What Happened In My Garden This Week? – Week 33

Aubergine

This is the first time I’ve grown aubergine, and a globe aubergine at that. I have one small aubergine growing, but it is nowhere near ready to be harvested. It looks healthy and strong, and there are a lot of flowers surrounding it. I do hope I can get a handful of aubergines this season, but it isn’t as easy for the pollinators to find the flowers on the plants that are in the greenhouse. I think I may need to hand pollinate some of them next week.

Brassica

I have moved some of the brassica up on the shelves where my potatoes used to be. I hope the slugs will lose interest in them there and maybe lay off the others as well, now that the grow bags aren’t packed as tightly.

Corn

I am letting the small cornstalks be, for now. They likely won’t grow large this season, but I’m giving them a few more days to prove themselves. After that, I’ll pull them out so that more energy can go to the other plants that they were companion planted with.

Cucumber

I have baby cucumbers now. It seems the plants agreed with my decision to direct them toward the sunchokes and they are now using the sunchoke-stalks as their trellis. They’re doing very well and the cucumbers grew a little bit bigger this week.

Herbs

The herbs are doing well, but they are not quite ready to be harvested yet. The vertical system fell down during the beginning of the week, and some of the herbs ended up beneath it. The smaller ones didn’t make it. I managed to re-assemble the vertical system and the remaining herbs have recovered nicely. So much so that I think I’ll get a harvest next week.

Root vegetables

The majority of the root vegetables are still small to be harvested, but there are a few beets and a few parsnips that look like they’re getting close.

Tomatillos

I checked the tomatillos on Sunday and they are not ready to be harvested yet, but they are filling out nicely. I just hope they’ll be ready soon, as it is already the second half of August.

Tomatoes

After I fertilised this week, one of the tomato plants grew so much that it began blocking the pathway. I had to support it with a tomato stand, and it is now upright once more. There’s not much more room for any of the tomato plants to grow large, and so I hope they’ll all focus more on fruit production from here on. They are all doing well.

Peppers

I harvested my first pepper this week. I wasn’t sure if it was a sweet pepper or a chili, so I tasted it. The end tasted like a sweet pepper, but after tasting a piece of it that was closer to the seeds, it became apparent that it was a chili. I cut up some of it and added the pieces to my jar of pickled padrón-peppers. I think it’ll enhance and compliment their flavour nicely. I kept the seeds and soaked them overnight. The ones that aren’t floating tomorrow will be dried and kept for next year.

Considering the amount of plants I have, I should have been harvesting baskets worth of chili and sweet peppers by now, but unfortunately, their production has been very modest thus far.

Potatoes

I’ve been gradually harvesting the potatoes. This week in the garden, I gave the soil and straw from each of the harvested potato pots to the perennials that were repotted earlier this summer.

The honey berries and rhubarb still need new grow bags, and I need to order them soon. I should’ve done so already, but every time I’ve checked them, they’ve either been sold out or priced too high.

Spinach

Finally I have some healthy looking spinach plants. They’re not huge, but they are healthy and producing leaves.

Sunflowers

The sunflowers still haven’t bloomed, but they are incredibly tall and sturdy. They all have flowers that are on the verge of opening, but they’re not quite ready. The flowers have however moved towards the sunlight, which is the last thing they do before they open. The tallest one is now taller than the garage. I think It could hit 3 meters before it blooms.

I have continued to harvest some of the leaves along with other edible leaves from the garden. Almost every day I harvest them, wash them carefully, blanch them together in a pot and then I cool them down in ice water, squeeze the water out and freeze them into portions.

Squash and pumpkin

This week I harvested my second courgette for the season. It wasn’t quite as large as the first one, but it looked great and no pests had attacked it. There are more courgettes growing, and I’d like to get at least two dozen this season.

There are no pumpkins growing yet, and I am not sure why. I fertilised a bit extra during the weekend, and we had some rain on top of that, so hopefully they’ll come around and produce some next week.

Perennials

Berries

The garden has produced a lot of berries this year. Not as much as in 2021, but much more than they did in 2022.

The strawberry plants are still full of small strawberries, but they are still not ripe.

There aren’t many blueberries left, but I hope I get to harvest them before the ants or some other pest takes them. I harvested some more this week.

The sloe berries ripened this week and last, and I harvested most of them this week. They’re now washed and frozen. I haven’t decided what I want to use them for yet, but time will tell.

I was really excited about my blackberries finally ripening, but quite a few have been attacked by some pest. Possibly aphids. I removed those berries and I’ll closely monitor the remaining ones. I want to be able to get at least a modest harvest of blackberries this season.

Fruit

All fruit trees in the garden have been pruned and are ready to be placed under covers at the end of the season. The cuttings from the fruit trees are sitting in a jar of water and will remain there until I can plant them and see if I can’t turn them into new fruit trees. Truth be told, I don’t need more trees, but I want to find out if I can propagate my trees this way. Some or the weaker cuttings and the leaves were pulled apart and repurposed as mulch around my perennials.

The plum tree was pruned and with the use of some spreaders and bamboo sticks, it is now erect rather than leaning to one side (caused by wind). Two branches have been kept at half their length, as they were good, strong branches and grew in the right directions. The third one wasn’t right, so I cut it off just over an outward facing bud in the hope that a new branch will grow there, in the correct direction, next season. Considering that the tree was badly broken in a storm a few years ago, it has truly done a great job recovering. I hope I can see some flowers and fruit next year. I pruned some short ends from the branches that had been broken off and died, but the rest of the tree appears to be full of life and potential.

Fruit trees from seed

The apricot plant and the pear plant are now kept in the garden. The pear plant showed some signs of weakening at the middle of the week, so I figured being outside might help it along.

The peach plants didn’t make it. I have gone over my notes and at this point, I think the issue might be caused by something in the soil. They had just the right amount of light and water, so they should have done well.

Mushrooms

I am still looking for a shop where I can buy mycelium and straw so that I may grow oyster mushrooms outside in the garden. If I manage to find some, I’ll be growing them in my potato pots. I’d like to be able to get an annual amount of mushrooms that way this fall, though that will likely require multiple containers. I’m also considering growing mushrooms around my perennials, making use of the space, providing compost for them, and utilising the autumn rain, when it comes. Growing 10-15 kilograms would be ideal.

Vegetables

I have two containers with sunchokes growing in my garden. The sunchokes continue to grow taller, while remaining sturdy enough to allow my cucumber plants to use them as a trellis. It’s nice to see them doing so well. I get to harvest their leaves every other day, and they keep producing more.

I intend to harvest the rhubarb next week and make some rhubarb pie.

Fertiliser

The bokashi is now ready to be drained, emptied into a grow bag and mixed with soil. But I want some more sunny days before I do, so I postponed emptying it to next week. After emptying it, I think I may grow some carrots over the compost and the soil layer. Post harvest, each perennial will get a little bit of the bokashi compost. The aim is to fill and ferment 1-2 more buckets worth of bokashi this season.

Propagation

I won’t be propagating any more fruit trees, but before the month is over, I will be propagating some of the berry bushes. Mainly the ones that need to be pruned.

Conclusion:

I have harvested more than 10 kg worth of food from the garden and my mushroom bags this year. It is a tenth of what my goal is for the season, but the garden harvest season has barely begun. There’s still time for me to reach my goal.

To do’s for week 34:

• Plant the fruit tree cuttings into pots

• Propagate the berry bushes

• Hand pollinate some of the annuals

• Harvest more berries

• Empty the bokashi in a grow bag

• Plant carrots over the bokashi and soil

• Order mycelium

• Keep fertilising

See you next week!