Things are growing

The rain and wind this week have not been too good for me but my garden has loved it. The tomatoes that I planted out Labour weekend have taken off, I have now filled the bucket of earth gems and the bin of potatoes with compost. The cucumber are reaching for the skies and my onions and garlic are tall and lush. In the square foot garden the sage looks great, the chilli have germinated as have the peas, radish, carrots and marigolds. I think the spring onions are coming up - either that or I had grass seeds in my compost, always a possible given that I compost my lawn clippings and put some of them in the worm farm. The carrots are just poking their heads through. Three out of four broccoli look very healthy but the fourth is a bit sorry for itself. I gave it a spray with seaweed tea to try and perk it up. The courgette gave up the ghost after being dealt to by the slug and I have replanted that square with dwarf silverbeet. I kind of guessed at how many to put in the square and decided on 9 as the seed packet recommends growing them 5 cm apart. I was down at the beach this morning and collected some of the compost like 'seagrass' that gets washed up after bad weather. I have used it to mulch the beetroot which were poking their beets above the surface of the soil, but I think I will be able to harvest them in the next week or so. The strawberries and their companion parsley are doing really well although one of the six plants still has no fruit and I still have no idea why.
I went to visit someone who lives by the beach yesterday and their garden seems to be about a month in front of mine. It's amazing the little microclimates that form - my friends who live in the same street as me never get frost whereas I, living at the bottom of the hill, get three or four quite hard ones every winter. But, hopefully, the frosts are completely over and now its growing time. And harvest time. I have had several salads from my mesclun and lettuce and I am looking forward to being able to eat my own cucumber and tomatoes too. Oh yeah my kettle full of carrots is doing great too and I repotted my chick peas into a larger pot.