Gardening All The Time

It turns out I'm rather lax at posting while in lockdown. The posts may slow down but the gardening never does. I've been quite good about planting out my main three square meters of raised bed:

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That's beetroot in the foreground, followed by bok choy, and rocket (a.k.a. arugala) at the end. With peas coming up along the trellis, and the calendula in the corner still going strong. I forgot how long calendula will go in good conditions. I pruned it in late Summer, and it's come back better than ever. On the other side of the beetroot, out of the picture, are four broccoli.

 In addition, I've managed a large terracotta pot of Fall peas, which are thriving. 

This picture was taken about a week ago; they are even taller now and I spotted flowers coming in just today. The fencing around them is just a length of hardware cloth wraped around the pot to keep the pet bunnies out. (yes I share my back yard with bunnies, which is a whole other topic for another day).

A second large terracotta pot has some carrot seedlings just popping up.

When I realised I could grow carrots year round in our climate, I had visions of continuous succession plantings. I am still working out the logistics of this. I may try a second planting in a large pot now that these have come up. But after that, I'm sadly out of space for the moment.

The bok choy have mostly been harvested this week - first for a veggie miso soup, and later for stir fry with marinated tofu. Both were excellent. It's my first time growing bok choy and I had a bit of a drama keeping the snails and slugs off them. I discovered that the wide, fat, leaf stalks hold water between their layers and make perfect cozy homes for baby snails. I still found them very satisfying to grow, but I wonder how they would do in the Summer, which is our dry season.

We are now deep into Autumn, but have been blessed with plenty of sunshine. My kumera (New Zealand sweet potato) are still going, though I thought they would have died back by now. They need a long growing season, so I hope this will mean a good harvest. The season ticks along. The days grow short. Even as I plan out the last of my Autumn plantings (garlic, multiplying onions, broad beans), I start to have more time to look ahead. I am already dreaming of Spring.