What Happened In My Garden This Week? – Week 31

On Sunday the 6th, it rained throughout and late at night, the thunder and lightning finally arrived. I’d had a two day migraine leading up to it, but as soon as the thunder came, my headache went.

Annuals

Alliums

I had to cover them with my winter cloth this week, to prevent the rain from drowning them or flushing them out of the soil. So far so good.

Artichoke

The artichoke plant is growing behind one of my tomato plants, so I can’t see it clearly. But from what I can tell, there are more leaves than anything bulbous thus far.

Asian greens & leafy greens

They get very little sun where they are and that might be why there are only spindly seedlings at this point. I may have to move the container.

Aubergine

The first globe aubergine has formed.

Beans

There are some plants that have begun to vine, but I haven’t seen any bean pods yet. I’m considering planting a few beans around the sunflowers so that they can use the stalks as a trellis.

Brassica

The snails continue to feed on my brassica and at this point I can only hope I get some cabbages, kale or black kale for my kimchi. I hope I get enough to fill at least half of my onggi. Cabbages are expensive, so I’d like to do whatever I can to avoid having to purchase the cabbages that I need for the kimchi. I’ve decided to plant more root vegetables to compensate for any loss of brassica.

Corn

The plants are still small and they may not be able to grow larger this year.

Cucumber

There are many, many flowers and small cucumber-like growths forming, but no real cucumbers yet.

Herbs

Most of my herbs are doing great, but some of the baby seedlings aren’t doing too well. The slugs may have gotten to them.

Root vegetables

Most of the beet-seedlings seem to have made it. The parsnips are doing very well and the radishes are too. Truth be told, I am not entirely sure which seedlings are my rutabaga and which are my kohlrabi, but I suppose I’ll find out when it’s time to harvest them all. It looks like it’ll be a good year for root vegetables.

I dehydrated the radish pods so that I could use the seeds this season instead. Once I have separated them from the pods, I’ll find room for them in the garden and plant them.

The dehydrated pods will be ground into a powdered seasoning that I use for carrot soup.

Tomatillos

I will have to remove the top shelf at the back of the greenhouse so that I can place my tomatillos on the second shelf instead. I want to do this because the bushes are huge and they’re pressing against the roof of the green house. Also, I want to get as close to 200 tomatillos per plant as I can, and giving them more room to grow will help them produce more fruit.

Tomatoes

More of my tomato plants flowered this week and now all they need is a whole lot of sun so that they can turn into tomatoes. The pollinators won’t be out pollinating in the pouring rain after all.

My goal is to get to harvest 35 kg of tomatoes. Given how many plants I have, it should be possible.

Peppers

There are a few chilies, some peppers, but mostly I have a whole lot of flowers.

Potatoes

It has rained too much for me to be able to harvest any potatoes this week, so I can only hope they’re doing okay.

Sunflowers

The largest is well over 2 meters now, and the others aren’t far behind. They need 6-8 hours of sun to bloom, so that’s likely why they haven’t yet. The flowers can grow to be a foot wide and weigh several kilograms each. You can eat the stalks, flowers, seeds and the leaves, so I hope they continue to grow taller and produce large flowers full of seeds so that I can get as much food as possible from them.

Squash and pumpkin

I harvested the first fully grown courgette this week and there are about five more growing. I hope to grow about 15 kg of squash and 15 kg of pumpkins this year. The first courgette weighed 338 grams, but they can grow until they’re weighing in at almost 2000 grams.

The pumpkins have begun using the hedge behind them as a trellis, which is fine. I just hope they don’t make it all the way over to the neighbour’s side this year. It makes harvesting more difficult than it needs to be.

Perennials

Berries

I harvested even more blueberries and this season I’ve harvested over a kilogram’s worth. I hope the rain will let up long enough for me to harvest more tomorrow. I don’t want the heavy rain to wash the berries away, and I want to harvest as many as I can. I’d like to be able to harvest another 500-1000 grams of blueberries this season.

The blackberries, elderberries and sloe berries are ripening.

The strawberry plants are full of baby strawberries, so now they just need plenty of sun so they can mature. No wild strawberries yet.

Fruit

The apples have actually grown larger, so I’m glad I didn’t pick them early. I hope to get to harvest at least 1 kg of apples.

Fruit trees from seed

I have one apricot plant, one pear plant and five peach seedlings. I am preparing seeds from nectarines and paraguayos as well.

Vegetables

The sunchokes are almost as tall as the sunflowers and I hope for at least 1500 grams per container. I have two containers.

The rhubarb is still producing, so I should get a few more harvests out of my rhubarb plants.

Fertiliser

I’ve continued to let the bokashi ferment and this week I was able to begin harvesting the bokashi tea from it. I won’t use it on the garden until I have more of it, and am sure that it’ll be enough for a few weeks. Until the bokashi is ready to be emptied, I’ll continue to harvest the tea.

The heavy feeders in the garden are watered with diluted urine twice a week and the rest, once a week.

When the bokashi is finished, I’ll empty it in a container, add soil and plant root vegetables in it. Once the season is over, the bokashi-rich soil will be given to my perennials.

Propagation

With the weather this week, it didn’t feel like the best time for propagation. So the new propagation projects have been postponed. The apple tree cuttings from the spring pruning continue to do well.

Conclusion:

It was a productive week and though it rained a lot, everything in the garden is doing well. If things continue to do this well, I should be able to reach my goal of growing 100kg of food in 5 sqm.

To do’s for week 32:

• Propagate berry bushes

• Prune apple trees

• Fertilise

• Harvest

• Keep removing pests

• Plant out more of the root vegetables

The harvest season has begun, so soon the focus will be more on preserving the food rather than planting more of it. For that, I will need a new canner. My old one died on me in late spring this year. I canned a lot of food last year, so there are many sauces and preserves I won’t have to make more of. But here’s a list of some of the things I will need to do to preserve my food this year:

• Can apple jelly

• Can black currant jelly

• Can apple sauce

• Ferment ACV

• Can mushrooms

• Ferment kimchi

• Can beans

• Can salsa verde

• Can regular salsa

• Pickle and can chilies

• Dehydrate herbs

• Freeze more berries

• Blanch and freeze sunflower-greens and pumpkin-greens

• Can strawberry jam

• Make elderberry cordial

• Blend healing teas

• Pickle and can cucumber slices

• Pickle and can courgette slices

• Preserve aubergine in olive oil

See you next week!