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.
I can't wait for the peas on the porch to start flowering!
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.
