Growing Organic: Spring Harvests

It is invariably humbling to grow organic. Particularly if you can't even identify what vegetables you are growing in your garden; even more so if you have crowed about how large and bountiful said vegetable is on your last blog post. I did rather wonder why our giant cabbage had such luscious leaves and no heart - well, it turned out to be a cauliflower, actually:

Bethany and the giant cabbage, sorry cauliflower

At least it was a rather large cauliflower that could be harvested:

Harvest time. The leaves are providing fodder for our rabbit & guinea-pig

Our large cauliflower heart greatly impressed our second son:

Growing your own makes the kids likelier to eat it. Likelier. The corrrelation is, unfortunately, imperfect.

Our newly created vegetable bed is now not so new, and providing wonderful fodder for the snails, slugs, rabbit, guinea-pig and sometimes even ourselves:

In just one month the seedlings have taken over the bed and a new bed has been created behind it for the succession planting we adopt 

We have harvested a number of plump, purple turnips, which we add to our potatoes when making mash, at least it gets another root vegetable into the kids' tummies, though it is important to get the balance right - too many and it ends up bitter. When that happened, we just made more gravy and slathered it on and it kindof worked. Kindof.

One times large turnip. My son was eating a carrot from our garden hence the munchkin cheeks

The pok choi has finished bolting, and we have great hopes for its seeds volunteering themselves all over the garden.

Waiting for the seed pods to disperse their largesse all over the fertile garden

In fact, more and more we love our volunteers in the garden, such as these strawberry plants, which insist on propogating again and again all over the garden. They nestle next to the chilli bushes and seem quite happy to produce in that relatively dappled shade, though we note those growing in more shade becoming large and luxurious but producing no flowers, so will move them closer to the sun.

At least the monkeys aren't able to harvest these strawberries

Such are our early Spring harvests. We have yet to plant our seed potatoes, yes, we know we are late but I forgot to pick up the packet from mum so have to make a note to do it this weekend. The nasturtiums are clambering over all and sundry, pretty much taking over the place, even the beautiful iceberg variegated variety, and the seedlings are popping up as the Spring rains settle in. It's a very busy little season we are having, and thanks to my husband's hard work, the terraced beds of terracotta brick are substantial and between that and our continuous production of compost which continues to invigorate the soil and the fact that our predator population is moving right on in, from the darling little Natal bush snake with its green and black body to fat basking lizards, tiny praying mantises and the like, we figure we are getting a garden going - and all in the space of just one year now. My son turns 9 in two weeks and it was for his 8th birthday we had the vegetable garden planting party. What an exhilarating year and what hard work it has been. But well worth it all.

Our friend Cecily visited with Mark, to view our grassland this last weekend and brought with her three Green Goddesses, these amazingly beautiful arum lilies, which, a week later, are still going strong, thank you Cecily

A flower that is almost surreal in its size and colouring