Garden Update

I've made a lot of noise about growing your own garden, and how easy it is for everyone to get something green sprouting in whatever little space they have. My own efforts have, admittedly, been a bit hit-and-miss over the past few years, apart from fresh herbs and making compost. But since herbs are really just weeds with a useful side that's not saying terribly much, and you can't eat compost.

So when I started this blog, I decided I should really make a proper go of it myself, and got out planting.

Well, we've had successes and failures. The strawberry plant didn't fruit this year, to our untold sadness. We grew one beautiful broccoli, but were so proud of it that we didn't realise it was ready to eat, and it went to seed on the doorstep.

But I put a whole lot of pumpkin seeds down in a bunch of compost, and fed it all with lots of worm castings, and waited.
Then when the season turned, the garden suddenly came to life. Amongst the things growing up around the weeds were more pumpkin plants than I could count. My ulterior motive with growing the pumpkin plants was a lazy one really: I hoped that they would spread out and strangle all the weeds. It seems to be working.
Then these started to appear.
And then a few of these. Yesterday I counted 11 fruits growing in the pumpkin patch, as well as a few errant tomatoes that may or may not survive the strangling effects of the pumpkins.
Dessert Chef's potted tomato plants have also been shooting up, and with judicious applications of stakes, worm castings, water, compost, and a careful trim, they might be the big success story of the summer.
They've also popped out a bunch of these
And even a few of these.
And the random potatoes I planted in the back yard near the pumpkins have been our first proper harvest. Straight from the garden, we cooked these up the other night, and they were just beautiful. So much more flavour than the ones from the shop, or even from the market. You could almost taste the compost and the worm wees.

Hmm, maybe that's not what I'm really trying to say.

Anyway, I'm pleased to say that it looks like our efforts have not been in vain. There's also rhubarb growing, and onions, though I have to say I'm not sure what to do with those.

We'll see. I've put down more potatoes, and now I've got a better idea of what I need to do to get ready for the next planting season.

Now that wasn't so hard, was it?