A Veggie Wet Start to Summer - The Lodge Garden Update.
The Lodge, enveloped by fog.
The start of summer. I wish I was coming to you with descriptions of balmy breezes ruffling flower beds and ornamental grasses, or warm sun beating down on my face, but the reality is that its a classic Blue Mountains misty day.
Fog hugs the lodge and our garden tightly like a familiar blanket. I do like this kind of melancholy weather, but for the first day of summer? No thank you. The worst of it is the constant drips from our tall radiata pines (Pinus radiata) collecting the clouds’ condensation then releasing it slowly, a pitter-patter of nuisance for all below. This will last all day long.
Outside of The Lodge vegetable patch & edible garden
Although the rain has been in and out since last Sunday it’s been a rather productive week at the lodge garden. Yesterday dodging brief thunder storms forming over head before they roll down the mountain and into Sydney, I managed to clean up more than half of the veggie patch. Not that I had much choice, the white cabbage caterpillars have descended on any left over brassicas, namely my beloved Collard Greens (Brassica oleracea). They’re my favourite of the brassicas I grow, against knowing better I always attempt to push them out of season as far as I can growing them in the warmer months. Some years I’ve kept them going without chemical intervention for almost 12 months. Unfortunate as I look at the completely decimated stems I think to myself…. This is not one of those years.
Munched Collard greens
Cabbage White Butterfly larvae (caterpillar) eating Collard Greens
After my clean up I managed to fit in some more cucumber, tomatoes, carrots, radish, beetroot, and a little more lettuce. Having listed that out I’m happy with the planting spree. I also managed to attach wires to my Zuchinni plants so they can grow tall. This is a great tip for anyone with limited growing space. Grow up!
It was also a week of filling spaces and gaps. It irks me when I can see a space where a plant should be but all I see is soil or mulch. Often I have something propagating for the space but I grow inpatient and need to put something in immediately.
This week was white petunias along the garden bed that sits beside the veg patch. This garden bed is very slim, only 30-40cm wide and maybe 8m long. Through spring it has a succession of bulbs and flowers but each summer there is a gap for something, for years I’ve thought and searched for what I want in the spot but have never managed to make it work. I feel like I have some sort of writers block but for gardeners… Gardeners Block!
White Petunia
This week I through my hands up and said I just don’t care! I want something. So I bought a 10 pack punnet of white petunias. For impact more than class. Petunias are not my favourite, in fact in years gone by I’ve loathed them greatly, I find them déclassé. But it was all I could find when the impulse struck standing in the garden centre. Lets be honest this is just a temporary band-aid over my issue of a gap in the flowering succession of this bed.
In cooler climates petunias are grown as annuals, they are frost sensitive so come late autumn their cycle will end and I’ll be back to wondering what I will put in the spot this time next year. - classic.
Chickens perching on their favourite all-you-can-eat buffet, otherwise knowns as the compost bays
Our 4 chooky-girls are really making themselves at home. Three weeks after bringing them home to the lodge they are really settling in. They are getting to know us, and us them. When I open the back door I’m met with the sounds of their morning chirps. The garden feels like it has life again.
Despite the current weather this time of year is magical in The lodge garden. So much life and so much to keep up with!
What are you up to in your garden this week?
