I’m really happy with how my garden is looking on this side of the summer growing season.

I’ve been trying to spend at least 20 minutes a day out there – mostly weeding, but there’s been more planting in the last month or so too.

I’ve spent the last week a bit sick, so I haven’t had the energy to do much lately, but it’s nice to know that the combined work of the last few months (and years, when it comes to our soils) is quietly taking care of itself.

But I did publish my plans for the season a few months ago, so let’s take a look at how things are growing…

Garlic

I know. I swore I wasn’t going to plant garlic this year. Technically, these Takahue bulbs grew themselves from cloves we must have missed while harvesting last season.

After they popped up, I transplanted them. I’ve kept them weeded, and fed them with lime and blood and bone. I didn’t expect much, but something in me had to try.

Wouldn’t you know it? That’s the healthiest garlic I think I’ve ever grown! I have 3 plants that I think will need to be harvested in about a month.

Of course, I plan to grow them again next year. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the kinds of crops I used to have, but apparently they can grow nicely when they want to, and I’d like to grow enough for personal use.

Sunflowers

I planted an entire bed of sunflowers on the same day, at the same time, from the same bag of seed.

Somehow, the bed looks like this.

My initial suspicion was slugs and snails were hitting the plants at the top of the bed – probably coming out of the catnip. This was proven when I threw out some snail baits and saw some recovery at the ‘slow end’.

I did some thinning in this bed this year – though I held off a little thinking I’d hold some to transplant into the gaps and now they’re too big to do that, so it’s just gonna be whatever it is.

Potatoes

We have two plantings growing at the moment. They’re both early potatoes, but were planted about a month apart.

The first planting has begun dying back. This is the batch that get us through summer through to harvesting our main crops towards the end of the season, and they did really well!

Richard pulled up maybe 25-30% of them yesterday and harvested 5.8kg before calling it quits.

With so many potatoes, the plan is to drop most of what Richard harvested to the local community pantry the next time I go to work. But I think he had fun!

There’s still another bed to fill with some main season spuds soon. One of the jobs I had hoped to do this week and didn’t.

Carrots

We don’t eat a ton of carrots, but it’s the kind of thing I want to have at least a few of in the garden.

But I’ve really struggled to get my carrots to germinate.

I tried the board method, and got one carrot (the bigger one highlighted above). I germinated them inside and transplanted them (the smaller ones). They did better, but it is fiddly and the carrots are likely to be a bit weird-looking when I harvest them.

And then I saw the cornflour gel method and I thought I’d give that a go. So I made up a gel from cornflour and water, mixed in some carrot seed, and piped it out into the garden using a ziplock bag with the corner cut off.

No idea if it’ll work, but between my three attempts, hopefully I’ll grow enough to keep us busy.

Berries

The strawberries (mulched with Cozy Crops wool pellets for those who are curious) are doing fantastic. This year’s addition of Monterey daylight-neutral berries has proven to be a rewarding choice.

I’ve got to get a bird net over these as we have an escaping chicken who has discovered them, but we’re having regular strawberries for dessert with ice cream now.

The boysenberries and blackberries aren’t very far off full-production, and Richard and I are both visiting the berryhouse daily in anticipation!

I’m looking forward to the nights where I’m left wondering what on earth I’m going to do with all these boysenberries!

Bugnet house and the arch

The bugnet house is planted. The tomatoes, cucumbers, and paprika have been transplanted in.

I’ve also planted three rows of sweetcorn which have germinated.

I’ll be planting small blocks each month through to January to stagger the harvests and hopefully avoid too much of a glut.

The arch hasn’t gone quite to plan. I accidentally hardened-off my bitter melon seeds with terrible timing, in an awful position and – well – they died.

So I’ve planted a couple of extra cucumber seedlings on one side, and direct-sown some watermelon seed on the other. Again, we’ll see what it does.

And more

Of course, this isn’t everything. There’s also flowers, and herbs. A bed of peanuts has been sown, and the shallots are looking great this year too.

The feijoas are in flower and the native trees are taking off. The herbs are almost ready for gathering and drying.

For the first time in a long time I’m not entering summer staring at a large crop of rusty garlic – and that is really nice. It’s nice to begin without the spectre of failure staring at me from the next garden bed.

Things haven’t completely gone to plan so far this season, but it’s close enough that something will happen – and that will be plenty for us.