New Ways in Backyard Gardening

This year I am a little more organised with regards to saving some of the seeds from garden plants. I have even included photos of the tomatoes, as there are a number of different ones I have been growing and some just appeared in the garden during the year. Self-sown and as resilient and productive as ever.

Speaking of which, these pumpkins also grew from a seed that made its way into the back bed and has managed to grow two fruit during the summer. Both of these were on the same vine which appears to be something like a Kent Pumpkin. Unfortunately, while trying to navigate through the jungle to check out the greener of the two it came away from the vine.

As far as being organised, the rest of the garden looks like a bombs hit it. I am in the process of changing the layout of some of the plants now that I have a better idea of what is going to work after two years of living here. Something of a transformation will take place. It may not be spontaneous though, rather slow and awkward I would think. Still, we shall see. It has been fun trying to overcome the various challenges the garden and weather have been throwing around. I think I have some solutions. Stay tuned. I will be posting photos.

Corn Harvest

Yesterday, quite early, in a state of mind only a new parent could imagine, I stumbled down to the garden VERY EARLY and set about hacking at the corn and picking the cobs. It felt like rain was going to fall so I busied myself getting the corn and some leaves, seeds and bits and pieces under the house so they could dry out before getting any rain on them. It was a good plan, because eventually the rain came. I should mention that the corn is nearly quite dry and will be used for pop-corn once it is completely dry. I tried some but it is still needing further drying as a friend pointed out. Still the odd hint of light yellow deep within some of the kernels.

The chicks - now not really chicks at all - have taken to flying out of the pen. Mainly because they can and also because, well, look at the temptation laid before them with the back bed! All sorts of stuff to rummage and scavenge through. Which is what the guinea pigs were doing anyway - and have been for days. All set up with their own little boxes to shelter in, they have made themselves quite the little pigs by feasting on the corn leaves, fallen cape gooseberries and kikuyu.

 

Here is Jazz taking a break whilst some of the rain came in and wet the garden over. It wasn't much, but it was enough to bring out a decent harvest of snails for the perch and some for the compost bin (to feed to the perch later on.)

In between gardening, cleaning, cooking and caring for the new baby I have been working on various things in relation to our local seed savers group.

Tadpoles

Today I had the good fortune to have a friend drop by with a bucket of tadpoles and water snails, water boatmen and an aquatic stick insect that I haven't seen since I was a child and played much closer to water than I do now!

I thought they would do better in the top pond that is filled with watercress so we released them into that one. It flows quite quickly into the larger, koi-filled pond below but the watercress has such thick roots at that end of the pond that the tadpoles would have a real battle trying to get through. At least until they were able to eat their way through, in which case, they would have grown anyway.

So, I shall eagerly await the evolution of the frogs and wait in anticipation for their calls in autumn. Hopefully they will choose to stick around now that the garden is more of a jungle in that area. After-all, our other pet frog was rediscovered the other day as I was filling up a water chestnut tub. It appears he has been keeping himself cool in the tub rather than by the large, plant filled pond. Good on him. I was just so glad to see that he had been staying around. The last lot of froglets we had just disappeared, never to be seen. I'd like to think it had nothing to do with a visit from the neighbour's stray cats. I can't be sure.

Preparing the back bed. Goodbye Sunflowers!

Today I cut down the sunflowers and hung the heads to dry. A Red-capped Parrot visited the garden in the late afternoon and was a little put out to say the least. Where is my snack?

The leaves are really quite big and the heads on some of the plants are larger than dinner plates. The rest of the plants are going back into the garden bed which I will be getting ready tomorrow so that it is ready for an autumn crop and to get the soil built up a little better during the winter.

I also picked tomatoes and got seeds ready for saving. They are in water solution at the moment and should be ready for drying in a couple of days.

Something fanciful

Just a little bit of poetry from the garden as a male Red-capped Parrot contemplates a feast of sunflower seeds in the summer garden. They have just about cleaned up the extra flower heads on offer. Entertaining to have around.