But the cabbage moths have arrived, and I think that’s about the end for this year. We’ve had a good three months of harvesting broccolini, cauliflowers, kale, pak choi, napa cabbage, mustard. But from now on it’s not worth it, at least not here in the sub-tropics.
I used every trick in my arsenal for preventing bolting, but still, just a week or so after planting out, this little Chinese Cabbage seedling has decided it’s just feeling too sexy for its shirt. The days are getting longer at an exponentially faster rate now so everything wants to flower and set seed.
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.
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!
Jackie is sitting on 9 eggs. At least we think there are nine. Patrick and Trevor get very upset if we try to go near her. Geese are supposed to be monogamous (or at least “in an open relationship”) for life, but maybe because we have two girls and three boys, both Patrick and Trevor seem to have decided it’s a modern family.
When I am away from my garden, it is the herbs I miss most. If I only had pots to garden in, the top dozen plants on the priority list would all be herbs. There are just so many recipes that depend on fresh herbs to move food from fuel to experience, and it is so difficult and expensive to buy fresh herbs. And dried herbs just don’t do it…
Plants know. Well, mostly they know. They do get it wrong, but a lot of years of evolution have gone into picking the change of season. Despite the cold snap we’ve been going through, this morning my garden reckons Spring has truly sprung here.
Leafy planting days today and tomorrow. The trick with leafies this time of year is to think about sex.
Paw paw and citrus flavours go so well together, and luckily I have the last citrus of the season – late mandarins and pomelos – still picking.
These are the seedlings I potted on last leafy planting day, the seed that I planted the leafy planting day before, way back in mid winter. It is now eight weeks since the seed went in, seven weeks since they germinated. In another three or four weeks, they will be ready to start harvesting. So for more than half their life, they have not used up or needed any garden…