A walk in the september garden
Uhm. I think I skipped a mid august garden update. The last update is from the beginning of August. I forgot it I think in between all our friends that came over, and I was still mourning for all the tomatoes that we had lost due to the rain in July.Now that September started, everything is looking much more sunnier and brighter here in the kitchen garden #onthemountain. Time for another update.
The tomatoes that are still left in the garden are doing really well at the moment. Our neighbour even complimented us as all his tomatoes didn’t survive. I must say that I did give them more attention than I had meant to do. Luckily it paid off. I threw away all the diseased tomato plants and all the diseased leaves. I also gave enormous amounts of feed, both to make more leaves and to give more fruits. The plants now look much more healthy and are producing big fruits.
This past few days I also have been mulching the garden for the third time this year. This time with some mowed grass. It looks really pretty. Probably because it’s hiding the weeds partly.
Besides the tomatoes, we obviously grow other things as well. The strawberries are still producing like crazy. Kind of strange as everybody says that the strawberry season is over. We seem to be in the middle of it. I’m not sure what kind of varieties we now have in the garden. But basically everything is over producing. Yum.
Beans. We can bath in beans at the moment. I sowed many different kinds of beans in the garden. Dwarf beans, runner beans… Fields full of them. We also still have annoying bugs living on them, but I have the feeling that we can live with each other. We can still harvest a lot and apparently they can too. I have made these tipi’s earlier in the year and they seem to work great. I used four poles and in between I used yarn to make it cheaper. The beans also climbed up the yarn. So definitely something I can do again. In the meantime we are eating a lot of curry’s.
We also have many flowers growing in the garden this time of the year. It’s really nice to see how much more life it brings into a garden. If you are considering putting flowers in your garden, I can definitely advise you to do so.
What else, what else. We have pumpkins. Grand pumpkins & cute green pumpkins. We also have beetroot, tons of cucamelons, great amounts of lemon cucumbers, aubergines, peppers, paprika’s, carrots. Small and big cabbages. Red and green cabbages. Kale, red kale, green kale. Non preforming artichokes. And so on. It’s really amazing how a garden starts from scratch in the beginning of every year and how it grows out to a chaotic paradise, just moments before everything dies off again and you can start again with a clean sheet but with more knowledge.
So much for our kitchen garden. Back to our terrace. It’s really a warm day, so it’s smoggy and grey in town as you can see. Everything else is quite green. I decided to make a few pictures as fall might come in suddenly and colour everything in it’s own palette.
Owh and let me tell you something about the basil on the table. It’s there on purpose of course. People have been admiring the bushes. They are doing really great. I still follow the advise I got last year and it’s really working for me. The plant produces a lot of basil. It looks healthy and smells heavenly. Every time I cut pieces of basil, people can smell it miles away. Did you know that it’s best to cut herbs in the morning? The oils are at their best during that time of day apparently.
I also have a few more herbs growing on the terrace that are starting to catch on now. I have been repotting plants, which also helped them become more healthy.
And what more. The tomatoes on the terrace are also doing great. I gave them some extra feed as well. That helped a lot. I also still believe that trusses of 3,5/4L are really enough for growing tomatoes on a terrace as long as they have some access to water and as long as you feed them on a regular basis.
Last but not least: the potatoes. We have cut open three bags. The longer that we keep them closed, the more potatoes we have. So we try to stay away from them. It’s hard, as they taste great, but it’s better to be patient and get a bigger crop. That’s what I keep telling myself every time I want to open a bag.
That’s it. It’s a long tour today. I’m hoping that the weather we are having will keep up for another short month. If it does I’ll update you in a month again with great progress. If not, I’ll update you with a slowly dying garden. Only time will tell.