Been a while
I spent two weeks in Sydney, you see I normally return to Yass on the Thursday nite, but there were a few bike things I had to do last weekend for one the of the groups I am still a member of (BikeSydney – http://bikesydney.org) and I wanted to make it to at least one Sydney Swans game at the SCG (turned out to be the last Sunday game for the year at the SCG). Lee-Ann came down for the weekend and the inlaws stayed with the kids.
I’ll just say I drank far to much beer for two weeks. I need a couple of weeks detox.
Anyway all has now returned to normal and I returned on the Thursday nite train to Goulburn, Lee-Ann and the kids met me at the station and we had some chinese for dinner.
So whats happened, there are now 37 garlic – woohoo, now as long as they last till harvest. Some of the onions of sprouted. Broad beans seems to be going on OK. I have never grown broad beans before so not sure what to expect. Is 8 plants enough? I have planted a second lot of 5 plants (approx 4 weeks behind).
The other news being that we ate our first home grown broccoli and how fantastic it was, I waited until 30 minutes before we needed it so It was the freshest possible, and just steamed it with some butter. It was a side to a casserole I made.
The cauliflower is also coming up nicely (you can see it hidden behind the leaves) – I say we will be eating some in a week. We are doing grub patrol, as we have some green grubs on the plants. And every time we see one it gets the under the boot treatment.
June 9th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
No idea how many broad beans you need, but mine are going gangbusters. I’ve also got a few varieties of garlic in. Built my raised bed on Friday and planted out all the seedlings I had waiting, and sowed a few seeds direct. Can’t wait for it to get going!
June 10th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Hello,
First-time commenter here.
We grew broad beans for the first time last year and harvested beans on perhaps 5 or 6 occasions with each plant providing a couple of pods. Each time there was enough for a small portion for everyone. One thing we tried last year was to cut the tops off the plants when they were about a metre high – I think the theory is that will prompt them to flower. We had a stack of pods that we didn’t harvest to eat but instead kept for seeds. We haven’t tried eating them once they’d been dried. In retrospect we could have eaten another couple of lots of beans and kept way less for seed.
Regarding your garlic, the leaves are also edible – adding a milder garlic flavour with a bit of crunch.
Regards, Gary