State of greens #03
01/2021
Greenhouse
We’ve visited a nursery this week and could not leave without getting a puka tree, a tropical guava and a bay leaf bush. I’ve wanted a puka tree since I’ve seen them around New Zealand. Now is definitely not to time I should have gotten one, but here I am – owning a puka tree. Apparently they are hard to grow from seed but I could not give it a try so far because I’ve not seen a puka tree with ready seeds on it.
We tried to get a lot of native tree seedlings started to plant new trees around the property, we’ll see how that goes. The decorative banana plants we started earlier from seed are going well so far. The hops is in need for a permanent home, it started growing up the pumpkin.
Sadly enough, we just don’t know what to do next with most of this stuff.
Vegetable garden
Our garden has been hammered by wind this week, so a bunch of string ripped and some plants flopped over. Luckily nobody got hurt!
The ping tung eggplants are not going well, but they must be super stunted from being in pots so long and it might not be warm enough for them. Some plants seem to be in need for a new nutrient boost.
What started as a brassicas and (one) water melon patch starts being overtaken by the water melon. The brassicas are bolting and we’re not exactly sure if we can get away with getting any broccoli (was worth a shot). I cleaned out some gai lan (chinese broccoli) and found the one water melon has grown intensely since it rained this week!
The corn is going quite good all things considering and seems to be in his final stages. The peas are starting to get rust, I think, at the bottom but look eager and grow great. As do the beans.
Not so much luck with the potatoes! Something started munching away at them from under ground and a lot of plants died off and looked sickly. We had to clean some out and some of the potatoes were tiny and underdeveloped, as they did not have enough time. We also think they might have gotten too dry at some point. The potatoes outside of the garden are not looking the best either – but that’s mainly because our pig enjoys munching and digging away there very much…
We have high hopes for the mortgage lifter tomatoes. We keep pruning and cleaning the lower part of the plants and they simply look great on there. So do the cucumbers that are growing in the patch next to it. They had trouble getting started in this wind and weather but seem to do alright now.
The beets are still growing in clumps. We’ve eaten a couple. What is really impressive to me is the production of the zucchini plants. We pull off at least six every couple of days and it’s too much for two people to eat when you’re not a zucchini fanatic and you don’t have an oven or a zucchini noodle machine. So the stem is looking pretty insane by now. Can’t really wait to pull out the root at the end of the season and see how massive that has gotten.
We moved the berries from the “greenhouse” to the garden. They get more wind than expected, so the raspberries got sun and windburned. The others do not seem to mind too much and I think especially the strawberries and blueberries are thankful for the amount of sun they are getting now.
Pumpkin patch
The pumpkins are creeping further and further, but only one pumpkin growing so far.
Next to it we grow sugar cane that probably need to go into the ground real soon to continue as nicely as they did so far.
