Garden diary day 214 - finally back!
My ankle is almost back to normal, so I packed the bike with sorghum seedlings and squash seeds and headed to the garden.
I cleared around 60m2 of lavender mint (what an aromatherapeutic chop and drop!) and planted what I hope will become a future perennial bread batch of sorghum. I transplanted around 200 seedlings, a mix 20 or so different varieties, 3 of them perennial.
The selection process should be easy enough, but might take some seasons. I plan to save seeds from all of them, see which ones survive as true perennials and leave them, fill in the empty gaps with saved seeds, and continue this year after year, until a perennial patch is established.
I interplanted with 6 strains of kiwano melon from @ThomasPicard as ground cover, and along the edge, I directed seed ash gourds, brown fleshed moschata squash, and different varieties of Indian vegetable bottle gourds plus a trial row of 3 different types Tinda apple gourd.
This plot already has established quince, apples and mulberry trees, clove currant bushes, aromatics and perennial broccolish plants, so I plan to just let the gourds sprawl and make sure they don’t climb any trees or plant. Other than that, very little maintenance. Once the gourds get growing they suppress the weeds and anyone else in their way!
In the newer plot I planted more gourds, melon grexes, snake gourds, cucumbers, maxima pumpkins and green fleshed moschata pumpkins, as most of the seeds I planted on the 22nd of April haven’t come up, or they have been eaten by snails..
Garden harvest:
4kg artichokes
200g mixed potatoes
400g rose petals for mulberry wine making
400g elephant garlic scapes
100g broccolish shoots
200g mulberries