was like, yes, we'll take shit. And I was like, oh, wow, lion shit. Like, what are we getting here? Like, this is awesome. Whereas I didn't see the value and then just had these visions of me having a pile of shit at the garden for the next, you got to, you know, the community garden is run by volunteers. So it's hard sometimes to get the manpower behind those projects. So I just had this vision of a pile of shit sitting there forever. But I'm on board this year. Yeah, well, we don't have the circus now. here so we could have had loads of shit anyway we didn't. We've still got a load of shit. Fags of manure, sheep manure coming to the garden and my husband did point out that I'm very good at organizing shit. You are! When I was you know asking who wanted some and then payments and all that. If I need shit done. I'll do it for you I'll get it done. Yeah so. It is very important because it adds all the nutrients back in to the soil. And so you don't even have to dig it in. You just it's beautiful. It's lovely. So if you think about it, you've got the plants in the pulling nutrients out of the soil, not just your nitrogen potassium, potassium and. phosphorus that we see in our normal fertilizers, but there's a whole bunch of different minerals and vitamins and things that they pull up. Then they pull everything up and then we pluck them out of the ground, we harvest them. So you've got to give back. We've got to replenish. And different crops will put some into the soil for you, like your peas and your beans. They're really good at putting nitrogen. Yeah, yeah. Their nodes are great at that. So it's, you know, you can definitely plant and put back in. But yeah, it's just good if you can keep the healthier soil off the scratch. Not to mention, great. That's one of the great things I've learned about gardening is... that cycle of using the waste, making use of someone else's waste and putting it to good use. Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. And I mean, with the Gunninggold poo, they have their own website. You can pop on and look at it. It was supporting a local school as well. So it kind of made sense that we were getting poo, but. So when that comes, you're going to top dress your? I'm gonna dress, yes. So we just sprinkle it on. and... just add it as necessary. You don't have to water it down. You can make a tea out of it. But you don't have to. You don't have to and that's a bit of work. That's another thing like if you start to get, you can do that when you're retired, Bernadette. Yes. Because we have that knowledge, we know we can do that but it's a bit of work for me. But if you don't like the look of sheet manure sitting on top of your beds, especially if you're no dig, so it's just gonna sit on top, right? We're layering on top. Then there is the option that you could turn it into a tea. It doesn't smell. I cover all my plots in... sugarcane mulch. So I mulch everything, but then I do get issues with slugs as a result of that. So I'm still working through whether that's my forever. Do you reckon they are they attracted to the sugarcane? Anything moist and soggy. They tend to like they will stay under old leaf litter and things like that. And what about with your sugarcane? Does it not spray it up a manure like No, it's not like it's not like a pea straw. It has no seeds in it. It's just the refuse like the this up because I have seen that the process sugarcane goes through may not be the healthiest process like is there an organic sugarcane? I don't know I've never looked into it I never knew. Do they dice it to kill everything with chemicals or like I wonder? I don't know. Right. In Australia we do produce a lot of sugarcane in our northern regions where the climate is a lot so it makes but honestly that's a good thing for us to look into. Yeah, I think it's good. It's just something that I think I probably listened to or read that has stuck in my brain and I was meant to Google it and I never did. And some of the products, you gotta be careful in gardening, they'll say organic and they may not be, that might just be their trade name. Yeah. Their trade name. Like they've- Trademarked it. They've trademarked it, but it's not actually organic. So you gotta be careful. But that's why we've started this podcast, We can share. We can share. What we've learned, Miss Thanks We've Made and learn like this, let's learn together. Yeah. About is sugar cane okay? Yeah, well. I hope so. We'll look that up. Hopefully, yeah. Well. Yeah. What about you, Aura? Come on, tell me, what's happening, what are you doing this week? So I'm starting seedlings. Pretty much every single month of the year I start seedlings whether I should be or not. I just love that process. I think you're the seedling queen. I love the seeds. I just put seeds in the ground. I like, yeah, I like the seedlings. I like having the little babies. And you do experiments. I do experiments. got some that I've got inside at the moment on the windowsill getting sun and then once they've germinated, our word of the day, we are getting to the seedier part of Seedy Chats. Once they've germinated, then my experiment at the moment is, because it's still quite cold here, I thought what happens if I keep some inside and put some out into the greenhouse. So the greenhouse inside sort of sits. around 20 degrees centigrade outside in the greenhouse. It usually gets, this morning was the coldest I've probably had and that was eight degrees. In your greenhouse? