... on drought, flood and pestilence.

I took the camera out into the vegetable garden this morning so I could share with you the disgrace that has befallen my two Stephanie Alexander no-dig vegetable garden beds. You may remember how luscious they were looking towards the end of last year. Since then it's been hot, it's been wet, it's been windy, it's been dry, it's been humid, it's been harsh, and as a result most things have turned up their toes. I'm hesitant to replace them because of the hordes of insects that are munching on anything that dared to survive.
But you know what? I went out to capture the shame, but in fact I found some good stuff going on!

The first bed is sprawling with pumpkin plants, who have happily spread beyond the garden and colonised the entire back corner of the yard. Although all the tiny pumpkins have rotted off due to rain and humidity (I think), I have hopes that soon the weather will be in their favour and it'll be pumpkin-a-go-go around here. Other than the pumpkins there's some caterpillar-fodder purple-sprouting-broccoli, some pestilential remnant silverbeet and one tiny patch of self-seeded rocket. True to its name it's bolting to seed almost before we can eat any of it but if I'm quick enough I can grab a leaf or two for a salad.

In the second bed the kale is slowly making a come-back after some months of being ravaged by a horrible spider-webby caterpillar - I think it's a two-year type plant so I hope it will continue to crop over the coming cooler months once the bloody bugs die off! There's also one valiant eggplant continuing to struggle against daily assaults by the local birds (chooks included) who have proven they will dig DEEP to get a taste of the Hydrocell water-saving stuff that is in that bed. Apparently it's non-toxic... I hope so, because there's some maggies and crows around here with a serious addiction!

I checked out the sweet potatoes which have been growing in bags since last year. One bagful looked a bit wilty (and the bag ripped when I attempted to move it - looks like those spud bags will only last for two crops) so I tipped it out to see what was going on.

Sweet potatoes, and a decent amount of them, too! They're a bit holey in parts but I'm not too bothered - not when one tiny bag can produce a big spud like this:

The little fig tree is another thing that has seemed to flourish after the hot/wet/humid rollercoaster Brisbane has been on for the past month or so. It's sprouted so many new branches I've had to stake it to stop it falling over, and is covered in tiny little figlets.

I'm feeling positive about the garden, as the nastiest (and most unrelenting) part of summer should be behind us now. I'm looking forward to re-planting it all out with cooler-weather things once February is over and who knows? I may have an awesome pumpkin crop to report upon soon!

... on a garden update.

This is what awaited me out the back when I got home after being away for five weeks.

A garden full of green things! As there had been no rain, and as Brisbane had just been blasted by a long period of that horrible dry gusty westerly wind, I wasn't expecting this. The tiny kale plants I'd hurriedly planted before heading off to the airport looked promising. The row of Florence fennel was outstanding! And, although windswept, the corn at the back was flowering and covered in tiny cobs.  

I'm not sure why some of the tiny corn cobs have this lovely red silk, and others green, as all the seeds were the same. They are an organic heirloom variety from Diggers called Golden Bantam.

Aren't the little pink flowers beautiful?

Another surprise delighted me - it looks like the sweet-potato experiment is a success, as least from a vine-growing perspective! Whether there's lovely tubers forming in those bags is yet to be determined - I think it's way too early yet.
But, I can almost taste that corn already. A few more weeks!

... on new potatoes.

Yesterday I noticed that one of my Sebago plants had quite suddenly gone all yellow. There was only one plant left in that bag (the others having been lost to rot), and I figured as it had gone all yellow it wasn't going to be doing any more producing. I didn't have great expectations, to be honest.
I got a surprise.

650 grams (or about 1.6 pounds) of Sebago potatoes!
A modest, but encouraging first harvest, and I have another five bags of robust-looking plants still growing heartily away.
So, I now have an empty potato bag. I've never tried growing sweet potatoes in bags, but it could be time to plant out these little slips I've had growing on the windowsill. Let the sweet potato experiment begin!