Garden Update

Hullo blogger pals! I know some of my stuffie friends have been posting updates on their gardens, so I thought I'd do the same. We had a beary busy weekend.

Meet our turnips... we are a tad confused about these... they were planted in the spring but didn't really do much all summer and now they are poofing out big-time. Perhaps they are a cold weather crop? We will be leaving them in the ground over the winter to see how they do.

This bed is technically an herb bed with a few nasturtiums and marigolds thrown in for good measure. There is some basil, rosemary, thyme and right in front, a big bushy sage - which is beary good with chicken.

Back here, we have some of our accidental tomato plants and some basil that we planted from seed. Both are doing amazingly well! The tomato plants came out of our compost bin where they were trying to make a living - we put them in some beds and...

...they are making tomatoes! Whether we will get to harvest them before the first frost sets in is another matter.We have some regular looking tomatoes and some of the grape tomatoes. We gave them all a serious haircut and cut off the extraneous flowers because we want the plants to put all their energy into making the existing tomatoes turn red!

 

Let's see... and here we have... something green...

Can you see it at the base there?

They are radishes!! Yummm...

Quite a few radishes too... but we are learning that leaving things in the ground longer isn't necessarily better... some of these were a bit woody but some others were scrumptious!

There... thinned it out a bit... leaving the little ones in for a bit longer.

And some more marigolds - the more traditional form. For some weird reason the slugs have not touched these ones... beary strange.

Now.. remember the basil plants from a few pictures a go - with big leaves and nice and green... well... here we have some shrimpy ones that were put into the ground at the same time - and they have done nothing! Two issues... this was the garlic bed before and maybe basil and garlic don't mix (except in a pesto...) - or...

We are suspecting that the fibre cloth in this bed is somehow hampering growth. All of our beds were built on pre-existing lawn and over the year we tried various ways of dealing with the grass. Our first method was to put cardboard down on the grass and then filter cloth in the bed. That method is not working beary well. Plants like to put down seriously deep roots - even spinach. Our second method, which we recommend, although it means more work up front - is stitch out the grass and don't use filter cloth. The plants are way happier! More later!