I tried a new vegetable with dinner last night - broccoli raab / rabe / rapini / broccolini / broccolette, I'm really not sure of the name. Basically it's a long, thin bunch of broccoli with lots of small heads instead of one giant, thick-stemmed clump. I like normal broccoli too but Tom's not a fan, but he gave the broccolini a thumbs-up. So I thought I'd try growing some since I had an empty pot. It's the small seedlings on the bottom right corner. I thought I'd also show off my young spinach (just sprouted, on the left), my spring onions and one of my pea plants. All doing quite well methinks.
My potatoes started dying back which meant they were ready for harvesting. I didn't get very many spuds at all - just what you see in this photo plus two more little ones that fell off when I pulled the plants up. I don't know why there were so few, my guess is not enough sunlight. Oh well, if it was just sunlight than I'll have better luck over the summer when the sun is higher. At this time of year the garage puts most of the yard in shade most of the day.
Interestingly, compare the roots systems of these two. The one on the right was one of the first to die, notice how its roots are pretty much in the same ball they were in the pot. The one on the left was in the corner with the "magic fungus" mycchoriza. The one on the left was by far the healthiest of the four. I just hope that magic fungus keeps thriving!
Supposedly they have "four seasons of interest" - fresh dark foliage in the spring, long spikes of white flowers in the summer, dark wine-red leaves almost until spring and interesting bark in between. At the moment they have these lovely dark leaves.
I topped up the garden beds even more as the soil level was pretty low and planted them this weekend. They'll have all winter to settle in and hopefully spread out some strong roots before the summer heat. You can hardly see the little guys in this photo but I assure you after a few years they'll grow right into those beds, maybe even too big but hopefully the size of the bed will restrict their size a little.
Oh and I almost forgot. I was happy to get rid of some more of my dirt pile to top up the beds. It's up against some brick that edges a lawn. Turns out worms in the lawn had figured out a way through the brick and into the bottom of the dirt pile. Look at them all! They made a fine addition to my garden beds.
Well whodathunkit. I picked all those chillies green and looky here. The smaller ones ripened up! I wonder if the bigger ones will too.
Another lovely, crisp, sunny day after a rainy Saturday. I discovered this little beauty under the fig tree, which is just starting to shed its leaves. I didn't think snowdrops bloomed this early, at the end of autumn. I just hope they keep up their show during the winter or else by the time the fig leaves fall there won't be anything blooming underneath!
I also decided to harvest the last of my chillies and put the plant in the compost to make way for some winter spinach. I was disappointed that it turned cold before the bulk of the chilli harvest ripened to red, but you an still eat them green. They're just not as sweet. But I certainly wasn't going to waste all of these beauties just because they were still green! The black on some of them shows that they were just about to turn red before the cold stopped them in their tracks.
I keep finding these funny little weed sprouts around the garden. They're one long stiff blade and when you pull them up, they look like they're sprouting from a coffee bean!
I thought I'd give an update on the back veggie patch which I planted a month ago. As you can see the broccoli is doing well so far (dark green leaves on the left). I had to brush a lot of butterfly eggs off the leaves early in the autumn when the weather was warm but it seems to have kept the caterpillars away. The lettuce at the front (light green leaves) is doing OK but the leaves are a bit soft and limp, I don't think they're getting as much sun as they want. The rocket's doing OK though (two patches of bright green on the right) even though the right-hand side of this patch is pretty shady. But the peas are doing horribly! Those little scraps of green at the base of the canes are meant to be peas, but they're tiny.
Let's compare those peas to the ones I've planted on the front porch. This is one of my two pots, with four seeds per pot. Look at how lush and tall it's growing already, because it's got full sun. I don't think the peas at the back are going to make it ... but hopefully at least their roots are still putting a lot of nitrogen into the soil.
My new taro and camellia must be happy because they're blossoming! I don't usually get to see my camellias blossom because the possums eat the buds, but maybe because these bushes are new they didn't get nibbled. What a lovely blossom! "Paradise blush" is an appropriate name indeed.
I've never had any of my other taros put out a flower before. And to be honest they're not exactly a stunning flower, but it's interesting to look at. I wonder if it blossomed because it was slightly stressed by moving; it did go from a pond to the dirt. Sometimes plants won't flower unless they're stressed slightly. But otherwise it looks like a healthy plant so I'm not worried about it carking it.
And finally, an old plant in flower. I planted these marigolds back in January to add some colour and attract bees to the back veggie patch. I thought they'd have died out by now but they just keep flowering and flowering! I just love them. Oh and if you look carefully in the top-right corner of this photo, you'll see little sprouts. It turns out the marigolds are self-seeding; we'll see if they survive the winter but they may be spreading on their own. I have a feeling it's because I try to pluck off the dead flowerheads to encourage them to keep flowering ... except I can't always be bothered to throw the flowerheads into the compost and so I just drop them on the barkdust. Surprise! Some of those flowerheads had seeds in them!
