glasshouse envy and brag shots

Greetings from the sunny south. 

For the record, I am growing the runner beans in the tunnel house and what a success. 

However, as is often the way, it may be a trade off. The little cucumber beside them is possibly suffering from their success. 

Cucumbers really need the hottest sunniest spot and were I to achieve a glasshouse in the near future, these things can happen unexpectedly sometimes, I would put the cucumber in it. 

Meanwhile I am reluctantly buying cucumber. 

It's been the year of the strawberry. These things have assured their priority status forever. You guys can keep that sunny spot and I promise to take care of your progeny forever, well next year anyway if I need to replace you (No need to broadcast it but I already have some runners on the go from other varieties).

Rust on the broad beans. It appeared really quickly, right after I had the sprinkler on . Once the foliage starts to break down like this there's not going to be any growth so I've cut my losses. The beans are already blanched and in the freezer. 

They were in a bit late and are best in November when there is less in the garden for eating. 

Note to self, plant beans by Anzac Day. 

Well that's how it looked a day ago. suddenly my garden is looking bare. 

It's been really dry but we had a big rain on New Year's Eve. I was weighing up the benefit of the extra rain bulking up the bulbs over the potential for the moisture to degrade the skin. If the bulb doesn't store well it doesn't matter how big it was. 

Caution won the day. Garlic is hanging in the shed.

 Note to self, plant twice as much next year. 

I got a bonus bucket of new potatoes from amongst the broad beans. From memory it was a new variety called Highlander that I planted in January for Easter new potatoes. 

I'm glad I let them co-mingle. Usually I pull rogue potatoes out.

Incidentally the potatoes had very little wire worm which I attribute to the pine needles. 

Wire worm have a selective palette and seem to also like our favourite red kings over other varieties.

Well all this success is going to my head. Next post I must include a few 'when plants go bad' photos...if I can find some.