Around the garden

This year I decided not to put in my normal bean tepee for climbing beans but to just poke the seeds in anywhere there was a space and let them scramble wherever they could.

This one beat the others to the top of  the asparagus fern:

And more amongst a tomato, ending up on a trellis behind:

Purple King is the best variety to use because the beans are easily visible amongst all the green foliage.

Last year I was hoping my group of 3 seed-grown quinces would flower (after 5 years), but they leafed out without flowering. Then, amazingly, they tricked me by producing pretty pink flowers amongst the leaves:

And then….tiny furry quinces:

And it looks like I might get lucky with the persimmon this year with a few fruits forming:

I let a couple of kale plants go to seed last year and have a huge packet of seed. I decided to broadcast the seed into a wire circle (I grow my annual veges in wire circles high enough to keep the rabbits out, and half-filled with compost). I was determined to keep the Cabbage White butterfly out, and knowing she could get through the one-inch wire, I installed an inner circle of half-inch wire, then pegged mosquito netting over the top.  I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a butterfly in there! I’ve watched her flying frantically round and round outside the circle……. “I know my favourite food plants are in there; I can smell them”…….. but as yet I haven’t actually seen her get in. I wish I knew how she does it. So, I’m still having to check for caterpillars, damn it!

This is what the seedlings looked like 5 weeks after planting (that purple-edged one is a stray mustard seedling):

I’m thinning them out gradually and using the thinnings in salads, omelets, scrambled eggs and the like. Eventually I’ll leave half a dozen plants to grow on.

Some nice lush growth here. The ‘pompoms’ are leek flowers, waiting to seed. Behind them the leaves of sweet corn, the pink daisy flowers of Echinacea purpurea in front and the clover-like foliage of oca on the left:

Below are 4 tomato plants, planted in the bin which holds the humanure from the composting toilet while compost worms are finishing off the process. There are 2 Black Russian and 2 Burnley Bounty. I bought them at a Sunday Market. Because they’re in nice rich humanure they’ve gone berserk! They’ve pulled their stake to one side (you can see it poking up in the centre) and I’ve had to put other stakes in various spots to hold up the ever-expanding branches. They’ve flopped over the top of, and down into, the next-door bin, so that I can’t access that to put the next lot of humanure in there.

I haven’t grown Burnley Bounty before so I’m looking forward to seeing how they produce and what the flavour’s like.

 

This week’s harvest:

• Butter Beans  184 gm
• Purple King beans  149 gm
• Blue Lake beans  140 gm
• Beetroot  223 gm
• Carrots  563 gm
• Roma tomatoes  51
• Plums  1927 gm
• Pepino  105 gm