Catching up

Alas, I've been very slack in writing this blog last year, so here is a quick summary of last years highlights; First, I largely abandoned the ground gardening last year, simply because it takes so much water, I never do enough watering, and so the plants never do that well; also, all the beds are part-shaded. Of course its hard for me to waste ground, so I did put some stuff in here and there anyway, but I focused most of my gardening into bucket gardening. These buckets were filled with a mix of composts, soil, including the home-made compost from the previous winter. The best part; I get to move the buckets into the middle of the lawn (pretty much bare earth in summer here) so they get lots of light, and I even get to move them around to catch the sun if needed. Each bucket got punched with a nail several times so they drained, and then were planted. Most buckets last year got one or another tomato variety, and most did well, although there was an issue with a garden rat picking off all the early tomatoes until I filled the bite marks with ghost chili sauce. After trying to pick around the sauce for a while, eventually the rat gave up. It also helped that I found where he hid out during the day and hosed the place out. But all told, the rat probably got about 30 tomatoes or more. Possibly he was using the tomatoes as a water source, so one of my strategies was to leave a water source in a corner of the garden so he had a choice. I also noticed that he ate into my recycling plastic bottles, again looking for water. I really dont mind pests taking a little here and there, but when I lose almost every tomato for a few weeks after months of caring for them, it gets a bit much. Into the buckets also went basil, lettuce, eggplants and cucumber; these had very few problems; rats apparently dont like cucumbers, possibly because the leaves are rough and hairy. The crop wasnt massive (I only had 2 plants), but it gave a good enough show, so I'll definitely be growing some again this year, maybe different varieties. Last year I got cucumbers that were more like dill pickles. The one problem that these shared with the eggplants was that both tended to be bitter, so some were OK, others not. It turns out that the standard "black beauty" eggplant has to be picked quite young and gets bitter very quickly. Now that I've worked out eggplant growing - in containers in full sun - its time to try other varieties and see if I can find some that are inclined to be less bitter. The Zucchini crop this year wasnt great, at least in part because I wasnt growing so much in the ground; the ones in the buckets didnt produce as much, and there were fewer plants than last year. I guess this year I need to go back to growing zucchini in the ground; the ground continues to get better with all the compost thats going in, together with the occasional buried fish guts and whatnot. The topsy-turvy tomato containers were as good this year as usual (and safe from the rat), but once again I've lost a couple of containers because they really rot quickly (despite their claims to be reusable for many years). I've got other hanging containers this years, right-side up ones, but I dont suppose that will make much of a difference as the plants will tumble over the edge. The grapevine did very well last year, with about 30 bunches of grapes; I thinned these out a lot, by about half, then harvested the others fairly early to make about a liter of white wine, which so far smells a little yeasty, but I'm hoping this will go away in time. I'm hoping that this harvest didnt damage the vine, because they warn against taking early crops, but the vine was quite big, and I harvested early, so there should have been a lot of nutrients going back to the roots. It's also got a lot of soil to itself. I pruned the vine back around new years, cutting most of the side growths off, and knocking some of the leaders back. Cleaned out the pomegranate a little at the same time. Next post, I'll discuss how the winter crops are doing.