The solistice is still four weeks away but some chilly weather and the lower sun have really slowed things down. The beautiful big eucalypts on the property next door shade most of the garden until after 11am. And unfortunately the beds in our sunniest corner are still not ready to grow veggies. Our tomato seedlings have given up hope that they will have  greenhouse any time soon – getting a trench dug has turned out to be slower than imagined! One good decision was switching to selling “baby lettuce” this week. We might even plan on that next spring and autumn – more plants would fit in a bed so it compensates for a cheaper price and they seem to have less slug damage. 

We’ve been weighing up how much variety we need to justify taking produce to the shop in Geeveston. (Luckily for us, this is just our own dilemma and shop owner is super supportive.) This week we only had four types of vegetables, reflecting our inexperience, Christie’s unavailability for planning and the legacy compost problems (which limited bed space and meant that we don’t have pumpkins, garlic or other storage crops). So we’ve decided to stop weekly drop-offs after next week. When we have a decent amount of lettuce, or when the wombok finally form heads, we’ll drop those off. But until then we’ll just focus on getting ready for next season – including that greenhouse! – and enjoy what’s coming out of the garden, like the frost-damaged snow peas and too-small beetroot and swedes and the one perfect red cabbage. 

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The combination of rain, still-warm soil, and some compost that wasn’t hot enough created plenty of weeds. After some suggestions from Christie, Alex decided to do some weeding. This included some emerging seedlings that he later remembered where where he had sowed radish seeds a week earlier! (Christie wondered aloud if it might be related to not putting labels in beds.) Then Christie made a triumphant return to the garden with a day of sowing seeds and propagating flowers and herbs and another of weeding. One day of weeding led to blisters, sore legs and stiff back! Evidently we both have some work to do ahead of next season!

Over the next fortnight we’ll follow up on the greenhouse, practice our weeding technique, plant garlic (at last!), sow some snow peas in the tunnel and try growing some more winter greens. Let’s see what it brings in reality!