I Need To Post More Often...

As I intend to use this blog as a "progress record" to improve on production for next year I certainly need to post more often.

This is a photo of yesterday's morning harvest.

It includes Pak Choi, Tom Thumb lettuce, spinach, Tokyo Cross turnips, French Breakfast radishes and Champion Radishes which are absolutely huge.

The Tom Thumb lettuce is perfect for our household. I pick the heads whole and rinse them and keep them in a large bag in the refrigerator. Crisp, no hard white ridges and we simply pull off leaves as we need them for sandwiches, salads, etc..

My Red Rover radishes were a total failure. I pulled the two short rows and will not be planting them again.







This is Bed No. 3 of the open bed area. In the foreground are the Tokyo Cross turnips. You can then see the Pak Choi and Spinach with the leeks at the end. Also planted in this bed are carrots, green onions and a Heat Wave salad mix.

The Pak Choi in this bed will be all harvested by July 5th as will the turnip and spinich. I will then place in a row of parsnips, two more rows of green onions and a row of Tom Thumb.

We are already sending greens to the neighbors and I have been amazed at how much even one bed can produce.

One of our neighbors, who is a very seasoned gardener said he had never seen this much produce so early out of a garden in this area. Whilst I am sure that is not accurate we did take it as a compliment.


These are our two bean poles. Planted with Fortex and Kentucky Wonder. I spent soooo much time fretting this spring about how slow the Fortex was to germinate and show and they have now well overtaken the Kentucky Wonder in progress. This photograph was taken just a few days ago and the Fortex is now over half way up its bands. The Kentucky Wonder must have felt shamed as it is catching bands and beginning to reach up.

We interplanted in the small open area of this space Leeks and Onion which are doing fine. Not brilliant, but coming along as expected.


The Snow Pea pot is in full bloom and already forming pods. They have absolutely thrived this year and I don't think that I will ever grow them in a garden bed again.




I spent much of today transplanting Broccoli and Cabbage.

One of the lessons I learned this year was that my brassicas do better in the fence beds. The soil in the open beds is too loose and they simply require firmer stuff. They have done well and are of good size but the lack of firmness in the soil means that they have the potential of weakness at the stem.

Also, other than the peas which are well and firmly trellised, tall plants such as the Broccoli capture too much wind in the open beds. Part of this wind tunnel effect may be due to the fact that we removed the scrub pines at the other end of the garden and as the fruit trees placed there mature it may be partially resolved but for the next few years if its tall into the Pot Farm or Fence Beds it goes.

Finally, a photo of Richard's fountain with the new Weeping Cherry tree just put in. The Cherry will gain quite a bit more volume and will become taller and is a perfect replacement for the messy pine that was there before.