Spring has arrived in my veggie patch

My vegetable patch is looking colourful with self-seeded cineraria coming into flower just now. The cineraria are so pretty that I am going to leave them growing in-amongst the silverbeet (Swiss chard). They will attract beneficial insects, which is always a good thing. 

I also discovered that some evening primroses have seeded themselves in this spot too, together with echiums. I can't wait until they are all flowering.

The edible sage has started to flower too. I am going to leave the flowers for the bees, then trim them down once the flowers have faded. Hopefully the sage will grow back, I think it is a perennial? This is the first time that my sage has survived through the Winter.

The oregano has put on a strong growth spurt after the flower stems were trimmed down to the ground a month ago.

All of the parsley has bolted in the warmer weather. However it can still be used as a cooking ingredient at this stage. I am going to leave it to flower and set seed, so we will have plenty more parsley later in the year. 

In this photo you can see the Winter vegetables which are now ready to harvest (swedes, red cabbages, broccoli and cavolo nero kale). 

The potatoes, planted a few weeks ago, now have leaves on and should be ready to harvest at Christmas. I love new potatoes 😊

I am hoping that the danger of frosts has passed by now. Although it is still possible for frosts to happen at this time of year, we had an exceptionally mild winter, so fingers crossed. We have cloches, made from large plastic water bottles, ready to use just in case.

Dad planted this garlic in May and it is looking really healthy. It should be ready to harvest 6 months from planting, as long as nothing goes wrong. There is no sign of the dreaded rust yet, touch wood. We are hoping that, having planted the garlic earlier this year, it will have a good chance of forming bulbs before the rust arrives.

Some of the vegetable seedlings are coming up well in the cloche on the deck. The courgettes are ready to be planted out and the tomatoes, capsicums, pumpkin and purple sprouting broccoli seedlings are looking good.

We sowed the Blue Lake runner beans and Goliath snow peas directly into the veggie patch where the soil has been rejuvenated with homemade compost.

The soil preparation for the rest of the new seedlings and seeds is almost complete, with the help of my cat Otto of course!  Otto loves to inspect anything new that is happening, especially in the veggie patch.

Silverbeet grows all through the year here in Auckland and I pick fresh leaves for dinner whenever it is needed. 

These plants self-seeded themselves here and now that the weather has warmed up, they are bolting. I will leave them to set seed again and let them grow wherever they want. 

The swedes are ready to dig up now. It is a new vegetable crop for us and we quite like it. We had one as a side-dish for dinner yesterday, boiled for 20 minutes in salted water, then drained and mashed with cream, butter and a large pinch of nutmeg. It was surprisingly tasty!

On the topic of food, I am now off to plan the meal menus for the week and the grocery list.

I hope that you are having a great week.

See you again soon.

Hugs Rose x