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.
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!
In just a couple of days it will be Halloween in the southern hemisphere – the traditional festival marking the point when the day length levels out again, and we start the 3 month period of short days. The days will slowly shorten now until the shortest day of the midwinter solstice, then slowly lengthen again until the beginning of August.
Planted into potting mix a month ago. Look at it now. I think every single clove sprouted, and some of them now have leaves 30 cm tall. I have three boxes like this for planting out today, and I’ll put in another three boxes of cloves for planting out next month. Not that I need successive crops with garlic – they all get harvested at more or less the same…
The Broad Bean seeds I planted nearly a month ago are up and looking healthy, and I have a spot where some zucchini and squash have just come out, so today they’re going out into the garden. It marks a real turning point. The autumn planting is here!
In Spring and Summer, it’s the fruiting annuals that dominate the planting calendar. In Autumn and Winter, it’s the leafies. This is a big and interesting planting break, the first one for the season in this part of the world when I plant brassicas – kale, cauliflowers, broccoli, cabbages and chinese cabbages.