Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Summer Garden


Listada di Gandia eggplant flower. Isn't it beautiful? Hopefully it will soon look like this.


Dwarf red fig tomatoes. This cherry tomato vine is my most productive by far. It started cropping well before the romas, at the same time as the Grosse Lisse. But while I've had one (not very grosse) lisse I've harvested about twelve dwarf red figs. They grow in little bunches of up to six at a go. We had eight little tomatoes to eat on Christmas Day.

I am a complete convert to heirloom seeds. The Listada di Gandia and Dwarf Red Fig are heirlooms, as is the chocolate capsicum I didn't take photos of. When it ripens it's brown on the outside and red within. Beautiful. I was also given some heirloom seeds for Christmas - a selection of things in a pillbox from my mother's friend; and a packet of Minnesota Midget rockmelon seeds from my Stitch'n'Bitch secret santa. I cannot wait until it's time to plant a winter garden. Carrots, beets, garlic, broccoli - whee!


On the other hand, the world's crappiest giant sunflowers. Two to three metres is a big, fat lie. Any ideas why I have managed to grow dwarf sunflowers? Do they need really rich soil or something? One of the pumpkin vines damped off and died, meaning I'll have to be really careful to hand pollinate the flowers. There's been a run of bachelor boy-flowers, and a couple of little lady-flowers that have wilted off, but one big fat lady-flower looks promising. Cue my yelling across the garden "Oo! She has big stripy ovaries, so she must be easy to impregnante!"

3 comments:

Michelle said...

you are doing a heck of alot better than I'm doing with my garden. of course my garden is in the back yard of a house that regularly hits 40+C. Most of the plants are in pots so I can control the scorching a bit. My fig tomato plant is doing well, we had our first red one today. And strangely enough we bought a dwarf eggplant from the market on Sunday. I love the flower! At least if we can get it to flower it will be worth it. Anyway, while my garden scorches, I can watch your garden flourish.
Michelle

Bibnbub said...

Our plants aren’t doing too well, and the ones down the drive way get double the water of the others. I’ve never seen our garden as scorched as it is this year.

inkberryblue said...

Your vegetable garden plants look lush. After reading one of your earlier posts I got all inspired and bought some heirloom tomato seeds from Diggers. I'm looking forward to planting them sometime soon ~ maybe later on this month, when the temperature is something less than sizzling.