Various Harvest February 2018

We had variety of different harvest earlier this month, the most exciting harvest was the French Marigold seeds.

I planted lots of this little seeds earlier in spring, but didn't have too much success in germinating them. So, to my amazement, the little success had produced abundant of seeds, which I went ahead and planted all over the front garden bed.

It's very satisfying collecting these seeds, there are lots in each of the dead flower head.

There are lots of new seedlings of French Marigold. I'm hoping it will be a success this time. I'd like to make them into border of the front garden bed. The companion planting for my roses seems to work this year.

Also, from earlier of the month, the adzuki beans pods had started to grow and then dried up. I wasn't looking for these little treasure, so it was a pleasant surprise to see them. We've collected quite a few already and we can see new green pods started appearing. 

So, we're on the lookout for dried up pods.

The Spinach Perpetual Gator has been an amazing supply of greens for this home. This is probably the 4th or 5th harvest to this amount since December. I bought my seeds from The Seed Collection.

We'll be coming back for more next year.

And, lastly, the snake beans had finally arrived!! This is the first harvest that we had last week.

It's so exciting, as we can see lots of flowers and little snake beans everywhere. We're going to have abundant of this. Look at the size of it!

LittleMsGreenies Garden Update February 2018

Summer is well underway here in Melbourne, the weather is warm (sometimes even hot), with cool mornings and nights.
The fruits are finally starting to ripen up and harvest had even started already, especially the tomatoes. Lots of activities going on in my garden in the last few weeks. Lots of harvesting, tidying up, and replanting flower seeds.
It's definitely a nice feeling seeing the garden beds looking lush and green.
All photos were taken on 2nd and 5th February 2018.

On the Garden Bed 0, the bay tree keeps on growing new leaves, I'm confident that it had survived the winter. It looks like I will have a good supply of bay leaves as well in the coming months. Lots of herbs on this garden bed, we have tarragon, oregano (not visible on the photo), sage (not visible on the photo), and stevia. The dahlia is finally flowering, we've already seen light orange, purple and dark purple coloured flowers. I'm still waiting for the sign of seeds from these flowers. The random apple trees seedlings (from last winter's compost) still survive. I didn't have the heart to pull them out, so, you'll see lots of apple seedlings throughout the photos today.

On Garden Bed 1, things are well underway, the cabbage and brocolli are growing significantly and I'm checking every few days for signs of florets. We have had a good harvest of spinach, lettuce, and the herbs from this bed. Definitely excellent types of leafy vegetables that I will plant again next spring. The nasturtium plant is growing up steadily and it is an excellent companion planting as they attracted the caterpillar, so the other plants don't get attacked too much.

The look in Garden Bed 2 was not very pretty at the end of January. Melbourne's windy weather had proven challenging for the tomatoes to grow neatly on the allocated sticks. So, after a few hours of hard work, I managed to untangle the vines and run them properly up the sticks.

We have had ongoing harvest of tomatoes, left right and center.

Also on the Garden Bed 2, the corn and chilies are growing, I even saw capsicum flowers started to bloom this morning. It's going to be exciting time ahead.

The corn plants are showing the corn. It's my first time planting corn, so, I can't wait to see how this will turn out.

On Garden Bed 3, the radishes that I planted earlier had bolted. We collected the seeds and replanted them. It looks like they have started sprouting. I'm giving them another chance, not giving up on them yet. We shall see how this batch turns out. 

The carrots are slow growing on this bed for some reason, we haven't had any good harvest yet.

But, I planted some more seeds in there, hoping they will turn out successful.

The Kipfler potatoes were a good harvest, it was a bit challenging to dig them out without bruising them, but we tried to be as gentle as we can (as gentle as a 3 year old boy can be, that is).

Some of the smaller potatoes were planted back.

On Garden Bed 4, the beans are so glorious, indeed they enjoy the sun. They grow bushier when there was a hot day. 

We have had a few harvest of the green and purple beans. And now starting to see the snake beans and adzuki beans being ready for harvest.

The large photo on the top left corner is one of the many surprised tomato plants that grew in the garden. They grew from the tomato kitchen scrap that I planted as compost material around the garden last winter. Look at the size of it. Not bad for a freebie!

The pomegranate has 4 fruits, that are still green.

Bell Chilies are gigantic, I bet they really love heat, these 2 are positioned on the west side of the garden.

The photo on the bottom right hand side is the mandarin pipsqueak with a surprised tomato plants (again), apple tree seedling (also from kitchen scrap, apple core), and spinach cutting.

I have some excess pumpkin seedlings this spring, so, on top of the climbing pumpkin on Garden Bed 2, I planted the extra seedlings on the unused part of the garden. The soil on that area is not good, but, it looks like they are thriving in there. Lots of male flowers already appearing. I keep on checking every morning to see if there is any female flower.

The flowers on the front garden is in full bloom now. We have lots of solitary bees fluttering about from flower to flower, mostly the lavender, sunflower and zinnia. I hope there will be more bees here, but I've only seen one or two at the same time in the garden.

A few days after these photos were taken, I planted some borage seeds on this section, hoping to attract more bees.

Sapphire and Ruby Lou Potato Harvest 23rd Jan 2018

This is a late post from end of Jan, it was finally the time to harvest the potatoes that were planted in the bags.

It's my first time using this bag planting technique, and I was keen to see the result.

Overall, the harvesting method is very easy, extremely manageable, and you definitely won't miss any potato, unlike when they are planted on the ground.

However, I had an issue with drainage at the bottom of the bag. The soil at the bottom of the bag is soggy and I found a few bad potatoes at the bottom of the bag. I did torn up large rips at the bottom and the sides of the bag for drainage, but I think that wasn't sufficient.

And, I think I also over watered them, which may led to the rot at the bottom of the bag.

I used a large degradable clear plastic bag for this planting.

In this bag, I planted Sapphire potatoes (purple skin, white flesh).

Because I was experimenting with different types of bag, the next potatoes bag that I harvested was planted in the plastic woven rice bag. The result was much better, I didn't make additional drainage for this bag, but the soil seems to be dry overall and the potatoes were a lot bigger.

In this bag, I planted Ruby Lou potatoes (reddish skin, bright yellow flesh).

This bag is probably the closest version to the commercial potato planter bags that I saw online, so, I think I may use these bags again the next time.

One thing for sure, the commercial seed potatoes definitely produce better yield. I bought mine from Garden Express when they were on sale at that time.

All of the potatoes harvested had been transformed into roast potatoes and stew :)

I definitely will plant potatoes again next spring, easy to plant, easy to grow, and large yield.

Sunflower Seeds Harvest 19th January 2018 with little helper

This is a late post, because we're too busy enjoying the late arriving summer here in Melbourne.

A few weeks ago, after weeks of anticipation, the sunflower seeds were ready for harvest.

So, I thought it would be a good activity for toddler and luckily for me he was keen to help.

We got lots of seeds, some were planted back and the rest were stored for next year.