Friday, January 15, 2010

Kitchen garden, week 5

A quick photo update of week 5 in the garden (posted a week late).

The whole garden. 5 out of 6 tomatoes are doing really really well - heaps of healthy dark leaves and flowers appearing all over the place. The one tomato not doing so well is in the bottom-left, it's the Black Russian - my favourite variety :(
On the path between the garden beds and towards the tap I have a bonus crop - rocket! It's my favourite salad leaf so I was very happy to see it appearing. I've been using big bowls full of this and it just keeps on coming.

garden1

Some happy looking fruit!

garden2

The sad Black Russian. Despite it's generally stunted appearance, it's growing some lovely big fruit, but I won't get many from this plant.
You can also see my climbing beans to the left, they are going well but I need to put something up for them to climb on asap!

garden3

My basil. It's still not doing well but it's trying its hardest to grow, which is encouraging. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on its progress. I don't know what is eating it, I don't think it's snails or slugs as the cos lettuce growing next door to the basil is untouched! So I suspect another critter, but I have no idea what.

garden4

Peas! Now, I planted snow pea seedlings, but these guys keep getting quite fat instead of staying flat like the snow peas I have grown before, it's rather curious. Regardless, they are delicious and sweet.

garden5

Cos lettuce grown from seeds scattered between the tomatoes. They are more successful than I was expecting, and I need to remember that they are hiding in there to eat them!

garden6

My carrots finally decided to sprout, though not very many of them. I'm not sure why this was - perhaps planted too deep, or because they were quite old seeds.

garden7

After taking these pictures, I fertilized with Maxicrop Seaweed Plant Food Concentrate (which is what I found in the shed). I think it's a good idea to fertilise tomatoes just as they start to flower to give them a boost when all that energy is needed to grow the fruit. If any gardening experts are reading this and it isn't true, please let me know!

I still haven't planted out my strawberries or flowers... and they are looking rather worse for wear. Shame.


For previous kitchen garden posts, click here.

3 comments:

  1. It could be caterpillars eating your basil, maybe? There's various solutions, Dipel is a good one because it's a selective bacterium rather than a chemical poison that humans wouldn't want to eat!

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  2. BTW tomatoes looooooooooove seaweed solution. You can water them with it every couple of weeks with no worries. Some say it even improves the flavour!

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  3. The basil is actually growing amazingly well now! It's made a seriously impressive recovery. I need to do an update actually, the whole garden has gone nuts

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