Growing in the Garden This Week

I have just been out in the garden, wandering around. I must admit to spending an awful lot of time just wandering the garden. I find it therapeutic to just amble, gaze at this plant or that, contemplate what needs to be done, and enjoy watching the fruits of my labour grow (literally!).

Here are a few of the things I've enjoyed looking at over the past week:

The raspberry canes are fruiting well, particularly for their first season! I have never been partial to bought raspberries, but have discovered that there is a marked difference in flavour between the pale pink, plastic clad berries you buy at a supermarket, and these dark, juicy ones straight off the canes. Yum!

Next year we hope to have even more, with some Christmas fruiting canes sending out their fruit-bearing runners this summer in preparation for fruiting next year.

We have been chuffed to find a self-sown watermelon in the garden. Doesn't it look scrummy?! Now the family is debating whether it is ready to eat yet.

We moved a few self-sown pumpkins so they could ramble out over the lawn: here's one doing nicely. I think there might be at least 5 big grey pumpkins developing.

On a less exciting note, yet another
lettuce has gone to seed. Typical for this time of year in Tauranga! At least we might have got some of this one first.

Finally, here are seedlings waiting to be planted once it gets a little cooler this evening. These are the first of our winter crops to go in: pak choy, broccoli, cabbage and silverbeet mostly. It will be interesting to see just how well they cope going in this early in a Tauranga summer. You can see the grape vine enshrouded in its cloth bird-protection in behind the garden, and the fresh mushroom compost we put on every available garden space last night.

Thanks for coming by. What are you growing in your garden this week?