Garden Update (30-10-2011)
It’s the last Sunday of October and my garden still has quite a bit to offer. Have been harvesting 7 carrots in the past two days, as part of my plan to roast enough chickens to make more concentrated chicken breast. The carrots have decent size (so that you know, the height of the tetra paks are about 20 cm), and they tasted quite sweet too. So roasting only made them even sweeter. I will definitely grow some more carrots next year.
While it shouldn’t be totally surprising, I still found it delightful to see an earthworm within one of the tetrapaks. I mean I’ve put in this worm cast into the soil mix, and although it’s said to have been sterilized, some worm eggs seem to have more resistant to the heat. Enough rotting stuff from the compost I bought kept some alive.
Tomatoes are, well, keeping their green fruits pretty well. I suppose it was rather late for me to give the rice water last month, and now when they have all the green fruits ready to ripen, the weather is not warm enough. Oh well. Interesting aside, some lady bugs started to settle in the garden as the one I captured hiding behind a leaf of one of the bushy tomato plants. Unfortunately, they’re not doing anything significant to the aphid community that has been well-established in the chinese green population.
If the aphids weren’t there, my bok choys and choy sums would have flourished greatly, as one can see in the two self-watering pots perpendicularly laid to the polka dot barrier. The population is so pronounced one of the pots, that most of the choy sums are going yellow so quickly. I’ve harvested some a few weeks back, but I don’t think I’ll be having any more harvest from that pot. It’s probably wise too to get rid of the pot entirely. That’s something to do in the near future. In any case, the chinese greens I’ve been enjoying the past few weeks taste as they should be. Having choy sum with noodles is a special treat for me 
Still have that small green bell peppers hanging around. I’ll use them soon, before getting rid of the tired plant. Same with the dill. The chinese greens, chives, parsley and tomatoes seem to be holding out pretty well, so they’re not going away soon, unless the weather drastically takes a turn for the worse. The basils cannot stand the coldness, and I’ll have to bring in the rosemary soon. It will be a bit difficult to choose which plants I should be wintering since there’s not so much place inside that has access to sun.
I probably still have 1-2 garden updates left this year. I just hope the weather will stay just fine, that is no sudden drop in temperature.
