Sunday, October 30, 2011

Another gardening update

So just to keep track of what I'm planting and seeing how it goes, here's the seeds I planted today:
8 climbing beans (3 bean mix from diggers) in a row
11 beans from Elena (she's my godmother)
5 small gourds (phoenix)
5 watermelon - sugar baby (diggers)
5 zucchini blanco (diggers)
4 silverbeet (diggers)
5 pumpkin (diggers)

I've turned the soil with a little compost, and did some weeding before that. The chilli in there is doing okay, and some of the garlics so far are doing alright. Out of the 5 original cloves, 3 are doing well - and one out of the 2 I planted later.

Cabbages seem to do okay leaf-wise, but I need to try again to cook them. Carrots also seem to have done rather well. I look forward to seeing how they go. Maybe I should try collecting seeds from them too?

The seeds from the daikon radishes seem to develop randomly. The ones I've collected have been all different shades from green to brown. On the bright side, they are the same size as the original ones I planted so hopefully they do well. I want to see if they improve in terms of adapting to the local soil.

The broadbean harvest was 400g in the first batch, + some spare for planting next year, and 800g in the second batch with some more also for drying. There are still plenty to go. The first batch we just ate in a simple recipe as the bulk of the meal - boiled, then cooked with some fried onion. This batch I'm planning on turning in to tamiya/temeya.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Minor gardening update

In the interests of recording how things are going, it looks like:

3 daikon radishes came up and bolted
1 onion has come up
1 silverbeet has come up
any rocket coming up in the last month or two simply bolted
the first batch of broadbeans are going gangbusters. Took a first haul off them today. I will be keeping some and drying them out for next year! I need to build them a zimmer frame next time as they have very soft stems and keep falling over. It's quite difficult to keep them dry in there, so I'm worried about rot. Also, some leaves have started to grow some kind of rustiness on them.
Any of the bolted mustard lettuce seems to attract aphids. I do want to collect the seeds though. Similarly, I want the seeds from the old daikons from the first batch. They seem to take ages to mature, although I have no idea when they are ready to collect.