How does my garden grow
Abundantly, that's how my garden grows. The weather has been kind; not so hot, and with frequent moderate rain. A pity I didn't have these conditions when I put in my first failed crop of coriander, but you can't have everything. Both types of basil are thriving.I have more leaf than you can poke a stick at. I made pesto. Lots of pesto. It's pretty good.
One of my wild lettuces gone to seed has inexplicably produced another crop of leaf. That's bizarre, but I'm not complaining.
The wasps are proliferous, and my plants suffer very little infestation. It is hard to believe how effective they are. Companion planting works, but not on the scale on which people try to apply it. You need a colossal garden to achieve a stable microecology. The wasps, on the other hand, are a focussed weapon. Their activity centres around their nest, which happily is right in the centre of the patch I have under cultivation. For simple bioeconomic reasons they don't forage further than they have to, so anything right under the nest has a life expectancy measured in minutes. The location of the nest is probably not coincidental. When they arrived, my garden was grub-central.
For a while I worried about getting stung, but I've noticed that the wasps are aware of my presence. They turn to keep me in view when I walk past their nest. It was quite unnerving when I first noticed that they were watching me right back. But the fact that they know I'm there and they are content to watch me pass is reassuring; I am neither food nor foe.
The avocado sprouted, got too much sun, wilted, sprouted again and produced several leaves. It reached ten centimetres before I decided it needed planting out. This isn't our yard and it's entirely paved, so I took the sapling to Brett's place and commended it into Jeanette's loving care, with detailed instruction on the care and feeding of sun-sensitive saplings. It's still in the pot but that's ok, I've seen them kept indoors.It stunts them but the point is that a few more weeks in a pot won't worry it. This gives us time to organise a livestock resistant sun shelter as well as a silage.
That's the Hass, but what of the superior breed behind the Bowls Club in Rockhampton? I spoke to Stephen, who said he was up there the other week and the fruit is still green. I suggested sulphate to bring on fruiting, but I suppose it has already set plenty: the only thing to do now is let them ripen. The other thing to do is get Dad to bring more advanced specimens from Jeff in Bundaberg, if he can spare some. Jeff is a commercial grower, so his stock is no doubt high yield but prissy grafts onto Nemaguard rootstock, and probably not worth the bother in the long run. But it might do as a gap filler while we wait for the better trees to mature.
My mulberry cuttings are thoroughly rooted (stop snickering) and one budded leaves. I let it get too much sun one day and it died, but the others seem ok. I think I put too much sulphate on the fruiting capsicums. Some of their top leaves look burnt. The pots are pretty well drained so I've been flooding them with rainwater to flush the excess. We'll see.