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.
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!
Strawberries are still the star fruit in my garden, but the tussle for number two is hot. There’s still a paw paw a day most days, and though the fruit fly sting most of our stone fruit, there are enough early peaches and plums on the tree to just share them with the chooks – they like the stung spot with its little grub the best. But I think number…
Conventionally they are planted in spring and harvested in autumn. But when I’ve had a patch established before, I’ve just let it go and dug up a sweet potato or two whenever I want one.
Yesterday’s planting. Note just three zucchini seeds, three tromboncino seeds, three cucumber seeds. I’m being restrained!
Last broad bean recipe for the season I think.
Today we pass the point on the day-length bell curve where it flattens right out. The days are now nearly as long in the southern hemisphere, and short in the northern hemisphere, as they will ever get.
Broad beans are a good source of low GI complex carbs, protein, and fibre, which means that they keep your blood sugar stable for a long time, so quite apart from the l-dopa, a broad bean breakfast makes you feel good all day.
At the moment I am giving away armloads of silverbeet to visitors and using every silverbeet recipe in the repertoire, but any day now I expect the grasshoppers to arrive and the urge to bolt to seed to win out and the bounty will be over. Seasonal eating. Make the best of it while it lasts, then leave it off the menu till next winter.