Blog November 2017.

Everything is growing well in the front garden thanks to some useful rain last week.  The lawn is colouring up nicely after looking a bit second hand for a while in the winter.

We will finish harvesting the peas in a few days, and start to harvest the alliums and potatoes during the coming month.  The tomatoes have established well and are setting the first truss of flowers.  I will need to get the electric toothbrush out to start hand pollination them soon.  I take out all lateral shoots at this stage, and allow each plant to grow five sets before pinching out all new shoots.  I am growing cabbage, lettuce and beetroot between the tomatoes as catch crops, and sweet basil as companion plants.  The bed will be very busy in a few weeks.

The peach harvest will be a bit thin this year.  The weather suited the development of leaf curl, and despite a light lime/sulphur treatment just before blossom burst, the tree has been badly knocked around.  Infested leaves have all been removed, but the tree has a bit of catching up to do. 

The potatoes seem to be going OK despite much closer planting this year.  A few early flowers have opened so I could start harvesting a few new potatoes, but I think I might leave them all to fully mature in Jan/Feb this year.

The tomatoes are growing closer together than usual, so I may have to sacrifice a few to maintain good sunlight for the rest.

I think the butternut pumpkins would like some warmer weather soon.  Its been fairly cool for this time of year, and they are struggling a bit.

I hate a mess, but as we Australian's say "She'll be right, mate".  The wild winds of the last few weeks have knocked everything around a bit.

The olive tree's in flower again and looking good.

These climbing beans are waiting patiently for the weather to improve, but I'm glad they haven't quite taken off yet, because the peas are still occupying the climbing frame.  I will relocate the frame in between these two rows as soon as the pea harvest finishes.

This is the wicking box from my modified EcoPropagator.  Its still doing a sterling job growing these cuttings.  I just need to find a suitable place for them so that I can decommission the box.

My thornless hybrid blackberry plants struggled to compete with the raspberries sharing the same bed last year.  I decided to sacrifice the rasberries so that the blackberries could recover.