Time waits for no-one. Especially not in the garden!

Last Friday was the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, the longest night.  Though it still feels like mid-winter, we are already over the crest and on the downhill slide towards spring.

It’s always tempting in this weather, feeling the frosty mornings, to plant more of the winter crops, but before you know it, before they get time to really bear now, the cabbage moths and aphids will become active and the spring dry heat will challenge those big crunchy leaves.  Though it feels far from intuitive, it is already time to start at least thinking about the summer crops.

Most of the summer fruiting crops use soil temperature, as least partly, as a signal to germinate. Gardening Australia has a post about a good design for a homemade hothouse that is easy and cheap to construct.  If you want to get off to an early start, this is a good way to do it.

But unless you have some form of hothouse it’s still a bit early to plant seeds in the open. But it is a good time to go through your seed stock and make sure you have seed of eggplants, capsicums, chilis, beans, zucchini, squash, cucumbers and all the other summer crops ready for planting.  What are your favourite varieties? What should we have on our lists? And what is your favourite seed supplier?