The Week That Was

I have been harvesting my tomatoes and roasting them with capsicum and garlic (also from the garden) to make passata for use in my winter cooking. I have only enough tomatoes to last the week out then I will be pulling out the old plants. This will leave more room for my sweet potatoes to spread themselves around. They are looking very healthy, I must say. 

I harvested my apples and got three different varieties.

I have planted my garlic as I am hoping to build up my stocks so I can sell it next summer. Organic, local garlic for eating and planting. I planted it in all my empty garden beds and along the edge of the Nepeata bed (pic above) which was covered in bees doing their thing.  I also had to rig up a climbing frame for my peas. Its an old swing set with gutter guard stretched over it.  I just happened to have a roll of gutter guard left over from when I was teaching. The children used it as a weaving frame. Then I planted my Green Feast peas.

Since we had our solar hot water installed our new pump (which was installed at the same time) keeps wanting to run constantly, instead of just coming on when a tap is turned on. So the bearded wonder climbed on the roof to see what was happening and a connection is loose and water is pouring out and and running into the gutters and back into our tanks. So I had to turn off the hot water at the cylinder to stop this and turn it on only when I want to shower, or wash dishes. While trying to sort out this problem the bearded wonder accidently broke another pipe so now the pump had to be turned off as well. Needless to say, we have plumbers coming today to sort out this nasty mess.

I have decided to give up on growing most seeds as they are too time consuming as they need so much care. The brassicas I tried grew leggy and I was very disappointed.  I bought some more leek seedlings and will plant them later today when its cooler. I will also sprinkle about the remaining leek seeds I have, to see if they do anything over autumn and winter. I will also be planting Sweet Pea seeds in the spot where my beans were growing. I found that even though the beans grew well it was awkward for me to reach them to harvest them. So with Sweet Peas in that spot I can just admire the flowers without the need to harvest but I will be picking the ones that are easy to get to.

We have built a shade house/potting shed in the last couple of weeks and in the last day or two, I have re-potted all my orchids. The walls are called Gabion walls and are cages of rocks. A very effective way to build. I have had to stop watering on a daily basis as our garden tank is getting very low. It is forecast for rain over the next three days so I am hoping we get a good amount.