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so. Cause we were minus last night. I mean. Minus three. So it's still got, you know, 10 degrees, 10 degrees. That's fair. Better than, yeah. So. I mean, you could put a heater in there. I've got a little heater in there. I do have a little heater in there, but. that only one's usually at night time and I don't know how effective it is. Yeah, that's probably another topic. That's probably another topic. But it's interesting, like, I just think to have that difference of degrees, it just shows you. Because I actually, three weeks ago, did carrots and beetroot, which need 10 degrees to germinate, and they've, you know, my daughter and I had a little day and planted those, and they've germinated beautifully just out in the greenhouse, so it's still too early to do that. I've got them in tubs on wheels. I've filled them with just the seeds. starting mix and then I've... put the seeds in and kept them in the greenhouse. They've germinated. Once the weather's warmer or we're past our last median frost date here in Canberra and it's safe, I can then move those out of the greenhouse. This time of year, the greenhouse, it does get hard because I've got everything in there. All my citrus is in there, anything that I'm... That's great, it's better to have them in there than in the house. Yeah, that's true, that's true. Because me, it's in the house. Yeah, my husband would never allow that. It's already testing that I've got the seedlings in there. fungus net or something in the house. I mean he probably saw that when you um going back to when you lived in Melbourne and you had them on a water bottle he was probably worried they were going to come to bed. Yeah so I've got seedlings going. What have I done with the seedlings recently? I'm trying to quickly fit in so it's August here, the late August and I'm trying to fit in some last... brassicas, so some mini cabbages and some anything that had short days to maturity. So I can try and get it in in spring. Yeah. And it can. Will the cabbages, they'll still grow? Well, they're 60 days to maturity. So if I can get them in in spring before it gets too hot and they bolt in summer, I don't know. Charles Dowding was doing it in his book. So I thought, well, Charles. Well, I think, yeah, no, you're probably right to look at the germination and yeah. So obviously if it gets too hot, they'll bolt. But if we can, if we've got enough time before then, but we've got to fit. Yeah, yeah. We're heading into another wet. La Nina. La Nina somewhere. I must say that the garden loves the water. It is different, but it's different conditions. But yeah, my garden is. some stuff was just absolutely thriving. That's another reason why it's really good to do lots and lots of variety because you don't know what sort of season you got ahead of you and sometimes what's bad for some things will make other things thrive. So I've got the seedlings going, I've got those brassicas, parsley I always start, I've always sort of got, I tend to do two or three starts of parsley, I'd use a lot of parsley in the kitchen, dehydrating stocks, things like that. So I've got. my next round of parsley. So I've got one which is currently in my veg truck, which if anyone's familiar with that, it's a raised planter, but it's got like almost like a mini greenhouse on top of it to protect it. Veg. Veg. It's not veg, truck. Oh. Bop. What was that? I think that makes more sense. Oh right, it's like one of those- Veg truck. Veg truck, I was like, veg? Oh yeah. That's very- Bop. But I do get my pronunciation. Is this like when I bought the hot tie top when I was 16 and the cashier said, I think you mean hottie? Ha ha ha. hard tie. Yeah, because that's what I was. Yeah, so the Veg Triangle got parsley. I always have parsley on the go, so I've started that. And then I've just got in there some other things, flowers that I really wanted to have, like, Billy Buttons, Echinacea. Yeah, right. And your Billy Buttons, because I've grown some Billy Buttons. How are they going? Have you germinated them? They've all germinated, they've all started. That's exciting. And they're all sitting there. And then once they germinated, I moved half of them into the greenhouse. So again, that's like 10 degrees cooler than what's inside. And that's been really interesting because things are really struggling in the greenhouse, whereas the half that I left inside are still performing really well. So that was just a thought for me, was once they germinate and they, because they really need that heat very importantly for that germination process, but then- that's when it switches to sort of heat and light. So I thought, could I then get away with putting them outside? But the answer is no, it was a bit early. Yeah, right. You know, next year. It's all trial and error. And I rec... Sorry. No, I was gonna say, just come back, speaking of trial and error, like there you're talking about parsley and a lot of people would think such a good basic herb to have. And I fail all the time. It's very slow. Very slow to germinate. So people think it hasn't germinated. You've got to hang in there like up to three weeks at times, depending on how cool it is. Cause it does it. Are you direct sowing? Well, it's a bit of one of those, when you go to the garden store, when I go to the garden store, that I feel I'm always obsessed with parsley. because it's always something that I want to use, I use in the garden, you'll sometimes see at the supermarket, you might buy one of those, it's been brought up in this perfect environment. It's a growing herb and you'll bring it home, you think I'll plant that and again, they just don't survive because they haven't been hardened. Hardened off or grown in our local. And grown in a, in like, yeah, in a cool climate. And maybe that's got a little bit to do with it because I do save seed from my parsley. The seed that's, the parsley that's grown environment and then that's what I'll start the next time. So maybe, yeah, I've had really good success. And just to our listeners that people will be like, oh I can't even grow parsley. Well you know what? It's actually probably quite hard to grow sometimes. So and I have, yeah, some stuff works, some stuff doesn't. That's what I say, have a lot of stuff. I, yeah, love the process. I start stuff I probably would start it every week. Start something every week if I had time and space realistically. what I want to do because the more stuff you start, the more regularly you have stuff on the go. And it becomes habit as well. Then you'll be harvesting all throughout the year as well. So then you're planting, so that means that you've got more days of