Garden Share Collective – March

In the midst of the start of the school, getting myself ready to find some work and life in general I missed the last Garden Share Collective – hosted by Strayed from the Table.

In the two months since my last garden update something serious has happened.  A pumpkin plant has attempted a garden coup!  The coup began quietly and undercover of tomatoes and zucchinis, but has since spread rampantly and is now looking for total domination.  The attempt is so serious as to have involved the neighbour’s pumpkin plant which has started a take over climbing over the six-foot+ high fence and seeking to dominate the non-veggie patch side of the garden.  Things are becoming untenable, pathways loving created by Mr Good have succumbed to pumpkin plant rule and are now closed to all human traffic.  The girls’ trampoline seems next in line, but Mr Good assures me the lawn-mower army will mobilise and make short work of any attempt to capture the lawn.  All of this from just one plant!!

Despite this plant’s attempt to colonise my garden, the patch has proved something of a manic provider this year.  The three zucchini plants have been in fruiting overdrive for more than a month and I can’t give the stuff away fast enough.  I’m picking 20-30 zucchinis a week.  The cucumbers have started the late catch up supplying at least as many fruit.  And with a stretch of warm weather – though still mild by comparison to other summers – the tomatoes are now ripening and the plants heavy with fruit.  However, my poor staking and neglect has left them in a sad and sorry state of appearance.

The weather has been very odd this year and the humidity has been much higher than usual.  As a result I’ve had whitefly problems on and off since well before Christmas.  They destroyed the potatoes plants and the mint and then went for the beans.  Thankfully the beans survived and came on strong again in January but are again being attacked so my harvest has been limited.

In this part of the garden I also have some lovely healthy-looking silverbeet, red kale, spring onions, parsley and rogue potatoes.

I’ve had my best every year with strawberries, picking a bowl or more every week for a couple of months.  I’ve managed to freeze quite a few which will be turned into jam at some point in the near future.

Below I’ve included a glimpse of my regular harvests and a couple of gorgeous sunflowers brightening our yard.

The final big news in the garden is that Mr Good and I have made excellent progress on the last of the paths around the veggie garden beds.  We’ve dug it all out – back breaking and blister inducing work – gotten rid of the dirt we dug up and laid the gravel ready for the final stage.  Now all we need it so whack-a-pack that down, top it off with some sand and lay the bricks.  It will probably be another weekend’s worth of work but we’re close!  It’s only taken me the best part of 18 months to get these paths done!!  Next up is the deck, any bets on how long that will take us?

To Do this month:

Finish the path!!!!!! (I promise a photo on the next update)

Plant out seeds for winter – broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage etc.  I’m a bit late doing this but I’ve decided not to stress too much about timing, I was late with the summer ones too and I’ve done okay.

Finish tidying up the tomatoes.

Weeding – lots of it!

Start getting some manure/mulch for the next season.

And anything else I can think of.

Be sure to check out some of the other posts, I’m constantly amazed at how much people manage to do in a month.  And I love seeing the gorgeously neat and planned patches that put mine to shame!  Mind you, I also love seeing the rambling free-range style that I tend to go with too.