The asparagus are growing nearly as fast as I can eat them:
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The wicking bed out the side (North-facing) has started kicking in over the last month, with eggplants, onions, tomatoes, and peas. I've succession-planted some beans among the peas, and also a luffa plant - hopefully some of the other vine melon plants sprout and I'll put them in there to act as a shade screen over the heat of the summer.
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The Plum-Stone bed has been sitting pretty quiet through the winter - I planted a bunch of broad beans (which mostly have aphids), peas (didn't take very well), sprouting broccoli (mostly went to seed the instant it started warming up), and mustard (the only thing doing well and pest-less in the photo).
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The Apple-Crepe bed is a problem. I filled it with a soil that I got as part of a project, but it was extremly alkaline (ph of around 9, when what you want is about 6.5-7 for most vegies) and likely not all that great for growing things in.
That's radish in the shade, garlic in the middle of the bed, and carrots in the sun. What you can't see are the onions and leeks, or beetroots, and the parsnips never even materialised. (Parsnips are incredibly difficult to grow apparently: the seed needs to be fresh, and all the conditions need to be right.) This bed was planted back in May, maybe June. And it hasn't grown at all. That's how bad the soil is.
Also, I underfilled the bed with woodchips, thinking they would break down. I kind of doubt that they did, it's probably a mess under there. Anyway, I need to transplant the garlic (I might try to turn it into perennial garlic in the herb bed - just keep trimming the green tops and they grow more green tops - gives the taste of garlic even if it's not the bulb) and pull out all the failed vegies. Kind of heartbreaking though.
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This is the Crepe-Apricot bed which is going to hold sweet corn this season. It's mostly an 'in progress' pic to show what it looks like now. Hopefully in five months, it will look entirely entirely different!
Mind you, I planted about a dozen seeds here, straight into the ground, and exactly two of them have grown. I'm better off planting corn in seedling trays and then transplanting, I think. A much better strike rate.
That big green-and-purple thing on the right side of the photo is a...brassica that I planted in winter. I don't know what kind (I'm bad at labelling) but I thought it was a brussels sprout. I suspect it might be a purple sprouting broccoli but it's hard to tell. It's doing better than the other two which I planted under the Stone fruit tree which are...pretty much the same size that they were when I planted them. Maybe marginally bigger. :/
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The Apricot-Avocado bed had a compost heap on it for about six weeks over winter, before I transferred it to another compost heap and raked it out into the Apricot bed (which I'm trying to grow green manure/meadow flowers on).
Now it has...brassicas. Yes, 'brassicas'. World's Most Terrible Labeller, remember?
I guess we'll see if they head or not. Also: it being summer, it's probably going to get too hot for them really fast, so I'm trying to grow things in front of them to take up more sunlight for them as well as to grow things pretty closely so it's a melange of green and growing things that shade the ground and make the evaporation of any watering a little slower. The 'somethings' that I plant will probably be indeterminate tomatoes, because who doesn't love a billion tomatoes come autumn?
There are a couple of beans up the back of the bed; and I've tossed down a bunch of 'green manures' which are quick growing nitrogen fixers that will not only improve the nitrogen in the bed, but also provide some mulching bulk as the summer wears on.
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And the bed at the end of the line - the Avo-Shed bed - has more brassicas which are probably a mix of cabbages and sprouting broccoli, a tomatillo (or two, I hope, once the thing gets moving) in the front, and a row of beans along the back. Unfortunately, I managed to double-plant beans, because I planted a bunch and then forgot I'd planted them, and then planted another set, and both sets sprouted. *rolls eyes*
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Speaking of the chooks, they're spending most of their days out in the front run, are laying, and quite happy to get in yo' face.
Interestingly, there's a section of the chook run which abuts the neighbour's yard beyond the fenceline, and I've noticed the neighbours have started throwing some of their kitchen wastes into the chook pen. Which, they're from out rural way, used to be farm folk, so I understand, so I trust they're not trying to poison my chooks. I've had a bit of a chat to them about the chickens when they first moved in (because I was worried about the noise they might make) but they've been pretty good about the occasional noisy clucking that takes place when one of the chooks wants something and isn;t getting it. (Hainan chicken is particularly noisy when she's bored.)
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There's still the front yard to go. Maybe talk abotu that some other time...
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