Kalte Sophie

My great-aunt always told me to wait out "Kalte Sophie" for anything tender. So today I planted my tomato starts, patty pan squash and the Turk's Turban squash. Perfect day for planting - not too warm, not too cold and now it is raining a bit after a bout of sunshine which gave me enough time to work out there.





The cucumbers have to wait a bit as they are still a bit too small. I wonder why they are growing so slow compared to the squashes.


I am trying out an "experiment" on the tomatoes. I have two of each kind: Red Pear, Marmande and Tigerella. One of each I am protecting a bit more over the next few weeks and see how they do in comparison. One of the Red Pear plants is getting extra-special treatment, a Wall-o-Water. The others will have to make do with some soda bottles or improvised bigger cloches I can find.




On other news, neighbours who chopped down the tree at the back (yay!) poked their head over the shrubs/rubble. A small discussion ensued about what to do about the crumbling wall that separates their garden from mine, whether to build on top or rebuild it completely. I think the upshot was to ignore it and just stick some fencing up instead. Nice to meet them though and know that they are starting to use the garden. I just wished I hadn't been wearing my pink unicorn baseball cap at the time.

good fences make good neighbours

As I was doing my usual bit of pottering around yesterday in the garden, a woman passing by informed me that she got the plot next to me and is getting someone to roto-till it for her soon. She also asked me to turn on the seeper hoses for her since it "needed a good soaking". Er, right. pre-installed seeper hoses coming right up... Since the initial weeding effort on that plot had already resulted in the compost pile nearly ending up on my cherry tomatoes (close to the boundary but still on my side) I thought it best to construct the wood-chipped garden pathway that the community garden requires between plots.

There are so many plants flowering right now and it is easy to just brush them off as just some also-rans compared to the vegetables. I took some pictures of the nasturtiums (munched on one while watering - very peppery!), potatoes, borage (only tried the leaves so far which have a lovely cucumbery taste) and, of course, the rocket/arugula.

The cucumbers are doing well. "Orient Express" is sporting quite a few fruits which put on several inches almost overnight and "Lemon" finally is producing little globe-shaped cucumbers (even though you have to hunt for them in the foliage at the moment). The last cucumber "Bog-standard" has flowers but I have great hopes for it.

In the overview picture, the zucchini seem to dominate the entire garden. Which is true - I am faced with the first glut of the season.

I managed to harvest good-sized bunches of mustard greens, collards and rainbow chard, plus four not-quite-baby/not-quite-war-clubs zucchinis. Considering that I still have half a zucchini in the fridge and more on the way tomorrow, I am shopping around for friends to take them off my hands (haven't stooped to leaving them on doorsteps yet...)