Garden and flowers

On Sunday I finally got around to doing some bigger pot planting. The summer having been so poor, the motivation for gardening is real low. On Sunday, anyway, I planted some basil, parsley cucumber, pepper, aubergine and courgettes into slightly bigger pots. The size of pots that can be taken inside, come autumn. None of those will be producing anything during this summer. 

The potatoes and onions are doing quite ok, radishes not so much even though they have grown huge leaves; the ground is too tough for them to grow properly with all the clay. We'll get a lot of apples, despite the locusts in the trees, I'm sure, and wild strawberries are growing wildly.

Despite the weather, flowers in our yard seem to be doing quite well.

Yesterday I visited my grandma at our summerplace. It was a rainy day, but I enjoyed being there. The huge rhododendron there is at the end of its blooming, most flowers have wilted already, some are still looking nice.

Garden stuff

Today has been a truly warm sunny day, and I did a whole lot of things in our garden. First off, I raked and cleaned off the patch with the spring onions, and found some rucola growing underneath of all the crap! The I planted a bougainvillea in a pot that I placed in one of my twig bunnies. I also sowed some flower seeds to pots and the clay pot.

Our spinach is growing nicely, and at least one of the aubergines has sprouted. The biggest tulip has opened.

The neighbor's cherry tree is producing flowers, but isn't quite blooming yet.

 

Garden work

Finally we got around to do some garden work. We planted basil, zucchini, aubergines, dill, parsley, beans, rucola, salad and spinach seeds in boxes. A whole lot of herbs, tomato and chili plants etc. are on the shopping list, probably getting some plants instead of seeds again later on. And we were thinking of getting some flower seeds this year too.

 

 

Chives are already growing nicely by the sunny wall, but I cleaned the pot and added some new seeds there today. I also cleaned and turned the dirt in the bean pots, and planted those beans where they were growing last summer too. Otherwise the sunny wall is still all old pots waiting to be cleaned out and re-planted. And the bunnies are waiting for some of those flower seeds ;)

 

Spring onions will be ready for harvest here soon!

 

Garden in late July

I was away for a mere week. Yet, so much had happened in our garden in that short time! The medina chilis had started to turn red, as had the first cherry tomatoes. The green pepper and naga jolokia had started to grow their first fruits. Cucumber, aubergine and zucchini were hanging heavy with ripe fruits. Beans and sugar peas were ready to be harvested.

 

We harvested quite a lot of the stuff yesterday evening.

 

Beans we made into a side dish by boiling them and then adding oil and crushed garlic. Zucchinis we grilled, and the aubergine I peeled, sliced and deepfried. We also have more rucola than we can possibly eat, so we had some if that at the dinner table too. At least a small effort ;)

 

The sunny wall got hit by some hard winds, knocking the tomatoes and some other pots over. The plants are a bit leaning on each other now, but still they seem to be happy enough!

 

Harvesting

We went to visit my sister for some grilling and such and took with us some zucchinis, eggplants, zucchini flowers (stuffed with feta cheese), the first ripe tomato, basil and and salads - a little bit of harvesting of our garden :)

 

The sugar peas are full of ripe peas, while the beans have just started to produce flowers. Strawberries, every day there's a few new ripe delicious ones!

 

First aubergine

The first eggplant seemed to be ready to be picked already, so we did.

 

 

Going on in the garden

A lot of stuff going on. We hung the sugar peas on the wooden fence - hope their feelers find their way to the fence and grab on!

I hung a red christmas ball both on the big tomato and chili plants to keep the birda away, for they had been messing around in the plant boxes.

Oregano was transplanted in a bigger box and found its place between the basil boxes.

We got some bamboo poles and wire and built some supports for the beans that had started to fall over.

The eggplant and cherry tomatoes and other tomatoes are growing by the day. Cucumber plant has the first little starts of cucumbers now too!

That first zucchini flower is really big and growing right before our eyes. It more or less doubled its size only today! There's a whole lot of those zucchini flowers already, but that first one out is really showing the way for the others.

We also started today to build a drip irrigation system for our garden. Its somewhat complicated...

First eggplant and new herb pot

Our eggplant now has two flowers, the first one already producing fruit.

We got a new clay pot for herbs yesterday. There it sits, by our sunny wall, with some newly planted rocket and parsley seeds and transplanted oregano in it.

Our garden in early June

A heatwave has been caressing our garden these past days. Eggplant has its first flower, several tomatoes are growing, there's 14 chilis on the medina, and everything is growing right before our eyes.

Eggplant, tomatoes and the medina

Basil, oregano, spinach and dill

Zucchini, cucumber, peas and beans

Our bhut jolokia seems to be a bit tiny and is not growing taller all that fast, but it does have some flower buds already too!

Herb garden is doing good

Our (herb) garden has got several additions in the past days: a pepper mint, a bhut (naga) jolokia, a patch of different salads and spring onions and garlic.

Green on the trees

Today was so far the warmest day of this spring. I noticed small leaves starting to sprout in birches and other trees.

We planted some tomatoes, an eggplant and a medina chili plant. We also got some violets and marigilds for our patio.