It's nearly two months on from my last post and things are growing better than I expected in the vegetable garden. It has been a lovely mild autumn down here and we have been harvesting kale and chard for several weeks now.
..and this kale is called Red Russian kale and has grown much faster than some of the others I sowed. I let it flower every year and save my own seed, and if I don't get to it in time it happily self seeds everywhere. Its down side is that it's not as hardy as some of the other varieties of kale, and in the middle of winter it looks really sad and scruffy and stops growing, but has another flush of growth in the spring. Brassicas are supposed to be difficult plants to save your own seed from because they will cross breed readily with and other brassicas in the area, so I'm not sure why this one seems to come so true from seed.
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| Chard plants a few weeks ago |
..and this kale is called Red Russian kale and has grown much faster than some of the others I sowed. I let it flower every year and save my own seed, and if I don't get to it in time it happily self seeds everywhere. Its down side is that it's not as hardy as some of the other varieties of kale, and in the middle of winter it looks really sad and scruffy and stops growing, but has another flush of growth in the spring. Brassicas are supposed to be difficult plants to save your own seed from because they will cross breed readily with and other brassicas in the area, so I'm not sure why this one seems to come so true from seed.
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| Red Russian Kale |
The vegetable garden area looks a bit like a proper vegetable garden already. About half of it is roughly dug over and the old turf has mostly been killed quite well by the thick grass mulch.
A few of the old seeds didn't germinate, but most did. We've eaten most of the radish, there are tiny thyme plants, parsley just about ready to harvest and one lonely rocket plant! I have transplanted sweet williams, pansies, hollyhocks and evening primroses into the flower beds and there are lots of different kinds of kale plants coming on to keep us in kale through the winter. There are also some broad bean plants, a few hardy peas (the seed was a bit old and only 3 germinated) and some winter onion sets. I Because I only have a small area cultivated but want lots of variety I have mostly only sown 12 inch rows of each plant, and if lots come up I thin them or transplant into spaces elsewhere. It's so easy to be swamped by 60 hollyhocks or 20 kale plants, and really, I only need 5 or 6 of each.
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| A lovely purple kale I haven't grown before (can't remember its name!) |
And finally here's a general view of the veg garden looking lovely and green in the sunshine a few days ago.
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