Wicking box update 2 (& brag)

Here’s the wicking box containing the Bok Choy Chinese cabbage, 70 days after sowing the seed. Tomorrow’s the big day when I harvest a couple of plants for stir-fry.

This has been a great trial run for the wicking box idea. Even though the boxes received some overhead rain, they were happily sucking up the water from the bottom reservoir, because I was checking levels regularly and on two occasions found the reservoir empty and had to refill with water.

I’m looking forward to trying celery in the boxes over the coming summer. Celery is a water-loving plant and my previous efforts to grow it haven’t been notable. It’s shallow-rooted and keeping water up to it (remembering to water every day in summer) has been my main problem. I’m not going to direct sow the celery seed into the box as I did with the Bok Choy, as celery seed is very tiny. Instead, I’ll sow it in the polyhouse in seed-raising mix and pot up seedlings which I’ll plant into the box when they’re large enough.

Continuing with the showing off… here’s the first couple of chilacayote harvested.

The smaller one weighs 900 gm and the larger one, 1400 gm. And there’s seven more on the vine rapidly approaching these in size! I made a small trial batch of chilacayote and ginger marmalade yesterday and was given 8 out of 10 for it by the Better Half. Lost a mark for the set (slightly runny…next time add some Jamsetta), and another point lost for ‘not gingery enough’. Sheesh! And I doubled the ginger from the original recipe, too. Some Better Halves are never satisfied.

Oh… and the chilacayote will join the Bok Choy in the stir-fry.