Strawberry Success

This is year's thinned out 'patchy  patch' with raised strawberry mounds and no weed mat or straw. I thought I'd try to give the slugs and snails fewer places to hide and it seems to be working.

Even with less plants (too lazy to replant the runners) I'm still pulling out a punnet's worth every 3 or 4 days. It's so good not to worry about how much they cost and eat big handfuls at a time, especially as I know they have not been sprayed with anything. Strawberries are one of those commercial crops that get a lot of pesticide treatment: http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/eat-safe/strawberries-pesticide-residue#slide-11. This variety is seriously sweet - Cambridge Rival.

But wait ...there's more!

With an unseasonably warm early Autumn, the tomatoes are still going and the strawberries are having a second flush. We just leave the apples on the tree until they drop.

Strawberry Delight

The strawberry patch went well this year, though the slugs ate quite a few. I used some garden-friendly snail-bait in a tube to tempt them away. But there were so many, I didn't worry too much about it.



I'm not sure if this is a biennial variety. They didn't do too much last season. It's a variety called "Cambridge Rival" and they are so sweet, they are almost like sherbert sweets - possibly even too sweet for me! I might get another variety that fruits at a different time to extend the strawberry season. I replanted some of the newer runners into a different section of the patch and used black plastic as a weed mat for the next season.

Rain, Hail, Blistering Heat and a Surprise

The poor veggie patch has been subjected to near 40 degree heat, two freak heavy hail storms and some thundery showers for some relief in the last few weeks. I just got the shade cloth up before this last heat-wave and I think that's helped a lot, particularly for the lettuce and bean seedlings that are just too young to survive the big fry.

The espaliered apples and a self-seeded pumpkin had some of their leaves almost shredded.





But none of this crazy weather has deterred my strawberries who have veggie patch domination plans of their own!:


And you can't keep a good plant down ... a surprise flower popped up from a bulb buried in dirt I'd dug up for a path to our studio:




We've got a couple of these in our garden - do any Blue Mountains people know what it is? I hope it's not a weed, 'cos it's a spectacular flower. We do have a lot of bulbs around the garden that were planted by previous occupants.

Where did the year go?

My favourite spinach for 2009 - Southern European Spinach

Well the year flew past and I went through stages of business and laziness with the veggie patch, still managing to produce food even when doing little. The plants that bolted in our unseasonably early warm weather are now producing beautiful seeds for me to collect. At about $2.50 to $3.00 a pack for organic heirloom seeds, the bolting plants are still worth something and then after
seed harvest, they are of course, composted, ready to go back into the veggie patch several months later. I love nature's recycling system!

I tried using toilet rolls for seed germination. I'm not convinced they worked as well as the seeds in the plastic black seedling containers that were probably warmer and germinated more successfully. Also planting the toilet rolls in the ground sounds good, but they take ages to break down. I'd be more inclined to just recycle them. They may also be glued together with something yukky, so I probably won't bother so much with them. I tried putting the seeds in toilet rolls under plastic but that didn't seem to help.

I received a red currant plant as a gift - even in its first season, it produced about 1/3 punnet's worth of currants which went into a glorious summer pudding for a New Year's Eve dinner party (thanks to my partner, a skilled cook).

Some radishes were rather amusing :)

I left the brassicas to grow as long as I could. It was a good thing, too as I was surprised by a huge head of purple broccoli that wasn't there last time I looked!!



Green Mignonette, Australian Yellow Leaf, Purple Oakleaf (not shown) and Forellenschuss (not shown) lettuces provided us with months of greens for yummy fresh salads and they are so easy to grow. The yellow leaf lettuce was the least bitter of all the lettuces, but I like bitter greens anyway - they are very good for you and the slugs and snails don't bother much with them - maybe just some of the outer leaves.

The golden-podded snow-peas continued to give us lovely crisp pods for a number of months, just from growing in a big trough along a sunny trellised wall and I have saved some of the finest peas, ready for next season. Even the neglected broad beans growing near the compost bins (not in the veggie patch) in less prepared soil still produced beans.




The patch goes through stages from partially bare, ready for new plantings, to feral (late spring).


The strawberries (Cambridge Rival) produced strawberries so sweet they almost tasted like sherbert. Sadly though, too much leaf growth, not enough flowers and enthusiastic slugs reduced the yield, but the plants have gone nuts and I will have plenty of runners for next season. I planted them in an elongated, raised mound, covered with hessian to protect from fruit rot and reduce weeds.

I did have more success with carrots this year (and beetroot), but still had trouble getting the seeds to germinate in the first place.

And sometimes the ladybirds in the garden were just having too much fun on on the bok choy flowers!