From Sunflowers to Potatoes…
Been meaning to pick this for ages, our last lot of rhubarb for the year. Apart from Rhubarb crumble, I never really know what to use it with. Everyone likes rhubarb crumble but there must be more to rhubarb life than just that.
The rhubarb bed is now all clear. From some wood that I got from Freecycle I have doubled the height of the bed which will one day stretch right along the side.
The book says to cut back to two buds at least one third of the bush, plus any extra to reshape. This normally works out to be about three or four branches all together. Pruning is a bit of a scary thing as when you don’t really know what you are doing it feels a bit backwards to be cutting bits off in order to generate more. Here we go then for this year, probably not really how it should be! Last year, I didn’t cut the bush at all.
This is all unexpected. Tonight I discovered a new small flower on one of the sunflowers which has now flowered and is now looking a bit sad. Halfway down the stem, a new shoot and a baby sunflower child growing off the side.
I am really pleased with this Amaranthus stuff. It seems quite robust and during the time now when most plants are past their best, these are still going strong and putting a different focal point onto things.
The front garden is nice with all the wild flowers that we have sown, but this year they did tend to take over a bit. So the plan for next year is “cone shaped” and here is a deal from the BBC Gardeners World magazine that will get it started. These offers, £2.99 a go, seem like a great way to populate your garden.
I suppose these need to be cut down at sometime, save some seed and sort out what to do with the rest. In the meantime, they give off an uneasy grin….
I am quite happy with how the worms are going. They are on the second layer and are looking after themselves very well.
On the top layer I have a number of cardboard pieces to keep it dark, keep off the rain a bit, and to soak up any extra moisture. It is a lot better, for me, than a standard moisture mat as I found the worms eat the mat too quickly. Maybe that is showing a slight failing somewhere if the worms prefer my mat instead of the food.
I am putting in mostly vegitable peelings, tea/coffee, eggs, and things like that. A lot of stuff from the garden went in at the beginning of the year and they have managed to chomp their way through that, but it did put it all out of action for adding new stuff for a number of months, so not a good idea really. At least once a month I add a load of ripped up paper made up of various credit card bills and other confidential things. These worms let no secrets go, so no identity theft going on here!
The great things about potatoes, you put them in and they sprout. They all look nice and green, and the little white flowers are quite nice. They just sit there doing nothing, not much to do with looking after them, they are just there for ages and ages. Sometimes they die back and it all looks a mess. But when it comes to digging them up it is the best treasure finding fun you can ever have. Digging down with a fork or even your hands (in our case our hands digging down into the pot) and uncovers loads of yummy looking potatoes. They have been growing and sitting there for so many months - and now it is time to eat them. Yum yum.
Next year, we will be more planned and have two pots!
One day it was small, and the next day it more than doubled in size. So we picked it, chopped it up, and sprinkled it on a bowl of Doritos and melted cheese. Yum.
Actually, it turned out not to be hot at all so maybe we should have had left it a couple more days and had it as a green pepper instead!
We don’t know what type of potato they are, but I think now we are in august it is about time we dug these out…
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