Watermelon progress

The watermelon seems to be doubling in size every couple of days. Pity there's only one watermelon on the vine doing anything! Several of the flowers have a baby watermelon at their base but they don't seem to be developing at all.

Five days ago:


Today:


The vine seems to attract the mosquitoes for some reason - there's always a cloud of midges that fly up if you disturb it, and there's always several sitting on the melon itself.

Thar she bolts

These both came from the organic mesclun seed - they've gotten away on me a bit.

Strawberry runners

The Camarosa strawberry plants are now starting to send out runners, so I will have to research as to exactly how to make these into new plants for the coming year. The parent plants are still producing lovely berries but I will try to have more plants next year so we can have quantity as well as quality!

So far I've had two courgettes but another three have rotted on the vine. Not sure why, will have to investigate. It's actually the second plant that wasn't transplanted until mid-October that is doing better than the first, but I think this is because it's more exposed so is getting more sun and bumblebee action than the first.

The garlic is starting to keel over. Interestingly it's just the Printador garlic from the garden centre, not the organic garlic which is still standing proudly. Last week I dug up one of the garlic (where there were two stems wedged next to each other, I figured they wouldn't reach their full potential like that anyway), and there was a definite bulb but it wasn't an impressive size yet.

I've been very slow off the mark with the basil this year. So far only two seedlings have made it into the ground, but there's another two hardened off ready for transplanting today once it stops raining.

Mental note - plant less albino beetroot! It's just not as much fun once it's been bottled. I do have a recipe for beetroot dip which I'm planning to try with the albino beetroot over the next couple of days.

The rocket has shot up and been flowering vigorously for the last 10 days or so. I tried trimming it back, and have removed one plant altogether, but I think it's time for the other two plants to come out.

Broccoli is indeed purple

Well, sort of....you can now see little purple shoots coming out of the cauliflower-like centre.

Sprouting

The purple sprouting broccoli is finally doing something other than provide food for hungry caterpillars. It looks like it's growing a cauliflower as it's white at the moment, but hopefully in time it will in fact turn out to be purple broccoli....

I also planted out a broccoli seedling this morning, and as soon as I work out where I can put the other four seedlings they can go in the ground as well. In theory I should have been able to fit four broccoli in the patch where the existing plant is but that first one is so big that there's only room for one more that size.

Courgette!

Today I was able to harvest the first courgette of the season! How very festive......

With all the rain over the last couple of days I suspect the garden will get a bit of growth spurt shortly. The tomatoes are doing well, plenty of baby tomatoes on each plant and plenty of bumblebees fertilising the flowers. The coriander has definitely succumbed to the windy patch last week though.

Sage and rosemary

This morning I planted out two of the sage seedlings next to the exceptionally-well-established mature rosemary bush.

Mental note to self: don't leave delicate seedlings out in the sun too long! The just-germinated eggplant and capsicum didn't survive the rough treatment, so on Thursday night I had to sow some new seeds (hopefully it isn't already too late to get these germinated and in the ground), along with some extra herbs and my holy grail of germination, leeks - I just don't seem to have the touch for these.

Baby watermelon

Five baby watermelon

On the morning dash round outside to see how everything is faring (it's been raining and quite windy overnight, the coriander is not happy with the wind), I spotted five baby watermelon! Then it started raining again before I could get a picture.

Beetroot relish

I've harvested 7 of the Detroit beetroot now - one I cooked and ate, five made up the 500g I needed to make relish (ended up with around 500ml worth), and the last one was definitely the runt of the litter - only around half an inch across, even though it had been growing as long as the others. I fear the one in the photo below is the runt of the second litter!

Welcome to the jungle

The two courgette plants have been flowering for a couple of weeks now.

Meanwhile, right next door the scallopini appears to be doing well. I think I actually managed to get the raised mounds right this year for the scallopini and the courgettes so they are proving easy to water.

And most of the tomato plants now have little tomatoes on them. It's interesting to see the different shapes this year, here's pear-shaped baby Roma:

Weekend update

Yesterday I gave the tomatoes some fertilizer, spotted the first tomato! (Russian Red, beating San Marzano by a day), spotted the first flower on the watermelon vine, sowed another half a dozen each of dark beetroot and albino beetroot, sowed another half a dozen spring onions, ate lots (comparatively - ie more than half a strawberry each) of strawberries, mulched with compost the burpee pepper (plenty of flowers there now) and the spot the eggplant will be going into once they're a bit bigger, transplanted the scallopini and the parsley into the ground, and moved the four pots of sage into the greenhouse.

This morning I transplanted into their interim pots seven basil seedlings, four parsley, three eggplant, two capsicum (jingle belles), and one white sage. I've popped them outside for a little bit to warm up.

Harvesting beetroot

Beetroot can be harvested once the roots are 1 inch to 3 inches diameter, depending on what you want them for. They will start trying to evict themselves from the ground so you can see quite easily how big they are getting (how convenient!). Loosen the soil round then gently pull them out of the ground, being careful not to damage the skin as the colour will bleed - you also want to keep the skin on while you cook them for the same reason.

They store well in a cool dark place, provided you cut off the leaves a couple of cms above the root. The leaves can then go into salad. Any beetroot juice can be used for dye, preferably deliberately :) so if you're like me you may want to plant albino beetroot.

Today's harvest:

Mesclun

The mixed mesclun's been going well. We've been eating our way through the outer leaves and it just keeps going. There's also a few plants from the second sowing coming through (although not of the varieties that we like), and I did a third sowing this week - although I've had to water it several times to keep that patch of earth from turning into a dustbowl.

Catnip

Since the catnip went into the ground a few weeks ago, it had virtually disappeared. I think this was partly kitty-related and partly because I wasn't watering it enough. Anyway, it turns out it's not dead after all as there's several new leaves on it today.