Child of the Planet

After weeks of dry weather, it rained over the weekend. This makes me very happy because my rain collection tanks had run dry. I've been saving water in the shower for the past couple of weeks to pour onto the vegetables. Wasn't enough and scored a lot of end blossom rot this year. Same thing happened last year when I accidentally left a tap open during dry Feb. This year a brass fitting on the hose broke and the tank was drained before I noticed. Lessons for next year are to turn the water off at the tank, and that brass fittings are surprisingly delicate.

I'm starting to feel like this could be some sort of astral plant? Decided to create a series of shapes reminiscent of fungus Any lopped off branches are being moved towards the similar shapes Some of the thin stalks are becoming a concern. I'm spending extra time and energy when moving this thing about.

I've built a studio in the front garden. I think I'll call my second piece 'resting bitch face'.

... that I planted along the driveway. Don't have enough cloth bags so I cut the heads of and are leaving to dry in the sun.

The 'new girl' and the bush tomatoes have started to ripen and the stems are buckling under the weight of the fruit. I did a picking and processed down into juice. I'll freeze it until I"m ready to make sauce and paste.

Just when the lemon tree on the end of the line was staging a comeback, we had some sustained hot winds that burnt the tiny shoots off. The poor thing is giving leaves another go. Hopefully the weather gives it a break. Lot's of decent sized fruit is hanging off the branches on some of the other trees.

Discovered this new flower head growing at the base.

It keeps raining, and the paper bag wasn't surviving so I've replaced it with this cloth mesh bag. Need to find some more for the other flowers

The plants seem to be doing well, with some fruit appearing. I've also been hitting these guys with the BT. Having a lot less of a problem with slugs up here in the drier part of the garden. This is the first year I've grown a lot of plants from seed. The problem with the multi packs of seeds is that you don't know what you're going to get. Hope the bells at the end turn out to be red or purple.

  The 'new girl' variety are supposed to have better flavour then the 'early girl'.    I had one on a sandwich for lunch and it did have a nice standard tomato taste. The 'new girl' are doing well now that the winds have died out. The bush tomatoes are rampant with lots of good sized green fruit and a few early ones have ripened. There are a few young 'Tommy toes' breaking up the mass. The Roma were grown from seedlings and I've had a bit of trouble picking the right suckers to remove. There is a bit of fruit and I'm hoping they can get some good growth on now.     After wasting time and tomatoes on fighting caterpillars last year, I'm better prepared and got the bt onto the plants early.