Catching up

We've had such a lovely day today after a few weeks of quite chilly weather. I was wondering if I've shown off my small area of flowers around the raised garden bed? It's slowly becoming what I had imagined when we first made it. It's lovely to see colour in the garden after a difficult Summer season!



The pumpkin vine I showed off earlier, too, has grown! It's starting to get a touch of powdery mildew as the weather has become wetter.



There are 4 really large butternut pumpkins hiding in there!



Free pumpkin! Yay! :)

Lastly I picked this today - it's an Egyption beetroot, slightly flatter on the bottom, and not really red inside. Quite tasty, but not as sweet as the Detroit variety.




(Edited to add pic of the inside of the Egyption beetroot)



Otherwise, I planted out some spinach today for the winter. Two varieties this year: Winter Giant and American Curled. Looking forward to plenty of baby spinach over the winter.

Until next time!

Potatoes and Plums in Pictures

The Russet Burbank potatoes have all died back, and we harvested the results today. Umm..



6 pretty good sized potatoes is better than last year at least! I put the small ones and the ones which were growing back into the raised garden bed. I hope they're happy this autumn/winter. The soil that we pulled out of the garden bed was lovely, filled with worms and rich. I started with a little of that - popped the potatoes on top, and then a layer of straw and sheep manure.



The purple Saphire potatoes are still going. Once they die off, I'll do the same with those.



I put all that lovely soil into a garden bed. You can see from this pic the tomatoes there are doing well. (The ones in the front garden have had it! hehe)



As I said before, most of the garden is suffering. This is the railway sleeper garden bed in the back garden behind the water tanks. I've used shadecloth to help protect the plants from the worst of the sun. I've planted carrots, bok choy, beetroot, and spinach in there - but there seems to also be pumpkin that's popped up too. I didn't plant it, and I've no idea if it could really produce any pumpkins, but it does look pretty! hehe.



We have a surplus of plums at the moment. We don't eat plums, so Marty has picked some of them and will try and offload them at work. Anyone for a plum? The tree is overloaded!



Lastly - Here's a sight for sore eyes. No, it's not earwig season anymore, so imagine our surprise when this guy came into the loungeroom one night! He's actually a native earwig. Not one that will eat our plants. We popped him back outside where he belongs - but it's certainly distinctive.



Until next time!