Last night, we came back home from our 10 days holidays. It was nothing exciting, just a family visit, so we're more tired than we were before we left. We try to spend as much time with the family as possible, but I think that soon we'll have to go somewhere to the beach and do nothing for at least a week.
It's been another heatwave in Switzerland and even though our neighbours promised that they would water our garden I wasn't sure how it would look like. It's a lot of work and I trusted them, but you never know. I woke up at 6 AM, and hurried to the garden. Honestly, I would have gone yesterday if we wouldn't have come back at midnight. Let me tell you that they deserved the gift that we brought them 😊 They managed to keep all our plants alive!
Let's have a look!
I have asked them to harvest whatever was ready, so that it doesn't go to waste. They took some cucumbers, but they left the rest, so we ended up with 6 gigantic courgettes, and we'll be eating them in the coming days. I understand why they left those as everyone has enough courgettes at the moment. They're too big for a grill, but perfect for lasagne.
Our tomatoes took off, and they are still healthy! I was so happy to see that as I was expecting the early blight as it affected my tomatoes last year around this time. This is probably the only advantage of almost no rain this year.
I was surprised to see that many beans as I thought that they would be done for the season. There are still quite a few to come and I will plant another batch this week for the September/early October harvest.
There is no shortage of basil this year. I have just made 500 ml of pesto, and luckily we both don't mind eating the same for several days as it's going to be lasagne, beans and pesto for a long time 😊
I didn't even take all basil, just those stalks that were about to flower, so that they don't bolt.
When we left, I harvested not even 10 tomatoes. In the morning, I was welcomed with several kilos of this ripe goodness! Imagine, a few years ago I didn't even like tomatoes, and today I'm taking care of several varieties and enjoy bruschetta as often as I can.
I have planted this variety for the first time. It's like golden pears, just red. We love golden pears, and we wanted to see if this would be similar. It's so delicious! They are really sweet and tasty.
Golden pears are my favourite variety. They keep producing until November and each plant gives us more than we would dream off.
When we left, my Hokkaido was yellow, and now it looks like a real Hokkaido! It's not as big as I would wish, but it's enough for nice soup in autumn.
I took a decision in spring that turned out not to be the best one. My Butternuts produced tons of fruits and I didn't want to remove them, so I experimented and waited to see what will happen. Well, they stopped growing at around 20 cm, and didn't change since we left, so this is their final size. I don't mind much, but next year I will sacrifice a few of them to get bigger pumpkins.
Our first chillies of the season! It takes ages for them to change their colour.
Red Bell peppers are still hanging in there. It also takes them a long time to change the colour, and therefore there are normally not grown where we live. We got the seedling as a gift from my father-in-law, so this is why we have them. I think they still need a couple of months before I can harvest them.
Every year I say that I will plant more eggplant next year and somehow I always end up with only one plant. Let's see how it goes next year.
Don't forget the basic rule for chives - the more you harvest, the more you get.
It's always sad to see when my plants are wilting. This is not unusual as cucumbers have a short season, so they're simply done. There are still a few baby cucumber that we will harvest and then I will remove the plants. I'm surprised that they survived this long in this heat.
But the beans are going strong 😊
When you find the way of growing basil you will have enough for the entire year. It's such a forgiving plant if you cut it in the right way. Or until thrips get to it which usually happens at the end of summer.
I have never seen buckwheat growing 😊 It's a great green manure, so I will not harvest them, but let them reseed.
It's a bit early for my Aster to start blooming, but here we go...
It's a huge bush that comes back every year. I cut it to the ground at the end of the season and it comes back in spring. It's a green bush for months and then (normally) at the end of August it will open hundreds of tiny purple flowers.
I had one sunflowers when we left, and now I have plenty...
Some roses are coming back again - so weird.
It's the first year when I can collect my rosebuds. The previous owners of our garden were using pesticides and who knows what, so I didn't want to use them. I read somewhere that it might take up to 4 years until you can use the rosebuds after these treatments, and the time finally came!
My hibiscus started to grow out of proportions, so I did an experiment and simply trimmed almost 50% of the plant off. I didn't know if it would flower this year again, but look at it now. I will trim even more this year.
I have pink and purple ones, and I'm thinking about planting the white ones too to complete my collection.
I can't even count how many times I was thinking about the garden when I wasn't here and what kind of scenarios I have formulated in my head. Of course, nothing happened - lesson learned - trust the process!
Thank you for reading!
Until next time...
