A bumper crop of radishes

Dad came in this afternoon with a huge bunch of radishes that he picked from our veggie garden. This harvest is only a tenth of what is growing!

This type of radish is called German Giant. They are very big, crunchy and juicy. Lovely eaten with lots of butter.

It looks like we will be eating radishes for a long time, as well as having plenty to give away to friends and family.

The veggie garden is doing really well. We usually start planting it during the last week of October, after all the frosts have finished. But it was such a mild Spring that we decided to start the veggie patch a month early. We have been lucky with plenty of showers of rain followed by days of blue skies and sunshine. Just what the plants need.

This is what the veggie garden looks like today.

The cavalo nero is looking good. It is the first time that we have grown it and I have never cooked it before. I will have to go online and look for some recipes. There is plenty of time to search, as the cavalo nero won't be ready to harvest until after the first frost next year to sweeten it up!

The kohlrabi stems have just started to fatten up. Hopefully the rains will continue for a long time to save me from needing to water them.

To the right of the kohlrabi is silverbeet and to the left are lettuces and tomato plants :)

Lots of smiles.

Hugs.

Rose x

Preparing the wildflower garden

Finally we managed to find another contractor, who could come quickly, to rotavate the land in preparation for my next wildflower bed. The original contractor ended up being very busy with big jobs and was finding it hard to fit our small 150 metres squared area into his schedule.

The area was rotavated on Monday, the soil was just the right wetness and has turned out well.

Dad has been helping me by raking over the soil to level it. He also worked on tidying up the edges and removing large clumps of grass. I wasn't able to do it myself as I am not very fit at the moment.

Tomorrow dad will be using our small rotavator to turn over and bury the grass clumps and to loosen where the tractor wheels had compacted the soil.

In the meantime I have been deciding on how to sow the wildflower seeds. I think I will mix all of the seed together, weigh it and then divide it into 10 lots. Then mix each lot of seed individually with 2 litres of gardeners sand. This will help to evenly distribute the seed. The idea is to sow 1 gram of seed per square metre.

I plan to sow half the seed along each long length of the wildflower bed as I won't be able to sow it from one side easily. Then I will need to very lightly rake the seeds over with soil.

I am hoping that the weather will remain good until I have sown all of the seed. Then I hope we will get a few weeks of rain. It is a pity that we can't order the sort of weather we need. All I can do is cross my fingers :)

See you again soon with more news. Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs.

Rose x