Garden Share Collective: Summer Ends

Another month down, another Garden Share Collective post. Hosted by one of the most enthusiastic gardeners around, Lizzie of Strayed from the Table. Have you been for a look yet?

February has been a slow month for garden work, but an abundant month for garden harvests. All the work from earlier starts to pay healthy dividends. We have been eating from the garden daily, with zucchini, tomato, rainbow chard, leeks and celery featuring regularly. And from the herb garden, which is doing surprisingly well, getting the hot afternoon sun as it does, we've been enjoying basil, oregano, thyme, sage, dill and rosemary. The mint and chives are also doing well, but for some reason they are always forgotten. Poor things.

Finally they are ripening.

The garden is now showing signs of wear and tear, the end of a long, hot and productive summer. The tomato plants are browning off, and we're not watering much to avoid splitting the already-large fruit. The tomatoes themselves are still ripening regularly and we have just loved the sweet taste of these fruits. I gave up buying tomatoes from the supermarket a long time ago, and really, when I eat these, I am reminded all over again why I made that decision. Plus William squeals for the tomatoes every time we go out there - at 11 months old, he is a master tomato-picker, foraging among the leaves and coming up with the goods. Sometimes green, which he has a good nibble at, and when he finds a red one, it's like a jackpot. He eats the whole thing in a juicy, tomato-stained mess. Just gorgeous.

Potato flowering, some capsicums and celery.

The potatoes are flowering like mad. I'm still waiting to see how they go, what with being sown so late in the season. But I'm heartened to see such abundant growth in that section of the garden, which stood bare for so long with nothing much seeming to take, except for weeds. So we shall see, perhaps by next month I will have a bumper potato harvest to report, or perhaps not very much. 

Leeks - what can I say, they have grown beautifully. Occasionally I pick a large one, but more often than not I take the smaller ones, the ones being crowded out by the zucchini, or that have suffered from baby-squash or cat-squash or chicken-scratch. Serious conditions, all. And out of 36-odd onions that I planted out, I harvested 5 small ones. The cat slept on all of them. All of them! Thank goodness for the leeks to flavour our dinners.

The zucchini has once again been a star performer. From only one plant, we've not run short of zucchini for about 2 months now. Lucky we all love eating them in this house. I've not had enough to entice me to make a zucchini chocolate cake, although now I think about it, there is a large one in the fridge, a bit too large for my liking, which could just suffer that fate. And then I would have to eat cake. The things you have to do!

Rainbow chard has been one of my favourites, as always. It is also one of the chicken's favourites. Now what are the chickens even doing in the vegie garden? Yes, my question exactly. They've not had enough greenery in their run so I take pity on them and let them out, and of course off they go to the vegie garden. I had basically given up shooing them out, since all the plants were established and they couldn't do too much damage. Apart from devouring my rainbow chard. Sharing is caring, I suppose. Anyway they now have a significantly larger run with lots of greenery. So the vegie garden is to remain chicken-free, unless I invite them in.

The oregano starting to wander.

My little herb garden continues to thrive, provided the water is kept up. Oregano is starting to do it's thing and spread out over it's rocky home. Sage is growing like mad, thyme is also growing well. These all went in as tiny little seedlings and grew ever so slowly for a few months there. I look forward to seeing them bed in a lot more over the wetter months to come. Mint is flowing, basil is flowing, dill is flowering, there are even little thyme flowers to be seen.

Mint flowers.

I've managed to finally tackle a new bed in the front garden, where I'm planning to put lettuce, beetroot, kale, broccoli and probably some more silverbeet. Nothing is planted yet, but the old flowers have gone, sheep poo has been dug through, it's had a drink and is now resting soundly under a solid bed of pea straw. Monday is the day for seedlings, photos to follow. I'm loving creating a new bed for a new season.

So in summary:

Planting in March will be broccoli, kale, beetroot, lettuce, silverbeet. Possibly broad beans.

Jobs in the garden for March will be to clear out the tomatoes and zucchini when finished, dig in compost, add fresh pea straw and think about what goes where for the autumn/winter. Lots of greens, I'm thinking.

Currently harvesting tomatoes, zucchini, rainbow chard, leeks celery plus the herbs. Hoping to get a harvest of potato and some capsicums as well.

It's me, digging sheep poo!

That's me and my garden for this month. For more garden inspiration head over to the Garden Share Collective page and see what's been happening in other gardens. There's bloggers from all over the world taking part, I always like to know what's going on on the other side of the globe. Happy gardening!