October in the Garden

October in the vegetable garden was a time to clear out the old plants, and plant the new. As you can see in the photo below I have already put shade cloth over two thirds of the garden, actually I have done it twice as a few days after I put it up the first time the weather became very windy and it was all torn down. It has been up for a week now and it seems to be fine so far.

Planting

I know the garden looks bare in this photo, but I promise there are plants in there they are just very small and they don’t seem inclined to grow at the moment. I am blaming it on the erratic weather we have had so far this spring. 

Down the far end of the garden I have planted out two Kent pumpkins, one butternut, a zucchini, two different types of watermelon, Sweet Baby and Luscious Red and a rockmelon, Hale’s Best and sown seed for corn.  

Two of the beds are for tomatoes with nine different varieties planted or soon to be planted, Lemon drop, Honeybee, Tommy Toe, Black Cherry, Sweetie, Mamma Mia, Tigerella, Rouge De Marmande, San Marzano and one store bought one that I saved seeds from because the flavour was so good.   

In the legume bed, I sowed seeds of Scarlet Runner and Butter beans.

My youngest daughters own three rabbits and they eat A LOT, and it can get quite expensive to feed them if you’re buying vegetables from the supermarket all the time, so I set aside one bed to grow food for them, mostly leafy greens as well as radicchio and some curly leafed parsley, plus I left four kale plants in the garden as this is a favourite with the rabbits. 

I had so many asparagus seedlings come up in the garden that I decided to add an extra bed of asparagus because you can never, in my opinion have too much asparagus and really you can’t pass up free asparagus plants. 

Asparagus seedling with a volunteer cucurbit growing next to it.

After two years of not having any I finally have a bed dedicated to strawberries and noticed today that there are flowers on one of the plants. 

In the two bed closest to the gate, I planted Genovese basil and Thai basil on the right and in the small bed to the left I sowed seeds of English spinach.

Growing in pots

Chillies, Italian parsley, lemon balm and garlic chives, as well a raspberry and blackberry which is just about to flower for the first time.

Harvested

October saw the garlic being harvested, I haven’t weighed it all yet, some of it isn’t quite dry enough, but so far I have 2.9 kilos of garlic.

Garlic hung up to dry, braided by my youngest daughter Samantha.

Also harvested were carrots, silverbeet and thyme and oregano.

Things to do

Cover last third of garden with shade cloth

Mulch

Put up bamboo screen on north side of garden if needed

Plant kumara, if it ever decides to shoot that is

Water, weed and fertilise as needed

Sow seeds of mixed lettuce