Autumn yard

Different plants react to the cooling of the weather so differently. Our tomatoes died long ago, and the pepper plants have wilted recetly. The chilis are still going strong, though, and the bell peppers have started to change color, despite being soft and wrinkled, probably due to the frost.

 

Basil has wilted (ok, we have neglected the watering too, and it has been a rather dry autumn), but oregano is doing good. Probably finally this weekend we'll get around to drying it. Parsley has gone into a new growth spurt, alongside with the chives. Thyme and rosemary are doing good too; actually, the rosemary never looked all summer long as good as it does now! Red salad has grown into 40-50 cm tall flowering salad towers.

 

The neighbors' cherry tree has become quite beautiful, with green, yellow and red leaves, all at the same time.

 

Things in our garden

Only today did I notice the *something* is in full bloom in our garden, October as it already is!

 

Our chilis are still going strong, even though the leaves have all but died in the firsy hard freezes last week.

 

Last of our crop

The green peppers are still growing, despite the cooled nights. The Medina is actually putting out more flowers even! The purplish bhut jolokias are slowly turning orange; the first small one is already there.

Also, our bonsai that almost died last winter has started growing new thick leaves in this late summer, early autumn, after spending the whole summer out in the sun.

 

Garden in late August

Even though most days still are quite warm - after that autumn spell a week ago - the nights have turned quite cold. Cold enought to put the tomatoes into a non-productive safe-mode and most of the other plants into slower motion as well. There were still three cucumbers, fully grown, that I picked today, as well as a zucchini in the zucchini plant, which actually has still put out a couple new flowers!

But the tomatoes are not growing anymore, and not ripening anymore. So I picked the rest of the tomatoes to ripen in our house. Hopefully they do!

 

The bhut jolokia seems unweilding to the cool nights, is making new flowers and growing its purple chilis rapidly! Soon we can make some fiercely hot purple jolokia chili ;)

 

We pulled the rest of our red onions out of the ground; they didn't do quite as well as we had hoped, but definately we can use at least some of them, too.

 

We also trimmed the basil again, making another 1 liter batch of pesto out of it. There's still plenty left to grow, we'll see how well it does with the autumn coming on here. Oregano still awaits picking and drying.

 

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!

 

Garden update

Both green pepper and the bhut jolokia have been growing a lot lately. Jolokia has a whole lot of flowers, green pepper is getting ready to bloom too. Cucumber plants have grown very tall, our bamboo poles aren't even tall enough for them anymore! And little cucumbers are growing on both plants.

Salad, rucola and spring onions continue to prosper on the hilltop, despite the continuous invasion of red clover (which I weeded out again today, after taking the picture). Rucola in the pot has gone wild, and parsley is growing nicely.

Only sad ones on our sunny wall are those chives, for some reason or other.

 

Zucchinis are growing by the day, soon we'll be having our first grilled ones! And the first tomato is starting to turn red.

It also seems that our funny scarecrow is actully keeping the birds away, for now for the first time I have seen the strawberries stay intact while ripening.

 

 

More blooming in the garden

Yesterday we noticed the bhut (naga) jolokia had finally opened its first flowers! Maybe we'll get some real hot chili, too, after all! Sugar peas are blooming too, as are the cucumbers. The zucchinis have a couple peculiar siamese twin fruits.

 

 

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 chilis of our Medina

About a week ago we picked our first Medinas for some Indian food we cooked.

 

 

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!

Update on our garden

Onions are growing, basil seeds have sprouted, as have the first zuccinis. Medina chili is already producing its first chili pepper, and the tomato has its first flowers. Strawberries are growing at the edge of the salad, spring onion and garlic bed (where so far only garlics have their heads out of the ground).

Onions, tomato and chili blossoms, strawberries

The newest addition to our little garden is a green pepper plant.

Green pepper

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.