Fractals

Romanesco: Seriously, the prettiest broccoli out. 

Buckets of broccoli

I have no idea why my broccoli is doing so well as it never has before. The variety is Magic Dwarf, and eight individual plants has been enough to keep this little family of three in broccoli for over two months now. In fact, with a fridge crisper full and another bucket collected today, we're starting to get a little sick of eating it; Broccoli soup, broccoli salad, broccoli quiche... Broccoli pudding next? Fortunately -or not - I think we'll be back to buying it soon as our crop is starting to shoot and the season is ending. This means that summer is on its way and soon I will be muttering about gluts of tomatoes :)

Small and perfect

That's my baby broccoli. I am super happy with it, because it's green and beautiful, and because I get to eat it before the aphids do! First time for everything, oh happy day.

Eighteen days left of winter.

Weekend house and garden round-up

Lots 'n' lots going on out there at our chilly hill's cottage over the last few days:

The aloes we'd pulled up months and months ago were just slobbing it in our yard, getting in the way. I'd been muttering about putting them up on Ebay or Gumtree for sale, before realising that I really wasn't going to be bothered and who was going to pay for a bunch of daggy old aloes anyway? So we put them in a box out by the gate, and within a day they were gone, so now I have a clear conscience about getting rid of them and hopefully someone else will get a nice little succulent feature in their yard.


I got around to potting up my little fig trees and pomegranate. I've not yet decided where they're going to go exactly, or even if they'll stay in pots or go in the garden, but at least they have homes for now. They don't look like much at the moment, these wee plants, but give them a few years and watch them grow. A bundle of green weeds makes a nice green mulchy blanket for baby plants, don't you think?


The broccolini had flowered after the heads became too aphid infested for me to consider eating and I've let it all go for ages because it's so pretty and fluffy. I've since cut back three out of four plants to see if they'll have another round of edible heads, but if they do this time I'll be watching and will try out some of the anti-aphid methods I've been reading about. I left broccolini #4 with it's flowers to bring insects - hopefully beneficial ones - into the garden.


I've started moving the roses. This shot shows roughly where I intend them to go in the front garden leading up to the front porch (decorated with renovation mess). I've marked out their new homes with piles of compost and manure. The first five roses were moved this afternoon before it got too cold to continue. The green fuzz over the soil is a green manure crop I sowed recently - very late - although I'm not sure it will get a chance to do much work before I dig it up again to put more little plants in (I get cheaper plants at my new job, WOOHOO!)


Look, how cute is this girl? She's a blueberry, and she's covered in flower buds even though she's only about 6 inches high!


And last but certainly not least... more walls! Very exciting, as you can see by SP's face :P



xx

Buggy broccolini.

The broccolini I planted a couple of months ago is doing quite well. The grey aphids (cabbage aphids, apparently) think so anyway. Boy, do they love it. They are packed tightly into the heads, sucking away, "delicious!" they cry! I tried rinsing them off to no avail, I've tried drowning them in a sink of water, hoping they'd float off, but no go there either. I never did spray them with anything, but I suspect if I saw them and then sprayed they'd just die in the green broccoli haven and stay there tucked in the heads anyway. It's that old thing: prevention is better than cure. I have since read that when the heads begin to develop you can cover them with old pantyhose to keep them out so I will try that with some of the heads to come (but the scientist in me wants to know which denier I should use? And should I use nude pantyhose, or are broccoli more Gothic and would prefer black? Fortunately I have plenty of both after that brief but important time spent in Japan working as an English teacher, where I had to dress in corporate wear: the horror! But I digress...)
Where was I?
Oh yes, broccolini... Anyway, although I intended the broccolini for human consumption, yesterday I had a brainwave: I can feed it to our fish! We have a Gibby (called 'Gibby,' very inventive) who loves all things green, and I'm certain he or she (we don't know) would appreciate the extra protein provided by the aphids. The broccolini was just starting to flower when I picked it. It's quite pretty, really.

Resting the vegie patch

I had the opportunity yesterday to have a bit of a potter in the vegie garden. I pulled out a few weeds, picked some Amish Paste tomatoes, and pulled out most of the daggy squash and zucchini plants. Plenty is still going on out there, even though the days are rapidly cooling and shortening.

My 'Yellow Patio Watermelon' has one lonely melon, but I am guarding it zealously and hoping like mad nothing happens to it before it ripens! It's about as long as my hand so far.

The Broccolini was ready to be picked so we sliced the tops off with a sharp knife. Three out of four plants produced lovely heads, though small. The fourth was totally insect infested and went straight to the compost heap. I left the plants in place to see if they'll do anything else. About a fortnight ago I also planted baby cauliflowers, some brussel sprouts, and more broccoli. I did have both broccoli and cauli seeds sown which had sprouted about a month ago, but they got frizzled off by a few very hot days.  

The pepino looks good. Nothing has tried to eat it yet!

The pumpkins are a disappointment overall. I will have to try again next year. We have only one butternut pumpkin (Butternut squash for the rest of the world!) actually growing. A number of other pumpkins started and swelled a little, then fell off. Maybe I planted them too late? There did seem to be an awful lot of male flowers compared to female ones.

This pumpkin, which I must admit I can't remember the name off, still looks healthy and strong but considering how the rest of the pumpkins went I'm skeptical that any of the fruit will go beyond their current walnut size. 

The other recent action in the vegie patch was green manure sowing. For the uninitiated, green manure crops are crops which are grown to add organic matter and nutrients to the soil. You sow plants like clover, beans, fenugreek etc, and you slash them down when they are still green and then mix them into the soil or use them as a mulch on top. They're something I've read quite a lot about but have never actually tried. I didn't have specific green manure mixes on hand at the time, but I did have fenugreek spice seeds from the supermarket which sprout very readily (in a day or two, in fact) which are legumes and will fix nitrogen (from the air to the soil). We can also eat the leaves as a herb. I also had half a packet of sprouting seeds (chick peas, mung beans and soy beans) from a very brief and unsuccessful foray into sprout growing which I scattered out there as well. A few weeks ago it looked like this:

And now it looks like this:

I've put patches of green manure throughout the entire vegetable garden and in the new garden bed I am still very slowly creating around it.