Time

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by"

 -Douglas Adams

I love gardening.  Even more so since I have a long term site for gardening.  However, my biggest barrier now is time. 

I know that I should be planting brassicas at the moment, and have beetroot seeds ready for sowing, yet I haven't the time to do so. The Phd needs writing, students teaching, dog walking etc etc.  The end-of-summer planting was something I was going to do today as well as some significant weeding, but instead I did a quick mow of the lawns (good exercise, as I have a manual handmower - none of that petrol stuff ergh) and fixed up a garden bench seat I bought from the Margate tip shop sans wooden slats.  I still have to paint the garden seat but at least I can sit on it now.

 

what do you do with your vegies after you pick them?

• beans

• basil --> pesto

• potatoes --> gnocchi (the potatoes were my friends' - I swapped them for some beans and cucumbers)

Beans, Beans, Beans

I'm currently distributing my beans throughout the land (well, friends and neighbours and the freezer, at least).  I did a big harvest last night because I had heaps of big beans on all the plants, and not only were the dwarf bushes straining under the weight, but I've discovered that big beans don't taste as good as small beans.  Here's my harvest being washed in the sink:

I'm so happy.

I also made a big batch of pesto from my thriving basil plants.  I planted some 'control' basil in a couple of pots, then some in the ground next to my tomato plants (companion planting at work), and it turns out that they much prefer the ground.  The pot ones are all runt-like, whereas the ground ones are mega.  They were all struggling a bit at one point (pots and ground), but I gave them a feed with some Seasol and they turned a dark green and grew rapidly.  So that's what they wanted (I'm still learning....).

Sunflower-Guzzling Bees

 

My sunflowers are out and happy.  Happier still are the multiple bumblebees that seem to be constantly attached to the sunflower 'faces'.

Here's an 'update' frontyard shot:

 

 

I also have to share my finally flowering sweetpeas.  Only two plants out of the entire packet actually sprouted (ripped off!).  They tried to climb some dead flower stalks at first, and I had to unwrap their tiny tendrils and curl them around some wire which I hung on my front fence (in the laziest of fashions).

Then there's the lavender that my mum planted from a cutting when she came down from Sydney a couple of months ago.  She introduced me to the world of stealing stalks of other people's plants.  Who would've thought cutting a chunk of lavender, sticking the end in honey, and then sticking it in the earth would yield a brand new plant?! Brilliant.  When she planted the stalk, it was a mere twig.  Now it has branches and flowers...

Lastly, is my 50c Chickenfeed seed garden, which is in the small planter box built into the house at the top of the front stairs. I wouldn't have thought seeds from Chickenfeed would actually grow, but at 50c I thought it was worth finding out.  I picked the 'blue mix'.  It turns out that the Chickenfeed seeds were much much more effective than the expensive sweetpeas.