Really happy about my vegetable patch

I took these photos in December. Everything carried on growing really well and my wildflowers started to open which made me very happy :)

There was only one problem with white powdery mildew on my sprouting broccoli which I fixed quickly:

Powdery mildew fix

Spray the affected pants with a mixture of 1 litre of water and 1 cup of milk.

I sprayed the broccoli leaves on top and underneath in the evening and by the next day there was no sign of the mildew and it hasn't come back on those plants!

Wonderful and easy! The milky solution changes the pH of the leaf surface making it unfriendly to mildew...plus it is a good organic solution to the problem. I wish that I could find an easy fix for tomato leaf blight, apart from picking the affected leaves off.

The rainbow chard continues to grow quickly which is so good because I am able to harvest the leaves when they are small, tender and full of flavour. Much nicer than old tough leaves.

I love the lemon yellow and dark blue combination of the French marigolds and lobelia. I bought the seedlings from a local garden centre and all the French marigolds were supposed to be this shade of yellow. However they had mislabelled a punnet of 12 plants and when the flowers opened I was surprised that they turned out to be all mixed shades of orange and rust and burgundy.

When I next went back to the garden centre I mentioned this and they had a look at the punnets they still had. By this time the flowers were open and definately not matching the photo on the label. So I was given another punnet of 12 yellow plants for free!

Then I treated myself and bought a sage plant which I planted near the mizuna.

This evening I need to spray my rainbow chard and silverbeet with milk and water because they have now got powdery mildew. I didn't think that they were susceptible to it, but the weather is so hot an humid at the moment.

I am also going to put some more coffee grounds around the borders of the vegetable patches because I found a snail when I was weeding today. Mind you, that is the first snail that I have found since I started the vege garden in October and there's been no sign of any slugs!

Thanks for stopping by. See you soon.

Hugs,

Rose x

Garden Diary

Weeded a patch of soil near the tomatoes. Dug it over with a trowel. Added a bucket of potting mix and worked it in.

Scattered some "Fancy Leaf Mix" lettuce (McGregor's Seeds) over the prepared area and covered the seeds with 5 mm of potting mix.

Then Ginger walked across my seed bed...Arrrrrrrrgh!...he had snuck into the vege patch and has very big paws!