Summer in the Garden
30 January, 2025
During the summer months in our garden, an important task is hand watering. Whilst we have an automatic watering system that goes on twice a week, it was designed for watering a large area of lawn (inherited from the previous owners), rather than a food forest. As a result, the sprinklers don’t reach some areas of the garden and there are a few sprinklers where I’ve built garden beds on top, so they don’t work anymore (sorry Rob!🤭). As the lawn is slowly being converted to garden beds, we’ve left the automatic watering system as it is for now, with my primary aim to make the garden more drought tolerant over time.
In the peak of summer I hand water parts of our garden daily, to support the edible annuals, but this simple garden task provides the opportunity for so much more. In the early hours of the morning, it’s an opportunity to quietly observe the garden in action, to check on the different plants, identify any pests and beneficial insects, harvest food and…. to simply be.
Over the last few months, I’ve watched the pumpkin vines slowly fill in any gaps, weaving their way amongst parsley, cosmos, salvias, basil, spring onions and zucchini. I’ve seen whitefly come and go, flowers bloom and fruit ripen. I’ve seen bees and other beneficial insects busy at work. I’ve seen the arrival of some native bees including Blue-banded and Resin bees and I’ve seen some funny looking insects that I couldn’t identify.
This summer has been very different to last summer, with some very hot days followed by some cooler days and the occasional rain. With more humidity in the air, it’s created the perfect environment for powdery mildew to form and I’ve noticed a few spots forming on some of my cucumber vines and zucchini leaves. I’ve removed the affected leaves and will be making up some compost tea to apply to the leaves to help make the plants more resistant to the mildew taking hold.
How’s your garden growing? I’d love to know.
“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”
A welcome visitor to our garden, a native Resin Bee.
A new favourite of mine, Zinnia Queeny Lime with Blush.
Harvesting food from our little greenhouse and garden daily. The long striped cucumber (pictured above) is Sweet & Striped from The Diggers Club. This is a fun variety, growing up to 1 metre in length and is sweet to taste with minimal seeds.
A bit of teamwork in the kitchen with Rob and I making some pasta sauce using the first tomatoes for the season. The tomatoes we used were a mix of three different heirloom varieties, Beefsteak, Tigerella and Santorini. We also added some chilli, red onion, garlic and fresh herbs (rosemary, basil & thyme). The house smelt so good whilst it was bubbling away!
Spotted this little bee emerging from a zucchini flower, heavily weighed down with pollen.
Til next time, bee well,
Alisa 🐝🍃