This time of year in this part of the world it’s all about fruiting annuals. I have more corn and beans and tomatoes and eggplants and capsicums and trombochino and squash and pumpkins and cucumbers and zucchini in the shadehouse than I will have room to plant out. So it’s just another round of the regular, staple roots this time – carrots and beets.
Besides the corn, I’m potting up the tomatoes, eggplants, and capsicums I planted last month. They’ll grow on in pots for another few weeks before they need to be planted out and by then it might have rained.
These are the lettuce seeds I planted just on a month ago now, last leafy planting break. I thought about planting them out today. But they’re still a bit little – they will thrive for another few weeks in the mix of compost, worm castings and a little bit of creek sand that they are potted up in.
These are the spuds I planted back in early August. They grow so fast! I planted them in a trench about 20 cm deep and I’ve been pulling the compost in around the stems, leaving just the top leaves exposed as they grow.
The exciting planting this time is cassava. I’ve never grown cassava, and I don’t know why. It should do well here, and I’ve eaten it in Cuba and liked it.
It is still late winter isn’t it? I really wanted to name this “Early Spring” – the weather has turned the corner here, and the soil is warm enough now to reliably plant capsicums and eggplants and things that won’t germinate if the soil temperature is too low. So this planting break I have planted seeds of:
A well designed, established permaculture garden can keep producing with amazingly little time or energy spent on it. Which is just as well, because mine has had amazingly little time or energy over the last season. If not for the fact that I now have a A Garden With Stamina, I wouldn’t have a garden at all!