What Happened In My Garden This Week? – Week 35

Brassica

I have a few cabbages in the garden that appear to be strong enough to make it. Fingers crossed.

I planted more kale and black kale this week.

Corn

The corn likely won’t get any taller, but I haven’t pulled them out yet. Just in case they produce something, even though the plants are very small.

Cucumber

I have so many cucumbers growing in the garden and that is a first for me. I hope I get enough to pickle and make cucumber kimchi with.

Herbs

I harvested and preserved all of my mint in the garden this week. I laid it down in a warm water bath with vinegar and baking soda, removed the stems, washed them and then I dehydrated them until fully dry. I got several hundred grams of fresh leaves – after the stems and the damaged leaves had been removed – and I’m happy with that. It resulted in a big bag of dry mint.

Next week I’ll harvest my other herbs.

Root vegetables

I harvested the first black radish in the garden this week, and the taste was so intense. It weighed 18 grams, so a bit small, but good nonetheless. I also got 90 grams of greens from that one radish, and I blanched and froze them.

I planted more beets into the soil and I also planted parsnips and beets in pots. That way the slugs won’t get to them when they’re little. I also planted some carrots in pots and I hope I can divide the carrot plants up carefully and plant them in the garden later on.

Tomatillos

The tomatillo plants are still producing. One of them had some yellow leaves during the middle of the weak, so I made sure to fertilise everything in the greenhouse this week. And the rest of the garden as well, of course. More tomatillos are growing every day, and it looks like I’ll get some great harvests this year.

Tomatoes

The tomato plants have been pruned and they keep producing. I harvest tomatoes in the garden whenever they’re red or almost red. Or when it looks like the slugs are zoning in on them. I haven’t harvested kilograms worth yet, but at least a few hundred grams. And that is from two of my 15+ plants.

Peppers

The chilies are doing much better with their new placement in the greenhouse and they seem to be producing chilies well now. I just hope they’ll be able to produce them before the cold season hits. We really need one or two more warm weeks at least.

Potatoes

I harvested some potatoes in the garden this week as well, and I managed to make a lovely curry with them. The remaining three containers won’t be ready for a few more weeks or thereabout.

Spinach

I have planted two varieties of spinach and I hope they’ll both start growing like crazy next week. I really want to be able to harvest enough to have a big spinach salad and make some spinach pesto pie.

Sunflowers

My sunflowers are all blooming and some of the smaller ones are now almost as tall as the tallest one. The tallest is near 3 meters. I found out that some of my sunflower plants have flowers growing all the way down the stem. I am partial to the ones that look like a sunset, but they’re all beautiful. I have been able to harvest more sunflower leaves as well.

When the tallest sunflower plant shows signs that the flower is ready to harvest, I will harvest the flower and then cut down the stem. I shall weigh them both individually and then preserve all of it. By doing so once, I’ll have a better idea of how to do it, how much work it is and what it amounts to. And that will help me with the rest of the sunflower plants.

Squash & Pumpkin

The courgette plant has courgettes growing, but incredibly slowly. They aren’t loving the cooler and somewhat darker weather. I still haven’t gotten anything of my pumpkin plants, more than a bunch of leaves. It looks like each flower coming up is a male flower.

Perennials

Berries

There are no more berries to harvest this season, unless my lingon berries make a comeback. The elder berries still haven’t turned dark, and there are so few of them – and they’re so small – that I think I’ll just leave them this year.

Fruit

The fruit trees are presenting with new leaves post pruning, and that’s good sign. I need to fix up one of the apple trees, and help it spread its branches more, but other than that, they’re ready to go under their covers.

Vegetables

The sunchokes still produce leaves daily and they are protected by some sturdy spiders, for which I am thankful. Sadly that doesn’t mean the slugs and snails won’t attack them daily. The sunchokes are about to bloom, and I think next week is their week.

Fertiliser

This week I made a mix of urine, water and bokashi tea and fertilised the plants with that on one of the rainier days. They seem to approve.

Propagation

Berry bushes

I cut the berry bush cuttings into smaller pieces, removed the leaves except for the ones on top, and planted them into pots.

Fruit trees

I planted all of the cuttings that I had taken into pots of their own. In the grow bag that my cherry tree grows in, there were two cuttings that were full of buds. They’d laid there unattached and without soil since I pruned the cherry tree. Given that they were that determined to live, I planted those into pots as well.

Fruit trees from seed

Both the apricot tree and the pear tree were fertilised this week. People seem to be in two minds about whether or not small fruit trees should be fertilised, but it looked like they needed it. And from the looks of it, they enjoyed it.

Furthermore, I am planning on getting my hands on some more peach seeds to turn into plants. I also would like to grow apples from seeds. I got an apple from my uncle’s house and the aroma and flavour was so good that I simply must try to get a tree out of those seeds.

Conclusion:

I got my seeds this week and I planted everything I wanted to plant. All of the plants are doing well, albeit starved for sunshine and warmer days. I’d like to be able to get the mushrooms started in the next few weeks. And hopefully the pumpkin plants will start producing soon.

I changed the placements of the vertical systems in the green house to ensure the plants get more sun, and I placed all of my propagated plants in front of the vertical system in the back. My way of making it less likely that it’ll fall over.

To do’s for week 35:

• Look into what I need for the mushrooms

• Water the seeds

• Harvest the rest of the herbs

• Keep harvesting leaves

• Harvest more root vegetables

• Harvest more tomatoes, chili and tomatillos

See you next week!