November in the garden

[Olive]

It's a bit late in December for a new thread so updating here. We were away for 2+ weeks - in a remote spot with few people and a chance to enjoy nature while contributing to citizen science.

In the flower garden, lilies are a good mix of colours, callas are all out, repeat flower roses looking good, climbing aloe still showing well and the geranium that I thought was finished still has some colour.

For the aquatic plants, the pontederia is making a good show and one lotus has a flower plus 2 buds. Nothing happening on any of the others yet though. It's time to give the pond a bit of a clear out to make more clear surface area to see the fish. The goldfish come to be fed but the minnows are so small that they get a bit lost in all the vegetation if I don't keep at it.

In the vege garden we had lettuce and broccoli to take with us to the campsite and they both only ran out as we were ready to come home so that worked well. The next lot of lettuces is nearly ready for picking and the broccoli has been a glut but I snipped and froze the tips of the "over-done" ones and we're eating well from the good heads. We've started harvesting potatoes and are averaging about 1.2kg per plant with some good sized ones. The plan is to cook, slice and freeze surplus for chips. Dwarf beans are underway with a meal every couple of days so far. When it's fully underway we will have surplus to freeze too. Blueberries are starting to colour up but are not sweet enough yet.

What hasn't gone well is the garlic. I pulled one up yesterday and although the plant looks ready, the bulb on the bottom hasn't done anything. We think the rest of the crop is likely the same but will give it a few more weeks to see what happens.

I'm sitting here right now admiring the serious rain that started 10 minutes ago.   It will do a lot of good to the figs, the plums and all of the green veges.   Everything here is doing fantastically well compared with last year, when almost everything rotted in the chilly damp.   Tomatoes, chillies, tomatillos and okra are all booming, herbs looking great especially dill and basil.

The only disappointment so far is the garlic, which was looking quite robust until a couple of weeks ago when it came down with rust, and now it hasn't bulbed at all and is starting to keel over.   Red onions always do well here so we're mystified by our continued garlic failures.   We have very rich soil and good drainage.