EOY garden update (post-TAS) - BSC

Two weeks away from the garden, and after some heavy rainfall, I came home to lush green foliage everywhere. To organise the photos and descriptions better, I'll divide them into separate posts according to the garden bed area. First up, BSC. 

Snake beans are growing vigorously. The 60cm-long green snake beans had their peak and are on the wane, but the black-tipped beans (which don't grow as long) are being featured on the dinner table now. The black-tipped beans leave lots of out-of-the-pod beans at the bottom of the plate, which is yummy to nibble on at the end of a meal. We have abundant basil (just made some pesto yesterday), and the mint runners are expanding their territory.





Purslane is wild. The right side is doing a lot better than the left side of the tree - it seems to prefer more shade. Purslane could be a pretty good ground cover crop. Harvested a big batch to make some Chinese-style dry-preserve pickles - it's called (or is similar to) xián cài and méi cài, doesn't seem to have an equivalent in English.




Rocket is out of control. Most of what's growing is wild rocket, and it's much too dense and the leaves are very thin. A few garden rockets among the mix too, but the plants aren't looking that healthy - too much competition for nutrients, probably.

All the lettuce had flowered and was pulled out. Some seeds saved for the next growing season. Kangkong is doing well, and apparently this bunch is the regrowth from the first harvest. 

A lot of the kale leaves had been devoured by caterpillars, but they're still doing alright, though not as vibrant-looking as in the winter months. A few have grown side shoots though, meaning more leaves are growing. I'm not bothering too much with the caterpillar problem at the moment since there are a couple of small land cress plants growing below. Hopefully by winter, the land cress will be mature and play their role as bait to the butterflies.  

That marigold plant is on its way out. It was way overgrown (even more than in the photo) and the leaves looked as if it was under attack by something, or really lacked nutrients. It was covering a few small comfrey shoots too, so I gave it a good pre-death prune.  

I inadvertently made compost tea. I had painstakingly scooped out all the compost that was pretty much done into this container, to make space in the bins for fresh scraps. It doesn't have drainage (cemented up by mum), and I only covered it with some hessian. Surely enough with the recent thunderstorms, the container filled almost to the brim with rainwater. It's quite lucky actually that not only did it not overflow, the rain only fell a few days before I came home, so it was only a little bit anaerobic when I found it. Well, I've made my own compost tea now.