One of the most nicest thing about my garden right now is hearing the buzz from the bees as they dance around the salvia hotlips and lavender. It's such a beautiful sight and sound, and I finally understand how nice a job gardening is. That partly explains my absence from Hive in summer.
I find it's so soothing just wandering around fiddling with this and that during the day. I wonder when the Gladioli from my mum's patch will blossom so I can take some flowers to her grave.
Or perhaps peeping under the leaves to see if any strawberries are ready to be harvested. So far I've only eaten three. Each time I decided to leave by them to ripen one more day. Then the next morning the little bug has got to it first and helped itself to the first bite before me. How rude of them. Now I'm protecting them inside mesh bags.
I admire how lovely my fig plant has come along. It's only in its second year, I don't be expect and fruit, just grow more leaves and stay strong and healthy for the time being.
This is the first time I'm growing romanesco. These seedlings are a month old and it takes about 4 to 5 months to harvest. They need to be planted and I'm still deciding where to plant them. I'm thinking in 10 litre buckets so I can keep my planters to grow different veggies that has a shorter harvesting time.
For example my sister gave me a courgette/zucchini plant. It needs quite a lot of space to grow, so I've left the surrounding area vacant for it to spread out. It grew its first female flower yesterday, I don't know if there will be any fruit as there are no male flowers yet. Or maybe buzzing bee has helped to pollenate it from a neighbouring garden. It's still early days, and I can see more flowers on it's way.
My watercress looks very encouraging. I sowed the seeds at the same time as the romanesco. They look a lot better than last year's crop which had died by this stage. I hope I don't jinx it now!! I've kept them nice and moist and placed them at a different place from last year. So far so good.
Same goes for my bird's-eye chilli plants. They are seeds from supermarket bought chillis and it took a while for them to germinate. I nearly thought they would fail. Now they're 21 days oldd
Same age as my box of mixed salad leaves (top). It will be lovely to pick fresh salad for lunch very soon. The bottom box are bak choi seedlings from my sister. I'm waiting for them to grow bigger before I plant them in the raised bed.
My first batch of bak choi all flowered very soon. I managed to pick some leaves for my bowl of noodles the other day, they tasted so fresh! When my young seedlings grow bigger they will be planted here under the net. I'm making sure all my plants are well protected from bugs this year!
For example, I've planted some marigold by the peas which sadly don't seem to be growing much. Not sure why. They were from my sister, and hers are like a jungle!
And I mustn't forget my lovely wolfberry plants. The other week I had to cut back the crop as there were so many tiny bugs on them. It was sad to do that as they were ready for harvest but I wasn't sure I could totally wash off the bugs to make it safe for consumption. Luckily they regrow very quick. The plant in the corner is a jasmine, also from my sister. I have three of them and when they grow big up a trellis I expect to have a fragrant curtain here.
Finally, let me show you my complete raised bed. At one end is the lavender and salvia hotlips from the first image. The courgette has plenty of space around it to grow. And there's another marigold on the left. That and the lavender will help to protect it from bugs. And as extra measure, you may have noticed there's a silver ring on its base. I read steel scourers can protect slugs and snails from getting to young plants. It seems to have worked! I've done the same for the other tomatoes plants, and I've planted another marigold in between the tomato plants. The space in front of the tomato is reserved for my bak choi and lettuce seedlings, and some other veggie seeds I've sown. Can't wait to fill my raised bed with lots of plants in the coming weeks.
See you next month in my next LUT garden journal.
