How amazing the garden looks after couple of sunny days and a few light showers. Plants that have been sat in the beds for months without even a glimmer of growth have doubled in size in the last few days! Its fun to walk around the garden in the morning and see the changes. I was beginning to wonder if, as a novice in the garden, I’d been doing something to my plants to cause them to sulk but as I pull the leaves back and discover head after head of snowy white cauliflower I’m reassured and excited.
The growth spurt has renewed my motivation to be in the garden and I’ve had a very productive morning weeding the older beds, composting old brassicas and clearing the parsnip bed. In my ‘first veggie garden’ enthusiasm I planted a small bed of parsnips in February, I have thinned them, looked after them and the tops had grown to over 4 feet high, I will admit to pulling one every now and then just to see how they were doing but other than that they have been left unattended. Yesterday was Friday and I happily opened my email to read the latest ‘get growing’ newsletter from nz gardener magazine. There was a question about when to pull the parsnips and the answer…. now, you shouldnt really have planted them when you did they wont do anything but go to seed so pull them out and plant some new for winter. So, I did. Not the most successful crop by any means but this is all part of the learning experience. I have sown the remainder of the packet in my new beds for winter, lets hope its better than this lot.
My salad bed is going nuts, so much so that I’ve resorted to giving bags of mesculun away. I trimmed the bed two days ago and today couldn’t see where I’d done it before so it got an extreme haircut. Luckily hubbie is at a bbq tonight so he’s taking a large bowl full of salad, though that still leaves us with two pretty large bowlfuls to work our way through. I love it, especially the mizuna however someone else in the house is making noises about being a man not a rabbit. I only managed to trim the mesculun, behind that is two rows of chiggioa beetroot that really need a reprieve from the lettuces encroaching from both sides as behind that is a densely sown bed of great lakes lettuce which will deffinately become aquainted with the scissors in the next few days. Cant complain when things are growing so well.
The small bare patch in the front is where the radishes have been and gone, really loving growing these at the moment too. I use chicken wire laid in the bed to protect them and to help with spacing and its been brilliant, I love the colours in the easter egg range so bright. I’ve since sown a few cucumber seeds in their place, Chrystal Apple and a short Lebanese Cucumber. Once they get going I’ll put up a trellis at this end of the picture and train them to grow vertically to save some ground space. Just had a quick look and a few have germinated already so best get building!
I cant believe how much the garden has changed just with a bit of growth, here’s the overall view, cant wait until the beans reach the tops of their teepees and cover the back fence.
I’m heading back out there! Happy gardening.
