After last week’s cold burst of nasty weather, there seems to have been a slight change in the weather.  I went out in the dark last night to close my greenhouse door, because I’d forgotten to and am having a possum problem.  I wrapped up warm expecting an evening chill to blast me as I opened the front door, but it was surprisingly not cold – I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was warm, but I may have had one layer too many on. 

I’ve checked the long-range forecast and the temperatures seem to be rising slow and steady.  Optimistically I’m beginning to think – this is it!  The last of the cold is behind us.  Although I’m not putting my scarf and beanie away just yet.  And there is a lot of rain supposed to be coming our away.  I can look at it as it helps to settle in plants, and fills the tank, or I can be frustrated that I’ll either be stuck indoors or gardening in the rain! 

Having said that the forecast is always changing so it is important to check it often, so you don’t get any surprises from a sudden cold snap that wasn’t on the forecast the day before!

Now after a bit of a break the Mini Challenges are back and the next one up is quite exciting: 

MINI CHALLENGE 3:  GROW TO GIVE

Sharing is caring and so in conjunction with Yates National Garden Week, we're challenging you to grow a little extra food to give to your local foodbank or other charity and share the bounty of fresh homegrown food with those who need it.  Create a blog post telling us all about your intentions to grow a little extra to share.  This is open from the 18th of October to the 29th of October.  It doesn’t affect the overall outcome of the Vegie Growing Challenge.

Three lucky winners will each receive a prize pack and once again is a fabulous selection of Yates goodies.  Although our winners will need to continue to be patient with us as Yates are still locked down in Level 3 and can’t send anything out until Level 2!  Let’s all hope we get there very soon!

Another thing we want to change, is during the last 2 Mini Challenges, a couple of blog posts got merged in some weird technological blip so what we would like you to do is come up with a creative heading but make sure you TICK THE MINI CHALLENGE TICK BOX when submitting your post so we know you want to be considered for this prize.

You can find out all of the details for this Mini Challenge on the What’s Going On section on the main page of the Growing community.  Click on the image of the prize pack to take you through to all the details or click >HERE<

And don’t forget to pop over to the National Gardening Week tab on the Yates website and register for your free seeds, because this week is officially National Gardening week.  Don’t forget to tell your friends out it too so they can receive free seeds and consider helping others to grow a little extra to share. 

One of my Teen Lads has been accepted to tertiary study out of town, which means I’m one set of hollow legs down from early January.  But when planning my garden, I didn’t take this into consideration.  I expect I was in denial about the imminent nest fledging.  As a result, I expect I will end up with a lot of spare vegetables coming out of my garden this season.  I spoke to our local food bank, and they are delighted to take whatever I have spare so nothing will be going to waste, even with one less mouth to feed! 

Happy gardening and as always – if you want to get in touch leave a comment below.

Sarah the Gardener  : o)

Image:  my seedlings hardening off ready for planting later this week.