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Monday 6 July 2009

Update garden, 6 July 2009

I return back from a two-week vacations.
There was no need for watering. All the food garden was a jungle. The weather was quite cool and wet.
The jungle is crazy growing tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchini and beans. Maybe because I don't prune my tomatoes, and I don't stake any plant. I just let everything growing wildy and mixed. Talk about excessive companion planting!
So, I learnt a few valuable lessons: plan and organize your garden!
give enough space to each plant to avoid becoming a jungle!

Next year, I will make of companion planting a wise and careful choice, such as not mixing a big plant such a tomato or zucchini with small ones like swiss chard or tiger nuts, or mixing brocculi withbeets. The vines are particularly invasive!

About pruning: remember last year, I had only one tomato plant, I didn't prune it, and I got in the end more than 100 tomatoes, in only one plant! So, I keep not pruning; let them grow without limits.

There are now dozens of green tomatoes.
We harvested zucchini (unfortunely some were rot, due to the cold weather), swiss chard, lettuce, one big cucumber, beautiful kohl-rabi, and plenty of zucchini and nasturtium flowers for our salads. We have also dozens of nice brocculi!

The fact that the garden has only 3-4 hours of daily sunlight seems not to be a problem. Yes, I have more greens than fruits, and ripening is slower, but the crops still are fine.

Now, we got four days of warm, humid, thunder weather; today it rained heavily for five hours. Then, as it was very humid evening, we went slug hunting, and imagine... we catch 127 slugs! Half were around the compost bins! Usually, I am not a killer (!!), but I have had enough. I just cut them in half. I think tomorrow the birds are going to have a dinner party!!

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