We have had family staying for the past couple of weeks and so they have been harvesting the last of the cherry tomatoes whilst we have also had quite a bit of lettuce, leeks, beetroot, spinach, basil and tons of beans. I also cut down another load of bananas that were starting to ripen on the tree.
I got quite frustrated with a lack of bean action early in summer, even our trusty purple beans didn’t really come up to much. Friends gave me different kinds of bean seeds and I cannot for the life of me remember who gave what, but this one variety which I haven’t recorded anywhere have succeeded. Looking at the good old web I think they are Rattlesnake beans and I’ll absolutely be saving seeds for next year.
Big news this fortnight is that the garlic is in the ground – two varieties, Wilde Jack and Spanish Roja. Previous years I have just bought organic Italian garlic from the market and planted that. Whilst we got a good harvest, the cloves were all small and fiddly when cooking. This year I did a bit of research and bought varieties that are more suited to Sydney conditions and will hopefully give us fat cloves.
I’m also getting very frustrated with the amount of real estate I’m devoting to brassicas that don’t produce. My yearly review is coming up in a couple of months and I’m likely to keep them on the periphery and concentrate the prime real estate on crops that really come up with the goods without much effort. I’ll keep you posted on the new plan when it happens.
Each fortnight teaches me something new about seedlings. Last update I had a pumping tray of veggies from mid March that I thought “let’s leave them another couple of weeks and they will be bursting out of the pots ready for transplanting”. How wrong I was, they have gone backwards. Seedlings that are looking great need to be planted out in order to keep the momentum of growth going. Most of them were plagued by slugs/ snails and looking very second hand. The tray I planted at the beginning of April however looked fantastic and so I’ve got them in the ground quick smart.
I’ve decided to put the new seed tray in the greenhouse now so that the cooler nights don’t hamper germination.
Onions and chives still aren’t germinating yet – possibly still too warm – so I’m relying on spring onions at the moment to fill the gap in the Galaxy Garden.
Well, that’s about it for now, have a great holiday season and I’ll be back in May.