the year where you can put stuff in the ground. So that's about it for me. Waiting for the sheep manure to come. And then I've got the sort of what's happening. It's actually this weekend. It's arriving this Saturday. So then I'll be amending my soil, getting that ready. And then probably the next thing I'll be looking at is potatoes. Oh yeah, we're gonna do, we'll have a big potato podcast. A big PPP. Oh wait, just two B's. Big. A BPP. A BPP. A big PPP. A big potato podcast. A big P. Yes, we, yeah, that's pretty exciting. Yeah, right. Well, we- So it's a good time to talk about our word of the day, Because I think that might be your issue with the parsley. It is slow to germinate. I mean, guys, I don't know everything. When I first started chives, and this was only three years ago, I planted a single chive seed. One. In each cell, because I didn't know. I thought it grew chive plant, and then I had just this lanky little chive come up on its own. And I just went, where are all my chives? Yeah, right. I mean, those seeds, they... you would want to do that with like carrots. But they don't always say on the packet. That's something they don't really say on seed packets, like so abundantly or like, I don't know. Have you got parsley in there? What would it say? I don't actually have parsley in there. But do you know what I mean? Like it doesn't really say for chives. Hold on. I've got a big, I've got a large basket of seeds here after our seed swap event on Saturday. You stole on seeds. I didn't. These are all mine. I stole yours. I've got three packets of yours and I have a coffee cup. That's something else that's happened to me in the last few years. I've become obsessed with seed collecting. So I think I've got something like 300. Can I just say when you left the garden on Saturday, someone rocked up that I think would challenge you. Who is it? What's their name? Afterwards, I'll tell you. Oh, my God. They know who they are. If they're listening, they rocked up like they're they're. you know, they've been at our, oh, I do have parsley. They do, it's continental. So it says here, so in punnets, germination 90%, when from autumn to spring, harvest at 26 weeks, moderate water, full sun, spacing 20 centimetres. So in all of that we've just talked about, you could assume, it's not as, you know, you could. open this packet and put one of those single seeds in the ground. It doesn't say grab a handful. That's true. It just says each plant needs to be 20 centimeters apart. So that was one of the things I had to learn at the beginning was. How, yeah, I used to make little notes like to sow things abundantly. You can often tell by the size of the seed too. I would say it's a bit of an indicator, right? Yeah, yeah. I got to plant these parsley seeds now. if it's a small time. So I would start them indoors now. Oh God, you know what? You're not allowed. Oh no, no, no, no, I am. So I bought myself two beautiful indoor growers with lights. Oh yeah. I've got an app on my phone. Your little hydro setup. I can sit here. It's a bit of a dirty word in Gurgong at the moment. There has been a recent bust. Were you related to that? I wish I was. Those lights looked awesome. I know, I wanna know what the police are doing with those grow lights. I reckon we could. Take them off their hands. I reckon we could contact. them and say if they could donate them to the local community. My indoor growing, I've done carrots inside and now there is leggy because I don't want to put them outside. Why are they leggy if you've got the grow lights? Well I just think they're ready to move on. They're ready to move on. How do you know that? That's a good talking point. When your seed germinates and you see the little leaves coming up. You normally have two little leaves and then when I see the third leaf coming that resembles a carrot top. So the first leaves that germinate from the seed aren't what the actual true leaves look like. So you will then get what people call the true leaves. Which is normally your third leaf I think. Which is like if you imagine Bugs Bunny chewing on a carrot that ferneys sort of green leaf type. Yeah, the top, the carrot tops. which can be extremely healthy on top and then now you can have this... When a carrot first germinates it just looks like a women's contraceptive device. An IUD. Or when if you know if you write in like a little emoji and you just get that little... Sprout. Sprout. Yes, if you write sprout. Contraceptive device. Sprout works too. But yeah, it's like a tea bar. Yeah, it's just like a little, yeah, just like a little, you could Google a seedling and it'll probably be like the generic photo that'll come up. There's just these two little leaves. And a lot of seeds, I don't know how people differentiate them when they pop up first. I don't think you can. Until they develop their. True leaves. True leaves, but some of my gardening, like Facebook pages or Instagram pages. of, follow us on Seedy Chats, our new Instagram handle. Yeah, so some people would look at the green leaf and go, oh, that's a parsnip or no, that's spinach. And I'm like. So that's one of my favourite things is guessing. Because you've done that recently, didn't you? Yeah, I posted it and no one played. I was like. No, I did, I thought it was. I know you always join in. But I thought. Because I'm St. Averill. I thought what a good game. Guess what the seedling is. Guys, if you think that would be a fun segment, let me know and we will post a little seedling and you guys can guess on our Insta. and instant. No one's got a reply. Oh, that is so harsh. There's gotta be more gardening nerds out there like me. Yeah. It has to be. You'll always have me, Brenna-dart. Yeah. And my mum. Shout out, mum. Well, that brings us to the end of our first episode of Seedy Chats. Yes, Brenna-dart, great chat. Thanks very much. Don't forget to like, subscribe, all those things you do. You can follow us on our Instagram, Seedy Chats. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. Yeah. So whatever you're doing in the gardening this week, good luck, have fun.