This time of the year in the Blue Mountains can be very unpredictable with sun, rain, cloud, high wind, hail storms, electrical storms and then the other bits in between all that. The Blue Banded Bees are back and you will see them now buzzing your flowers with their oddly soothing deep buzzing sounds. They are known as ‘Buzz pollinators’ that vibrate at a perfect level that helps with pollination of many native plants and vegetables like Tomatoes that pollinate better when physically shaken. Here we can also see a Magenta form of Amaranth Tricolor which is used both as a leaf vegetable and has edible seeds. It is also often known as ‘Callaloo’. Although it’s originally from warmer climates we can grow it quite well here in the mountains as a leaf vegetable and has huge attractive flower spikes – as long as you get the plants in early and we have a warmer summer. It’s looking good for that this year around here. This variety has both bright red leaves and flowers. The third photo here is of seedling pots loaded with Pink Stemmed Celery and Red Streaks Mizuna. The Pink Stemmed celery tends to have a much stronger flavour than the usual green only varieties and is excellent for use in soups and stocks for things like noodles and even lends an interesting salty flavour into a risotto. Pink stemmed celery is usually also a long lived perennial variety so you will have celery leaf and stems available right through the year except in mid winter when it dies back to ground level. These kinds of methods of growing multiple plant variety seedlings together can be very effective at getting you maximum use out of your available spaces especially if you are germinating the seeds in protected spaces under glass etc. ‘Red Streaks’ Mizuna is a fast but small growing mustard family plant that can get you edibles in a few weeks from planting in the spring time. They transplant around easily and are a useful filler plant for any time of the year but especially nice tasting in the spring.
It’s that time again!
This is just a quick reminder that the next scheduled meeting for the year 2023 of the Mid Blue Mountains SeedSavers is on at the Bullaburra Progress Hall this coming weekend.
Sunday 22 October 2023 from 10 am till Midday
Help celebrate the Blue Mountains SPRING!
It’s time to put more seeds and seedlings in and plan for the upcoming sunny growing summer and into autumn. There are seeds to be harvested from the late winter that have ripened up in the recent warming sunny patches of weather.
Come along and talk about growing things with like minded people.
Hope to see you there celebrating the current productive growing season!
The address for the Mid Blue Mountains Seedsavers website is:
https://midbluemountainsseedsavers.org/
We do now have a Facebook page as well:
https://www.facebook.com/Mid-Blue-Mountains-Seed-Savers-1629533990602860/
These regular notifications are sent out directly from the website if you subscribe to that email notification list.
Mid Blue Mountains Seed Savers 