What's growing?

Raspberries starting. Lots of spuds, peas, courgettes, salad leaves, callaloo, spinach. Few toms, flowers on the climbing (what are those say my French neighbours) French beans, cucumbers, baby beetroot looking good as are carrots. Lots of apples and pears coming, but fewer plums. Twenty-seven raised beds planted and doing well.

It is mid winter here in Queensland, Australia. Currently harvesting cherry tomatoes and silverbeet (swiss chard: a spinach substitute). We also have green paw paw: it can be used as a vegetable while still green, then a fruit when it turns orange.

I'm growing spuds, cabbages including chinese types, and broccoli. My cauli seeds never germinated. The mulberries are just starting - all still red.

Soon I'll be able to plant cucumber and lettuce. Well I could plant lettuce now, but I'm waiting for the seeds to be ready to collect from a couple of plants that I let go to seed. I've just planted a load of marigold seeds, from the last of the flowers.

I've also done a bit of guerrilla gardening. Not having enough room in my garden, I just cleared a bit of space in a derelict garden nearby, and planted some spare bean seeds. I trespass there daily anyway, collecting weeds for my chickens. No-one has lived there for 18 months.

My very favourite harvest is mango, but that won't be till December. I just love the flavour. You can germinate a new tree from the stone of a fruit - it grows true. I've go one about a foot high, which will also be included in my guerrilla activities!!!

Aka check out this page for Oca: downtheplot.com/oca.php. I'm really quite interested so please let me know how you get on.
I'm currently making jam most days; the strawberry's are finally coming to an end, but raspberries, gooseberries, red/blackcurrants are plentiful with blueberries and tayberries looking like they'll be good croppers. I picked the first globe artichokes this week (had the hearts for lunch yesterday with mixed leaf salad and poached egg - num, num), mange tout still plentiful, but must end soon. Kale, turnips, cabbages and beetroot are all giving really good crops this year and french beans, squash and courgettes are all at the flowering stage. Late planting of spinach has produced some sturdy seedlings and I think I may actually get a decent crop of tomatoes this year (last year I made pots of green tomato chutney because few ripened). The asparagus we planted has taken well, so we should get a little harvest from it next year. Damsons and apples doing reasonably well, but we'll have to wait for next year before the plum and pear trees produce. Oddly enough I've had a problem growing parsley this year, usually it grows like a weed, but the coriander that I normally have trouble with is fantastic.
It's hard work keeping up with the allotment, so writing down all the lovely fruit and vegetables we get does remind me of why we take the trouble.

Interesting article on them in wikipaedia

Treat the Oca like potatoes, Aka. They're sweeter. They can also be grated raw into salads. Don't need peeling - but then I don't often do that to potatoes either.
Your veg. and fruit crops are a feast!
I'm growing all sorts of herbs, and tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines, beetroot, chard, butternut squash and globe artichokes. I leave the artichokes to flower - they're wonderful. My rhubarb has had it's day.
A few potatoes are looking healthy in the compost heap, too.
Happy watering.

Yes I do Anno but keeping it watered in this weather is a nightmare. I'm also growing Oca. Anyone ever tried that? I put them in the ground and there's lots of leaves like shamrock but I'm blowed if I know where to go from here

Just came back from a week away. Strawberries and peas for dinner tonight! I'm just waiting for the sun to go down a bit before getting the hose out. I hate to do it but everything is parched and wilting and the lilac is turning autumn colours.

We are having peas with everything....pick them ALL one day, next day there are 20 more huge ones!!
Everything else seems to have been stopped by the heat....

Do you have an allotment, Aka? It sounds very 'good life'.

Harvesting new potatoes, courgettes, garlic, raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries and black currants.
Beans slow this year, but sweet corn, carrots and parsnips look promising.
Gooseberry wine? Might give that try but its years since I made my own wine.
Making raspberry jam later today"

The leeks are just standing there doing nothing. They're being watered twice a day but not putting on any growth. Same goes for the beans.

Harvested all the broccoli today as it was in danger of bolting. Looking good in the freezer.....Another job jobbed.

Starting the gooseberry wine tomorrow.

More a case of "what's wilting".

A couple of years ago, I split my big agapanthus. Not much happened last year, but at least one of the plants now has plenty of buds. I do love agapanthus - it reminds me of my very fertile garden in Kenya, many years ago.

Thankyou Bags. Who would have thought that a marigold could be called nana fruit twist? Meanwhile I've remembered that I was given a packet of sunflower seeds when we went to see Calendar Girls at the weekend so I shall plant them tonight.

...get seeds...

You can seeds for both marigolds (Calendula officinalis) and Californian poppies from big seed merchants like Thompson & Morgan, dusty. Also from ebay, I suspect, and probably from the RHS.

Does anyone know I can get seeds for California poppies and also old fashioned Marigolds? The sort that grow like weeds when you don't want them but give up and die when you try to encourage them.

henetha - I think California poppies and Icelandic ones are different things. I'm not sure but I can grow lovelly California poppies and remember thinking it odd because I live much nearer Iceland than California!

Feeding the birds is reaping a reward - thrushes and blackbirds are dealing with the slugs and nesting sparrows and tits are keeping the blackfly to manageable levels.

Me too Merlot. DH is spending the day in his boat, and I don't even have to cook as DD2 has invited us for dinner
Came back from the States yesterday to find the garden had blossomed in my two weeks absence - and have to admit I do like the alchemilla mollis, just not its bad habits. It looks lovely with purple and pink hardy geraniums, and Gloire de Diujon is blooming round the French window.
I haven't got a vegetable garden but I have some raspberries in pots which are coming on well, lots of blueberries coming, and apples and plums beginning to form. I planted some lettuces in a wicker basket thing a couple of months ago and we had our first taste tonight - yummy, despite DH's concerns about the slightly hole-y appearance

I'm so looking forward to a long day in the garden tomorrow. DH will be glued to the Grand Prix so we won't eat until the evening.

I love plant surprises too. A tall evening primrose is looking lovely this evening. I've no idea how it got there, but as usual, nature plants better than humans.

Marelli I love buying 'rescue plants' and seeing whether I can get them going. I also like the 'surprise' poppies.

Granny23, we bought 3 tomato plants today at a little garden centre. They were half-price, so perhaps that tells us something! Anyway, the struggling ones have been chucked out and we have started again, putting them in pots instead of a grow-bag. I'm definitely blaming OH for over-watering the last lot.
Every year we have lots and lots of yellow Welsh poppies. However much we pull them out, they keep on growing. I think they're lovely.

Oh! That sounds fantastic. As does merlotgran's new spuds.

Yum!