State of greens #10

03/2022

Another four weeks flew by. I believe we’re going slowly into autumn. And there’s basically nothing better than rummaging through the garden in the golden hours of the day.

The last round of runner beans we started are currently going so good. There’s lazy housewives, some yellow beans, some purple beans and a snake bean variety. The broad beans are coming along nicely as well and some glorious pak choi has sneaked up in that field.

Were the chili bushes haven’t died from blight (or whatever it is) they are looking really good and there’s a great amount of fruit on all the plants.

We were brave enough to start another round of melons about 7 weeks ago and are happy to report that there’s some on there and they are looking quite healty.

One of my favourite new things (since I moved to New Zealand) are okra. I’ve never known them before but they are just such a joy to eat!

And not to forget the aubergines and ping tung (which are superior btw). They are producing surprisingly well.

Not everything is rosy, of course. As I mentioned before, after the last storm with lots of rain the tomatoes and chilis started to get sick. While the tomatoes seem to give it another go, a lot of chili plants just died. We also haven’t had much luck with the cucumbers this year. And by luck I mean that we probably should stop trying to grow them upwards and give them a bit more shelter from the wind. Now they’re currently covered in mildew. One season we’ll get it right. The bread and butter pickles we made were so good tho, I wish we could do more.

It’s so easy to lay back and watch everything grow and have nothing coming up afterwards… we’ve got to get our winter crops game on now.

As for the orchard… Not having any water at hand there has just worn out the trees. Most of them didn’t produce anything (fair enough). At least they seem to be still alive and getting some new foliage. We put in a couple more bananas that we got from our neighbour. Can’t really plant enough of those, right? Some wildflowers that grew all summer are opening up their heads which is a very welcome sight.