Winter Garden Produce

The array of colours, forms and textures created by companion gardening is evident in this photograph of beet leafs emerging from carrot fronds, neighboured by leeks.

Winter Garden Produce

While this is mid-winter, and the weather is appropriately cold, that does not mean the garden is bare; indeed some plants thrive better in winter for being left alone by pests. There was a sharp frost on this morning, 27 December, so I took some pictures. On the left you can see the frost on a leek, seeds from Britain. Of course, because of the companion planting, the leek is not sitting in the middle of a row of leeks, but is surrounded by carrots, garlic, and other vegetables not seen.

Fennel and... companions

Companion gardening wisdom is that fennel is a no no for growing along with other plants. As luck had it, some carrots appeared in the midst of my recently planted fennel bed. The fennels are mature enough to be approaching their second harvesting. The image to the left shows a carrot harvested on Saturday that was growing cheek by jowl with a couple of fennel plants, there are others still sitting there. The coin next to it for scale purposes is a 5 yen, which is 2.2 cm in diameter, sorry I forgot to measure the carrot and it was eaten on the day of harvest, delicious. The only problem was, as can be seen, some splitting, which is the result of uneven watering, i.e., a dry spell followed by lots of rain. I will harvest more carrots soon...

5 yen coin:
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