The weather has got much chillier over the last week – I had to wear long sleeves all day yesterday, though am still exiting the house in jandals, not-quite-letting-go-of-summer-just-yet…
The garden needed some tidying up (after a few busy weeks of neglect) so today I puled out the bean plants, saving a few remaining seeds for next year from the Sutton’s Giant beans (from Koanga). They were great scarlet runners, juicy bean pods, didn’t get tough and oversized like the other Blue Lakes.
I also pulled out a few sneaky carrots and wow! They look just like on the packet! (Rainbow Selection from Niche Seeds) The first one was big and waxy and yellow, like a grub. The second one had pink foliage and came out shorter and red, and the last one was medium-sized and more orange than the first, but not normal carrot-coloured.
Also picked strawberries (they are STILL going – since mid-November!), tomatillos (the plant is über-productive in the lantern department but they mostly don’t seem to be getting big enough to grow fruit), chillies.
I also picked a bit of mustard and coriander, which I whizzed up with a couple of the past-it basil bushes to make pesto (recipe: 2 x basil bushes, sprig of coriander, sprig of mustard, handful of pine nuts, good amount of avocado oil. Blend).
The marigolds seem to have done their companion-planting job all summer, attracting the snails so that they aren’t hungry enough to eat my veg. They have grown MASSIVE (enough for a Monsoon Wedding), have started self seeding and have taken over all the space. So they had to go. Mostly. I will cultivate the seedlings and see if they go all winter too. I’ll try to plant them next to the veggie patches next year, so that I actually have some space to grow food.
