My family are visiting at the moment so I’m unlikely to have the time to write another blog this week, but I promise to read through as many of the others as I can during the breaks at work :)
It has not been a boring season in my garden; as always with natural life, there has been life, death, diseases, failures and successes. Sometimes I think that the reason I garden is because it is so much like a soap opera – never a dull moment:
Deaths
I’ve lost my first (and only at the time) colony of bees in the early spring to a cold snap. A couple of my cucurbits have also succumbed to the elements when I planted them out.
Life
Real stars of the season have been cabbages, broad beans, what feels like about 1000 lettuces (actually about 20-25) and, currently, peas.14 cabbages for Christmas (5 different varieties)? Yes please, I love my cabbages. I’ve also got 2 new bee families and one free swarm. I’m painting my new hives lavender (photo attached below).
The weird and wonderful
My diy clothes rack cucumber greenhouse has withstood stormy winds, cat jumping on top of it, and even me falling onto it once. My new obsession with mulching has been benefiting the garden too – I’ve stopped finding cat ‘presents’ as he prefers to do his business elsewhere where there is no grassy mulch.
Thank you all for a great company and comments! I will try to post again when I’m back from Christmas travels (going all the way to warm Northland for 3 weeks) as my garden starts to really reach its potential about end of January.
PS I’m trying to do a bit of research into garlic rust and will try to post my findings here too. I have three patches (all a bit different) and one did not get rust at all this year (others very much did), so I’m trying to understand exactly why.
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