What Happened In My Garden This Week? – Week 28

Propagation

I have planned this season’s propagation. How many cuttings I’ll take, how many new plants I am aiming for etc. But first I need to wait for the fruiting period to end. So after the last harvest, I’ll start propagating the perennials in my garden.

Pruning

I have also learned more about pruning the plants in my garden, and I’ll be pruning bushes and trees alike in August. Mine and my parents as well, to boost our harvests next season.

Next week I’ll check on the apple cuttings from pruning my late apple tree and see how they’re doing. If they’re growing leaves, growing roots and look viable.

Fertiliser

I am using urine water as my main fertiliser in the garden, and I am topping things off with some bokashi tea. However, this week I ran out of bokashi tea. The bokashi is ready to be emptied out in a container and mixed with some soil. I’ll be doing that next week. I’ll need to fill the bokashi again so that it can produce enough bokashi tea to last me the rest of the season. I’m glad I’ll have my own bokashi compost/soil-mix this season, and I think I may divide it in between my perennials at the end of the season.

Pests

Slugs and aphids are still causing trouble in the garden. I’ve had to cut off the outer leaves of my napa cabbages three times since they’e so keen on wrecking them.
The aphids are hanging out all over my red currant leaves, and I have yet to see any berries form, so I really need to spray them down. The aunts crawling up the tree are the ones that bite and it really stings.

Annuals

The potatoes that needed their second layer of soil got it this week. Hopefully I’ll have a decent amount of potatoes to harvest soon.

Allium

I planted out more leeks and 187 garlic cloves in soil bags. Next week I’ll need to plant out the red and yellow onions along with a few varieties of pickling onions.

Tomatoes and chili

All the tomatoes and tomatillos are doing great. Some have tomatoes and some are blooming. I repotted one of the tomatoes and one of the tomatillos and gave them a good dose of fertiliser. The chilies are also doing well. They’re not yet as large as I want them to be, but with some more fertiliser, they may be soon. Most of them have flowers and/or fruit forming.

Root vegetables

The radish plants went to seed a few weeks ago and they are finally forming the pods that I am after. I’ll dry some and pickle the rest. I’ll be sure to gather seeds from the radish plants as well, and blanch the greens to have them frozen or dried. I have a few black radishes that I will plant next week. The beets are growing well and more are being planted in succession. This should result in a continuous harvests of both beet greens and beets this season. The parsnips and rutabaga should be ready to be planted next week. At the end of the season, I’ll sow some carrots too.

Brassica

The black kale and regular kale are beginning to emerge. The beets are growing well and I will keep planting them in succession. The cabbage plants are doing fairly well. They’re still being frequently attacked by the slugs, but they have grown quite large even so. My leafy green container is full to the brim with sprouted seeds. So hopefully they’ll be strong plants soon.

Herbs

Most of my herbs sown from seed have germinated and will soon be moved to the vertical growing system.

The three sisters

The cucumber plants have begun to form flowers.

The pumpkin and squash patches require a lot more heavy feed. I haven’t harvested anything from them yet this year, though there is at least one squash forming. The cornstalks and bean-plants are still there, but oh so small compared to how big they ought to be by now. Fingers crossed that things pick up soon.

Perennials

The sunchokes that I was worried about in the beginning of the season, have finally caught up and they may outgrow us soon, as will the sunflowers. The sunflowers have begun forming in the middle of all the leaves of each plant.

Berries

I’ve gotten a few harvests this week from the black currants and I am hoping for more next week.

The blueberries need more soil, but they are steadily turning blue. Same for the gooseberries. They are turning red since I have a red gooseberry variety. The sloe berries are still green, but they turned dark blue/purple very late in the season last year too.

The blackberry bush is full of blackberries. Which is extra lovely given that I bought it this season.

No wild strawberries yet. Some of the regular strawberry plants have grown strawberries and I need to wait for them to grow bigger and turn red. The slugs stole some and left them half eaten until they got mouldy, so that was fun to clean up. Hopefully they’ll steer clear of the rest.

Fruit trees

The apples are maturing nicely. The herbs I planted around the fruit trees are protecting them well. I’ve had no issues with aphids since I planted those herbs there.

I hope the seeds I’ve planted will become perennials so that I won’t need to sow them every year. Most of them are perennial, but they do need to survive this year’s winter to make it through to next spring.

Perennials from seed

From last week, I have four apricot plants, four pear plants and one pear seed that is growing roots. This week I planted the stratified peach seeds in the soil. I also planted a few ones that didn’t go through any stratification, or soaking, and I hope they will germinate too. The others germinated in record time.

The pear plants are growing well, and their leaves are quite beautiful. The four apricot plants are all strong plants and I hope they’ll grow to be at least 10 cm tall this season. Next season I’ll have apricot trees, pear trees and 2-3 varieties of peach trees. What a blessing! I’d honestly like to give both plums and nectarines a go as well, but that depends on food prices, and what I can forage.

Next week

I will be planting the remaining onion plants and pickling onion plants. I’ll hopefully pick the pods off of the radishes and clear those plants away. I’ll plant something else in their stead, likely some beets.

The parsnips should be ready to be planted, so I’ll plant them in succession. Apart from that I’ll just keep up with fertilising and watering the plants, and harvesting things as they mature.

See you next week!