Three Sisters bed

Here is an image of the three sisters companion planting bed. This seems to have been a practice of native American, and is very effective indeed; the plants grow in harmony, and the weeds are having a real tough time growing; a win - win situation in my book. The French beans here are a purple variety, unfortunately they revert to green on cooking, but fortunately the taste simply delicious.

Runner Beans

This is a close-up of one of the runner beans, these form beautiful scarlet flowers, and are delicious to eat. They should be prolific.

Sunflowers mutiple heads

Here is a photo showing the multiple heads of the sunflowers; it is quite stunning to see these around the garden.

Swiss chard

On the left you can see the Swiss chard growing healthily, forby suffering a few bits. These are rugged plants that provide delicious greens, that are extremely versatile in the kitchen. They can be baked with potatoes into gratin with gruyere, of course. cooked to make a pasta sauce, cooked with beans to add depth of flavour and colour, and much more. They especially thrive in the winter, when there is nothing popping along to eat on them besides us. If you do not have at least one of these plants in your garden, one is sometimes enough, then it is time to sow those seeds and get it added. Any time is almost possible for these plants, depending on the growing zone your garden is located within.

Sunflowers

Here is a photograph of one of the varieties of sunflower I planted, Earthwalker which grows to Triffid dimension, over 2 metres tall with multiple large heads, ring of fire, which I think is this one here, and Little Dorritt, which is a yellow dwarf variety. The large ones grow in among the other plants, e.g., tomatoes, peppers, beans, apple trees, etc., to attract beneficial insects and to divert the unwanted bugs. They add a lot to the garden, towering above everything else, and with lower heads in the midst of the lush green backdrop.

Zinnia, Green Envy

On the left is my favourite, or one of my favourite Zinnias, called Green Envy, for obvious reasons. This, unfortunately, seems to look more delicious than the other varieties to whatever insect(s) is/are eating them. But it seems the trick is to get them established and they will thrive. This one is becoming established.

Courgette Flower

Here is a photo taken of the courgette flowers. We have three varieties of courgette growing; lungo bianco, genovese and rugosa friulana; they vary in appearance, and texture and flavour. Bianco is white, and with small seeds but large fruits, genovese is a standard courgette, light green and striped. The latter is a rather rugged shaped courgette, which retains more of its texture after cooking. The plants are growing vigorously around the garden and in pots. in one bed there are three courgette plants, four or so sweetcorn, and a bunch of french bean plants growing together, harmoniously, if densely. These and the other courgettes are fed weekly with a liquid manure made from chicken manure, but with the rainy season finishing this feeding will be doubled.

Zinnia

Well today it is raining down in waterfall proportions with occasional lightning bolts variably near and far. So, the blog will be updated with some photos. Here is a one of the zinnia's growing in the garden. I don't know, but the amount of seeds that I sowed and the number of flowers that have grown are out of proportion; 10 to 1 at least! I sowed and I watered regularly, I sowed into pots and many did not survive the transplanting. I have more in pots, and they are growing well, marigolds in particular.
I like this zinnia, and think it is called whirligig. Closer inspections will reveal that it has been eaten, and that is probably why many of the others did not survive. But, I am of the view this is my first year growing flowers, so I am taking this as a learning process and will keep trying, this year and next.

Snake(s)

To return to the subject of this post, we have snake(s) in / visiting our garden. The photograph on the left shows it in the planter, from where it escaped and I lost it. Investigation suggest it is a Japanese Rat Snake, so called because its preferred diet it rat. In Japanese it is called Ao-Daishou. At first I understood this is a venomous snake, but now I understand that it is non-venomous. The snake comes in different colours, here it is a dark, slate blue colour, and is an excellent climber. It climbs trees to eat birds and birds eggs with ease, indeed I have seen this perched on the window frame of a house, and my wife saw one like that too. I took this photo with a handy digital camera and it is not very good at all, but it does show the snake is somewhere about a metre in length, the creatures usually grow to 1.1 - 2 metres long.
The important thing is that it is non-venomous. Indeed, it seems that farmers, other than chicken farmers, welcome these snakes as rat controllers. But my neighbour, who is a farmer asked me if I had killed the snake and advised that I did if I saw it again. The one on the left I saw on 6 June, about two weeks later, late afternoon / early evening I was weeding around the same are when I heard a dull thump behind me, I looked but saw nothing. Later I was walking and heard the same dull thump and saw the snake winding its way down the side of a wall, so expect the snake had launched itself off of the wall and onto the dirt. The snake than made as if it was to climb up the wall again, but did not. My efforts to eradicate it failed, probably due to nervousness, and the snake slithered away through the bushes and onward to where I do not know. I am now, knowing more about this snake, less apprehensive about it or its friends visiting the garden, but would prefer not to meet it unexpectedly sitting in a corner...

Companion planting

I have bought a new camera and will upload more photos over the coming weeks... This is a Nikon D300 SLR with a Nikkor 18 - 200 mm lens, a good all-round lens. This is an exciting camera and is an adventure embarking upon learning how to utilise the camera to bring out its maximum potential.

On the left is one of the first photos I took with this, in JPG format and shows the density of the companion garden; in the foreground are the leaves of the Olive tree, in the centre is a sunflower, variety Little Dorrit because it is a dwarf variety. To the left of the sunflower you can see a cluster of tomatoes, probably Ailsa Craig variety, To the right the flowers for the Fennel and if you pear through the dense vegetation then the flowers of Ring of Fire sunflower are apparent. More will follow over time.