What Happened in My Garden This Week? – Week 34

Aubergine

It is still small, but nothing has eaten on it and it is still growing. I think there just haven’t been enough sun for it to finish growing. Here’s to hoping the sunny days come back and stay for a long time.

Brassica

The cabbages are still fighting the good fight against the slugs. It’s frankly astounding that there’s any of them left. I did lose a few plants, but I still have a few left. I just hope I’ll get something worth harvesting in the end. The slugs are really out of control this season and it is painful seeing them wreck plant after plant. They’ve taken all of my kale plants thus far, and I sincerely hope they’ll leave my current ones alone.

Corn

The corn plants are not very tall, likely because I was late in planting the seeds and we’ve had more rain than sun. However, they are healthy, beautiful and they have strong root systems. That tells me good things both about my soil, my fertiliser and the seeds themselves. So I have decided to try again with corn next year. Now that I know that it can thrive here, I’ll make it more of a priority.

Cucumber

The cucumbers are still loving their placement and are happily using the sun choke stalks as a trellis. I have a couple of cucumbers growing and a lot of flowers about to bloom. I’d like to get at least a dozen cucumbers off of these two plants.

Herbs

My mint bush really needs to be harvested soon. The plants I propagated have taken so well and are growing all around the gooseberries now. The other herbs that are growing on their own in the sunniest spot or with perennials, are all doing great. I also have some herbs in the greenhouse and they are still recovering from their fall, but they’ll soon be ready to harvest too.

Root vegetables

The parsnips, rutabaga, radishes, beets and kohlrabis have really taken off. It’s easy to see which plants were pushed back in their development by the rain, but even those plants are now recovering. My fertiliser has been good for them, and the parsnips planted over the bokashi compost are really living their best life. Soon I’ll be able to harvest some. The beets will be pickled and canned, but the rest will be kept in cold storage or used in my kimchi.

Tomatillos

The tomatillo plants continue producing and they almost remind me of decorated Yule trees. There are so many tomatillos hanging off the plants, and the flowers look like small, bright lights. They’re truly beautiful. I hope to get somewhere between six and twenty four jars of salsa verde. At least.

Tomatoes

The tomato plants keep producing. Some are a tad late, but all plants are either blooming or blooming as well as full of tomatoes. I get to harvest some daily. I eat some and freeze some. I haven’t quite decided how I want to preserve my tomatoes this year, and it will depend on how big a harvest I get. I will keep picking tomatoes and hope that triggers the plants to produce more. The hope is to get at least a kilogram from each plant, and I have a lot of plants.

Peppers

The chilies are producing and blooming, but not at the pace or in the amounts that I had hoped. I am considering turning the vertical system in the greenhouse to give the plants more sun, but I am not sure that’s the right call yet. I am also considering moving the vertical systems, or rather have them switch places with each other. The herbs and spinach would stand where the chili now stands, and the chilies would grow in the entrance, where the herbs are right now.

Potatoes

I have a handful of containers with potatoes that are not quite ready to be harvested, but I have harvested all of the potato pots. The harvest wasn’t as big as I expected it to be – as it would’ve been without the weeks of storms and heavy rain – but it was alright. I managed to preserve the potatoes by dehydrating them, and that will make them last for a long time. I hope I can get somewhere between 5 and 10 kg more.

Spinach

There’s not enough to harvest yet, but I have ordered more spinach seeds, and I will plant more of them. I have a small, round container that I’ll fill with soil and spinach seeds. I’d like to be able to harvest daily or at least every other day.

Sunflowers

The sunflowers are about to bloom and they likely won’t grow much taller. I haven’t measured them yet, but I think the tallest one is close to three meters. Pretty decent for my first time growing them. I hope I’ll get many kilograms worth of food from them this year. The stalks, the leaves and the flowers.

Squash & Pumpkin

The courgette plants are doing well, but they are growing slowly. I think I’ll have to up my fertiliser there. I have one plant doesn’t seem like it will produce anything this year, and I am thinking of pulling it out. I don’t want the energy to go to a plant that won’t grow, when I have plants who need all the energy they can get.

Perennials

Berries

There aren’t many berries left to harvest at this point. The sloe berries and blue berries are nearly done. The black berries aren’t looking too good, and I am not entirely sure why. I’ll have to look into that. The strawberries have been claimed by the snails repeatedly, and that’s it.

Fruit

While neither a fruit tree or a berry bush, the elder tree does have a bunch of berries on it, but they haven’t matured yet. I assume they will get as dark as the berries from the regular elder trees. And that means it’ll be a while before they are ready to be picked.

Vegetables

I have harvested the rhubarb and to my delight, the plants are producing new stalks. I may get another harvest before the first frost. Fingers crossed.

I added some leftover soil and fertiliser on top of the current soil level in the grow bags with sunchokes, and they loved it. They are growing taller, producing more leaves and several of the stalks have flowers that are about to bloom. I can’t wait to see what they look like. I won’t be harvesting the sunchokes until I know I have harvested all the leaves I can get, and the flowers have long since wilted. So there’s still some time before the harvest season begins for them.

Fertiliser

The bokashi was emptied of its liquid and then the bokashi compost was emptied in a previous potato grow bag, and covered with recycled soil. I planted some carrots there, and I may add some parsnips for good measure.

The plants are still receiving urine water at least once a week, and bokashi tea once every week or every other.

The bokashi compost will be divided among the perennials at the end of the season. Any bokashi composts that I fill and empty before next spring, will be emptied into containers so that it can continue to break down until it is time to plant annuals again next year.

Propagation

Berry bushes

I have taken cuttings from gooseberries, blueberries and honey berries and they are all sitting in the same glass jar as the fruit tree cuttings. They’ll all be planted into next week.

Fruit trees

The cuttings from when I pruned the fruit trees are still doing well. They’re still in water and will be planted into pots next week.

Fruit trees from seed

The apricot tree is doing well. The pear plant has something on it that is attacking its leaves, but it is starting to recover and it has produced new leaves. I am considering trying a new batch of peach seeds so that I can make sure I at least have a few peach plants for next season.

Conclusion:

It was a good week and I got to harvest more food and preserve it all. There’s a good chance I’ll at least get close to my goal of growing 100kg of food this year, but only time will tell. It mainly comes down to the weather in the next couple of weeks, and if I can keep the harvest safe from slugs.

I have ordered some large packs of seeds and I am feeling so good about that. It is a huge comfort to know that I’ll have enough seeds to be able to grow the basics the next couple of years.

To do’s for week 35:

Plant the cuttings and turn them into plants

Harvest and preserve more food

Harvest the potato container with levels

Plant more New Zealand spinach

Plant more alliums

Figure out the placement of the vertical systems

See you next week!