Carrot Tops

A nice break in the weather today and I took the opportunity to plant onions (red and white),shallots and garlic. Took two hours! An animal has eaten all my brassica seedlings. I have covered as many as I can. I hope it doesn’t like onions.

The reason my blogging has suffered (and my garden has suffered) is because I abandoned it for ‘other pastures’ over January and spent some time as a wwoofer on a newly emerging organic farm/eco village in Motueka.

I LOVED every minute of it. I will find a way to go there permanently.

Here are a few photos.

It’s amazing how fast things grow between October and november. Also I was delighted to discover the runner beans are indeed perennials (as stated in all good gardening books) and are starting to sprout.

runner beans sprouting from last years root

Courgettes after one month of growth in rich compost.

courgettes in tyres Nov 08

spuds nov 08

Woops this photo is mainly weeds! there are carrots and spuds in amungst them.

Siver beet and onions were the main plant to grow through winter, carrots and beets also but too woody to eat. Red cabbages grew a little through winter and are going great guns now (Dec) Also some lettuces went through winter and edible in spring. Planted carrots, broccoli, cabbage.

silver beet

red cabbage, onions, lettuce, radishes

These plants (except the raddishes) grew through winter. Onions and red cabbage seem to need two seasons here to grow big enough to harvest.

I have decided to grow courgettes in stacks of tyres this year, as my experimentalone went well last year and the potatoes in tyres failed. This year the spuds are getting the vege garden proper.

spuds 08 - about 1 month old

This is it in November 07It is quite fast growing and were harvesting in late december. If you remove the main head and leave the rest you can grow side heads as well. Here is a plant with a couple of side heads.