St Lucia Community Garden

 Better weather, better Garden

After losing multiple plantings to the very wet winter this year, July and August's better days let some hardy survivors recover, some plantings happy to have wet feet almost all the time thrive, and some new introductions say hello to the sun.

Herbs like rosemary, parsley, mint, dill, lemon verbena, sage, thyme and chervil made jazzing up a salad a pleasure, while our native violets, nasturtiums, some resilient alyssums and the bounty that comes from chucking your bok choi, rocquette and mizuna seeds into strategic places brought us flowers, colour, pollinator attractions and new plants when many other species were still having a kip. 

Dutch Cream potatoes, loads 'a beetroot, regular and purple kales, sprouting broccoli, sugar snap and garden peas, wombok lettuce, bok choi and plenty of perpetual (cut-and-come-again) spinach kept us in the greens, while we look forward to regular and purple running beans, the return of fresh chillies and our first late winter strawberries. 

Our papaw, pumpkin and tomato seed-rich compost (if you don't want them, just pull out the new seedlings as they sprout, because the seeds are undetectable as we make our compost!) has brought us lots of surprise additions in lots of surprise places, while donated orchids, elkhorn ferns, foxgloves, pelargoniums and camellias have made welcome additions to the non-edible palette . . .