Growing Challenge Update #15

My first update for 2009! I haven't been doing much in the garden lately though - except picking vegies - so there isn't much to update.

In the Greenhouse: Nothing at the moment, as it's the height of summer here and I think it's way too hot in there to be sowing seeds. Having said that, I would like to start sowing some more salad greens (especially lettuce) when I get the chance, although I will probably direct sow them into the garden and hope for the best.

In the Vegie Garden: I've had a bit of a clean out over the past few days. I've removed the celery which I had let go to seed. I was hoping to collect enough to use in the kitchen as well, but I needed the space. I have more than enough seeds to sow again next season though.

I've harvested most of the drying beans, which were a bit of an experiment this year. I bought a mixed packet of bush beans from Diggers, which included around 5-10 seeds each of Borlotti, Red Kidney beans, Cherokee, Yin Yang and Flageolet. The last still has green beans on them so they will stay for a bit longer yet, but the rest had nice dried pods on them. They will be opened and sorted later today, no doubt with my kids help :-) It will be interesting to see how many I get from the few seeds I planted.

I also picked what was left of the leeks in the garden, apart from two which have nice big flower heads, left so that I can save the seeds. Now I need to decide what to do with all these leeks, oh the dilemma ;-)

Elsewhere in the garden, I've noticed that the Dragon Fruit has another flower bud on it. It has had around 4-5 buds on it previously but they've either been knocked off by boisterous children or pets, or they haven't been pollinated which is a pity! This one is sticking out perilously close to the pathway so I suspect it might get knocked off as well, otherwise I will be watching it closely for signs of flowering - I believe that the flower only opens once, and only after sunset. I can't find any information on what sort of insect/bird pollinates it though, so if anyone knows I'd be grateful :-)


In the front garden, the vine I first thought was a cucumber developed fruit... which got to cucumber size and kept going LOL. The first ones looked like the one below, so I immediately thought "watermelon!". However, I've was out there yesterday and checked on them again, only to discover that the skin is developing webbing.


Mmmmmmmmm, despite the snails making short work of almost every melon seedling I planted this season, it looks like we might get some rockmelons (cantaloupes) after all!





Speaking of melons, only one of the three surviving Golden Midget watermelons seedlings I planted actually did any good and flowered, although I haven't been keeping a close eye on it. (Incidentally, it was the melon seedling that was supposed to be a Luffa when I planted it LOL). Well, yesterday I noticed that there is finally one teeny tiny watermelon developing on the vine! Isn't it cute? They are supposed to get to the size of the palm of your hand, and - as the name suggests - have gold flesh. The vines are only supposed spread around 1 metre wide so they are good for small spaces. This vine would be nowhere near that size, although it could grow that big over the rest of the summer I suppose.





I also noticed yesterday that my Starfruit is starting to flower, yay! The fruit normally ripens in May/ June so it's a little earlier in flowering this year, but then this season has been much warmer than last summer. It really is a very attractive tree, I'm looking forward to it getting to a reasonable height so that it will become more of a feature in our garden.

Well, it's a gorgeous day outside - not too hot for a change - so I'm off to plant my kiwifruit vines now that DH has put together the gazebo frame we were given by our next door neighbours AND built me a little planter bed to plant them in! Photos to come soon.

Have a great week in your garden :-)