I am one of those people who love ‘before’ and ‘after’ posts and I thought that it might be fun to look at my summer garden in terms of ‘before our holiday’ and ‘after our holiday’. I even found some photos that were taken from pretty much the same spot and it is interesting to see how the garden has changed in the span of a few weeks. Of course, this is not a makeover – when I’m away nobody is ‘making over’ anything. My in-laws visited to garden a few times to harvest courgette, cucumbers and tomatoes and were prepared to water the plants, but there was enough rain to render watering unnecessary. Other than that, the garden was left to its own devices. Let’s see how it went!
Before:
Notice the front right bed: before we went away I harvested the last kohlrabi and Chinese cabbages and immediately sowed bush beans. In the bed behind that, I planted leeks and sowed fall radishes and iceberg lettuce.
After:
Look! The beans sprouted! So nice when things go according to plan.
Before:
After:
See how much the sweet corn has grown while we were away and did nothing?
Before:
Wherever a spot opened, I planted endive, sowed beets or more lettuce.
Before:
Harvesting Chinese cabbage, carrots, courgette, sweet peas (not edible!), lettuce, basil, beets, kohlrabi, basil and the first cherry tomatoes
After:
Harvesting cucumber, french beans, courgette, basil, blackberries, carrots, parsley, aubergine, chillies, tomatoes and sweet peas
Before:
Lots and lost of berries to pick: pink currant (my favorite to eat straight from the bush) & black currant that I turned into jam. Mixed berries from our home edible forest.
After:
A bumper harvest of Japanese bramble (Rubus parvifolius) from the community garden. Unfortunately, my kids concluded they prefer Japanese wineberry.
After:
Figs from both our plants: ‘Pingo de mel’ and ‘Petite negri’ – everybody likes the latter better.
Before & after:
Polyculture in a large tub. Left what it looked like before we went away, right what it looks now – the citrus French marigolds (edible!) look so beautiful next to the Tuscan kale.
After:
Our edible forest/jungle. We’re picking first apples and thanks to the recent rain, the herb layer of the garden is also lush and green.
After:
The polyculture in the community garden: we’re harvesting cherry tomatoes, courgette and sweet corn – it looks even better than last year.
And if you’re not sick of comparing, here is what the garden looked like in July 2014, July 2013, August 2014 and August 2013 .
If you want some gardening tips for September, look here.
Happy gardening!