I cut down a heap of basil to make room in my brassica bed. I left it to dry to put on the compost. And then it rained. It rained for 4 days. When I went to move it to the compost pile it looked like this:
The seeds had swollen and look like frogs eggs.
It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen, bunches of these egg like pods on the dried flower stems.
Did any of y’all know this happened? How awesome is it to discover weird random unexpected things in your garden.
The garden is going well, however due to it starting to get cold, everything is slowing down, watering is only needed every few days so there isn’t much to do around the garden. One of the things I want to do is clear out some of my basil. There is so much and its now taking up space in two separate vege beds. One is at the end of my brassica beds, and it seems I might only get one broccoli plant, so I want to clear that and try and get at least two more plants.
This is the amount of basil I harvested with the plans of making pesto. We filled that steel bowl with only the best leaves, discarding any older or slightly damaged leaves. We still had a few stalks that were unharvested so the pile and stems went on to the compost. The pesto was excellent. We had it on pasta less than 30 minutes from it being made, and had more on potatoes in a bento the following day. The rest has been jarred or frozen.
This was my basil AFTER that harvest. Super unsure what to do with the rest apart from harvest or appeal to any friends who want bunches or just cut it and put it onto the compost pile.
This is the other bed of basil. It didn’t have any competition so it has gone nuts. And the amount of bees that visit it are fantastic. The dogs brush past them, I brush past them, they just move about the flowers collect the pollen. Very happy to have bee’s know where this place is and I will try my best to keep up enough flowers to keep them returning. But obviously I am not running out of basil any time soon.
This is an update on my green manure. So so lush. The pea tendrils are starting to form weaves around the other plants. Fun to watch.
A couple of kale seedlings. I will move the secondary one that came out of no where when I have cleared the basil.
Half of my lettuce bed. Baby cos in various stages of growth.
The other end of the lettuce bed. Some cos, Australian yellow leaf and spinach.
This is the side of my house.It is right next to the carport, with a path to the back yard and gate. It was just a massive pile of rubbish. But when we returned from our trip over seas my dad had cleared it off, put up some railing and repositioned our spider plants to allow them to hang down. As this rarely gets any direct sunlight it is the perfect position for them.
This little beautiful fern was found as a small guy sprouting just under the edge of our back deck. So I carefully dug him up, and put him under the spider plants. He is three times larger than when he was first moved. I think he likes it here.
At the front of the house, outside the fences on the edge of the driveway we have an area of grass. So I planted a lime verbena (I wanted lemon, I ordered lemon but ended up with lime in my delivery). It gets just enough sun, and it will grow well. It is surrounded by some newspaper and mulch to kill the grass underneath to make a garden bed I can plant some flowers in.
I love this night scented jasmine. I love the story of it. The hubs’ father had a really large beautiful jasmine in his garden at the house Mark grew up in. We took a cutting and propogated it and grew it in our old house. When we were moving we took a cutting of that plant and did the same. Propogated and grew it and now it is ready to flower. The smell and beauty of this shrub. It reminds him of his childhood so I think we will always take a cutting of this plant and move it around with us. I just love that technically it is the same plant he grew up with growing in our second house.
Yep, it seems I have a bottle recycling problem.
It took only a day for ants to find the worm farm and try to get settled. So I dug them out and put the legs on the farm and have not had an issue with ants since. The worms are having a great time and have had their first bath on the weekend. I love watching them hide when I put scraps into the top.
Next are sunflower seeds that I harvested from my two largest sunflowers. I still get awed by the concept of one tiny seed making a large sunflower head, that then produces hundreds of seeds. I could plant a field of sunflowers from just the first sunflower.
And lastly an update on neo and his companions. He is doing so well. We have lots of leave shoots and already some flower heads. When I opened the greenhouse to take this picture, it was so warm and humid that the camera lens fogged up.
So lots of things happening, but slowly, and not much to do daily, but lots of things to watch.
When we got back from the states I was surprised and thrilled at how all my basil had turned out. If you recall back in http://www.rexmanningday.com/2012/02/26/basil-basil-basil/ I had many seedlings and had planted them in a few different places. Also due to the size and based on the fact I planted a ‘mixed’ seedling set, I was not too sure just what type of basil I had.
This is what they look like now. And we are using them as much as we can, having pasta and other such things at least 3 times a night. I love having the freedom to pick bunches of the herb and use it liberally. By the fistful, full sun ripened fat leaves.
This is the basil I had in the container. I got lucky and it has nearly every type of basil. Red, Sweet, Cinnamon, Greek. When I go to open the gate, my dogs are usually with me, and their tails wagging sends wafts of basil scent into the air, its intoxicating. Also this planter is attracting many bee’s so it is also serving a very important role in the garden.
This is my main harvesting crop/bed. I plan to grow some broccoli and kale in the rest of the bed over winter. But for now while they are still seedlings this basil crop is being harvested by the stems.
Same bed from another angle. The majority of this bed is sweet basil and lemon basil. The lemon basil smells amazing and attracts a lot of bees. The sweet basil I harvest the flowering stems to encourage more growth from them. There are a few lonely purple and cinnamon basil plants in this mix.
This bed is a rockmelon bed currently, that I planted some basil in to get a large crop. Its working in two ways. 1. I am able to harvest the basil in clumps and 2. the horrid grasshoppers and other leaf eating bugs are tending to prefer this basil patch, which as I put it in as a temporary spot, means they aren’t hitting my other herbs or plants as much as they could be. Also more bee attraction.
I have some other projects going along. Obviously it isnt all about basil. There will be more detailed posts when they come to fruition, right now I am just photographing and documenting the processes, so here are some teaser images.
Here is hogan supervising and helping a bed being planted out.
Jack-Jack was more interested in his bone. A bone that he then planted into my beans. Unfortunately for him, I found it, and it did not sprout into more bones. He got locked out of the front yard for that bit of ‘help’.
The early garlic in early sprouting.
I have these hidden in the back of a cupboard in the dark sprouting away.
I wish I could take credit for this image of a ladybug on my sunflowers, but it was the hubs who takes the prize for best picture out of my garden yet.
These bronze sunflowers are providing me with joy, and the garden with bees.
This is our biggest of the developing rockmelon. I have my fingers crossed it will grow to maturity, but I already have mould setting in on the leaves, and I did plant it at the very butt end of summer so it might just not happen. But I am keeping up with the watering and like I said I am optimistic.
Plans for the planting in Autumn. I am about to pull out my tomatoes, and the two end beds are now planted completely. I plan on planting my garlic when March hits officially and having a whole bed of green manure. I don’t know how much I will get done before I go away in the middle of March, but maybe a bit.