October 2012 – The Wrap Up

October, for me, was about two things – planting and bolting.  I was either choosing which seedlings looked best for planting out:

or watching my winter and early Spring crops bolt.

The photos are a little difficult to make out but flowering in my garden at the moment are Coriander, Silver Beet, Bok Choi, Cavolo Nero, Spring Onions, Beetroot, Celery, Lettuce, Parsley and Watercress.  I plan to save seed from all of them but I’m hoping they hurry up as I would appreciate their space for other things.

More postively I also have some summer crops flowering.  My early sown Tiny Tim tomatoes:

potatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, pretty much all of the  citrus and my broad beans are all currently blooming.

For all the flowering excitement October was really all about planting out.

As well as the tomatoes I also planted out sweet potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, beans, eggplants, golden nugget pumpkin, ginger & turmeric.

This is what the tomatoes looked like on planting.  They are much bigger now though.

and here is the zucchini;

By the end of the month it had begun to set fruit.  On the subject of fruit I am still happily watching my blueberries slowly swell.

Almost as exciting is the reappearance of the leaves of my Scotch Bonnet chilli (this chilli is a Cardinel/Bishop Cap style chilli known as Scotch Bonnet in Australia).

I tried to overwinter 4 chilli varieties; these, a birdseye, a cayenne and a long cayenne.  This was the second winter for the Scotch Bonnet and the cayennes, and the 3rd winter for the birdseye but thus far only the Scotch Bonnets have started growing again (and I’m pretty sure that the others aren’t going to).  I’m not sure whether to attribute this to last winter being a little colder than the previous one or birdseye and cayenne being a fairly short lived chilli varieties.  Anyone know?

Finally I had a request from a reader to include more shots so they could get a feel for my garden.  I found it harder than I thought – too much junk, and kids toys lying around.  So I thought I show it bit by bit.  Here is my potato bed which runs down one of the side fences.  It is overshadowed by my neighbours large Eucalypts but I’m hoping there will be enough light for potatoes.  The silverbeet (you can see it bolting in the shot) I grew here during Autumn & Winter didn’t seem to mind too much.