March 2017

My blogs have become rather cumbersome over the years, so for convenience I have restored an old unused blog to manage my data.   This blog "Sustainable Organic Gardening" will be used as a portal to simplify the presentation of my story.  Through this portal, you will still be able to access all my blogs and blogpages.   I will deliver a monthly post to this new blog portal, and will continue to post regularly to Facebook, but I will not maintain any of my other blog posts.  I will however keep all my blogpages up to date to the best of my ability.

February 2017.

The corn is as high as an elephants eye, and the other plants are in hot pursuit.  These photos were taken in the evening today when the light didn't dominate.

The Sweet Basil is looking good, but the Tomatoes are almost finished, and I have new plants to replace them all.

The Californian Wonder are growing well and are just starting to ripen.

The peaches are all in bottles, apart from the ones I managed to salvage at their peek for Lil and I to eat fresh.  The tree has been pruned back to 50% of current years growth, and I can now put it on the back burner until mid winter.

My olives on the other hand are approaching harvest, and I am wondering how many to to take green and how many to leave until ripe.

The runner beans are using a lot of water, and I will be happy when the cooler weather slows the process a little.

Its the first time I've grown Crystal Apple Cucumbers, and they are growing well.

This sorry looking cabbage has been attacked by cabbage white butterfly and then by greenfly.  I caught the cabbage white early with Dipel, but was a bit slow cleaning up the greenfly.  They have now been sprayed with Eco oil and Neem oil, and the cabbage will recover.

A new variety for me Golden Nugget Pumpkin has luxuriant foliage for only a small crop of pumpkins (so far) I will need to be patient to see how they develop.

My beans are now in production and we are starting to harvest a few for dinner, but it may be a week or so before we start to store them.

Not too impressive at this time of year, but the propagators are still bringing seedlings along even in late summer.

January 2017 (2)

The climbing beans in this photo were planted in stages.  The ones at the back were put into the ground about a month before the others so they could established themselves before being shaded from the sun.   This strategy also extends the harvest by a few weeks.

This Ecobed has a water tank capacity of about 500 litres, and when the plants are fully mature, transpiration and growth will use about 100 litres a day.  Fortunately none of my other 3 beds are growing plants as thirsty as this or I could exhaust my supply of rainwater.