Wrap Up – July 2012

July for me is as much about preparing for summer as it is about what is currently growing in the garden.  During July I got my summer seed sowing underway.  As well as my year round crops I sowed tomatoes, eggplant, capsicums, chillies, cucumber, zucchini, beans, pumpkins and sunflowers.  All of these I sowed inside moving them outside into a cold frame as they germinate.

Some of these I am sowing really early just to test the boundaries a little.   My tomatoes have pretty much all germinated (or at least a couple of each variety have).  My beans are up (I only sowed one variety – Majestic Butter which was my earliest cropper last year).  A few eggplants have appeared, so have a few chillies and a single cucumber.  The others are yet to appear.  This has been a fairly cool winter for us so if they’ve germinated this year then I think its fairly safe to assume they would germinate at this time of the year most years.

It isn’t all about summer crops though.  The brassicas continue on their merry way.  I posted about my strange cauliflowers in my Harvest Monday post but they aren’t all bad some are looking pretty promising (if a little small):

Then there’s the Romanesco which reminds me of the sort of costume Madonna might favour for her stage shows:

The Cavolo Nero continues to do well:

and my potted spuds are looking promising:

The lettuces are perfectly happy to produce lots of leaves in what is our coldest month:

The alliums are going along well.   The shallots are dividing:

The garlic stems are looking fat and fairly happy – I do worry that it might have been a little wet for them though.

What it hasn’t been too wet for is the watercress which appears in the garden every year after self seeding.  This years is growing slower than normal (presumably because of the cold) but still looks pretty happy.

Most exciting though are these lovely little pink flowers:

I hope the blueberry fruit follow.

Whilst I don’t have many flowers in the back garden at the moment (my native front garden is alive with colour) the lavender is happily producing blooms.

But for all that I’ll finish with a final image more reminiscent of summer than winter:

Does anyone know how long Long Cayenne chilli plants can live for?  This is this plants second winter and I don’t know whether to try and keep it going or consign it to the compost – its looking a little worse for wear compared with my birds eye and scotch bonnet plants which last a few years at least.