Spring

It’s after midnight so winter is officially over, according to the seasons here in Australia. Hurray, bring on the spring. Alas, the warm weather has departed, leaving cool temperatures and rain in its wake. I can live with the rain but was really hoping to get a bit more warmth. So I’m now contemplating what gardening disasters to begin this month.

I harvested my pathetic crop of beets yesterday (Sunday). I only put in four plants and none produced more than two beets. The traditional purple plant had the best showing with two reasonably sized beets. The other three had very small beets. Once I’d cut away roots and leaves, there was little of the vegetable left. I boiled them all together and ate them with dinner. The Scientist ate a bit of it too, but only because it came from our garden as he’s not particularly fond of beets (or beetroot as it’s called here). The regular beets came out tasting well enough but the others tasted a bit off. I know they would have a different flavor but they seemed rather bitter. One of the beets was so small it wasn’t worth cooking so I ate it raw. Big mistake! I’m not sure why, but it seemed to cause a terrible irritation in my throat which lasted for a couple hours.

I still have a lovely red mustard plant which hasn’t been harvested in a while. I think the snails are enjoying their feast and I need to get some iron tablets to keep them away. It’s still growing well so I’m thinking of adding some similar plants in the same garden bed this week. My brussel sprout plant got eaten by insects and all that was left was the stem. My baby broccoli didn’t fare much better but I did manage to get one tiny “tree” of it harvested. I think once the insects had finished off the brussel sprout, they moved on to the broccoli. I guess they weren’t too choosy at that point.

My jalapeño plant seems to have died in the last couple of weeks so I have removed that one and will plant either seeds or a seedling soon. The other chilli plant is still alive and will hopefully be showing some new growth soon. Meanwhile, the cherry tomato plant at our back fence has started growing again. I’m quite pleased to see this since I’d taken almost no care of it during the winter. I’m going to put in a few more plants in the same area this year since they did so well last year. Last of all, my strawberry plants have new fruit coming up and so far it tastes pretty good. I will have to keep the snails out of that pot if I expect to get much out of them this year.

At some time this week I want to finally stop in at the Bunnings that opened in June a short distance from us. They have a good selection of plants there and I’d like to get a few seedlings for the garden. I’m forever hopeful of growing something right. I think I’m making progress but haven’t had a really successful crop of anything yet, unless I count the cherry tomatoes. Even those didn’t work out the way I had hoped. So far, I’m thinking about tomatoes and green peppers plus some lettuce and other greens. I also hope to find one variety of tomato I had put into a big pot last year. It came out tasting wonderful but didn’t end up providing much fruit at all. I might try it in the ground this time if I’m brave. I’m sure when the time comes, I will bring home more plants than I can manage. But hopefully this gardening thing will finally get a bit easier if I keep practicing.