My Gardening Report Card: September 18 2018

I missed @simplymike's Steemit Community Garden Journal Challenge 5 (September) but I wanted to post some pictures of my garden. This was the first year of my new vegetable garden at the back of the house. Originally I kept this as a natural habitat, but I enjoy spending time at the back and it catches the sun, so early this year I had the retaining walls and steps put in.

The heroes of the year have been the tomatoes. I grew four plants, each a different variety, and they have been laden with fruit. In previous years, I have maybe had five tomatoes from pot-grown plants - hardly worth the months of cosseting! We have had a superb summer and we added two lots of home-grown compost to these beauties. The last crops are ripening now and there will be very few green ones left for chutney.

The other side of the steps we are growing Purple Sprouting Broccoli. It's been constantly attacked by slugs, but it's kept growing anyway. I'm hoping we will have some tasty spears in Spring next year.

Just behind the broccoli on the left is the last of the courgette plant, with two tiny courgettes just growing. My neighbour gave me this plant and it's produced just the right amount of courgettes each week for my family. I would say this was the second most productive crop we grew over the summer. Next year, I'll give it just a little more room to trail.

To the right of the broccoli is our first-year rhubarb. This needs a bit of loving and this may not be the best spot for it, although it has thrown up three or four new stalks.

On the top bed on the right are some butternut squash plants. We didn't plant these, they just grew when we put some compost down along with a hundred tiny tomato plantlets. We kept two squash just to see how they do. This area had been covered by invading bamboo from next door and took about three days to clear (see picture below).

Over on the left at the top are some cardoon plants. These are strange creatures. They look a bit like celery and I understand it is the stems you eat, but we've not tried them yet. At the top of the picture you can just see a hawthorn branch with berries.

Here's our surviving aubergine plant. It's very pretty and you can just see the pretty mauve flowers. There are some fruits hidden under the leaves, we might get a crop before the frosts.

Here's the scary bamboo before we cleared it. Some new shoots are already showing. It's going to be an ongoing job, I reckon.

Last but not least, certainly in size, is my cauliflower plant, a cut and come again variety that grows eight to ten tennis ball size heads. I'm still waiting to see any sign of fruiting. It seems they take about nine months from planting to harvesting.

We also had a great crop of corn, perhaps twenty-five to thirty ears, but they have finished now. I was impressed with them, as were all my neighbours. Not shown are our chilli and asparagus plants, they're in pots by a sunny wall, and our herb garden, which has done quite nicely. The biggest fail was the beans, they just didn't work at all. Maybe due to total neglect. Next year, I'd love to try some potatoes.

Moving Around Office, Walking