10 in 10 Challenge – September wrap up and October Plans

It’s all go now that the Spring weather has arrived – even with the few colder days and frosty mornings – and while the soil isn’t quite warm enough to plant out the sumemr seedlings, it’s been a great opportunity to raise more seedlings, and move the first round of tomatoes into bigger pots for them to continue growing. I did already plant a few early zucchinis, and depsite losing one to the cold, the other 5 are doing really well.

With the number of fails over the cooler months, I’m hoping I can improve my yield over the warmer months. I have quite a few tomatoes – including a few new ones, Pink Brandywine (A climbing tomato I purchased on eBay) and one called Goldman’s Italian American which I received through the #seeds_are_free_au project. I lost my first lot of 6 as I left them outside on a cold night – I have just planted the remaining 6 seeds and hope that I don’t do the same to these ones.

these tomatoes have been replanted into bigger pots – most were ‘leggy’ and tall so they have been planted deep in an effort to produce a strong plant and more roots.

Our purple podded peas and our Greenfeast peas ready for harvest

It’s all looking a little crazy – the peas are all over the place, and the yellow stemmed chard at the front is ready to bolt to seed

And from the other side of the same garden bed, the lettuce has bolted to seed, parsley is growing in abundance, and there a few more carrots that we need to harvest

the other garden bed has some potatoes sprouting in the foreground, along with the chives on the left. The rest is the flowering broccoli and rocket. I will pull these two out and add more compost/manure and mulch once the summer seedlings/plants are ready to go.

Kale self-seeds everywhere in my garden – even in the paths – this one is pretty though and I’ll move it (they relocate fairly easily) when I need to plant the summer crops in this space.

Plans for October for the 10 in 10 Challenge crops:

Crop	October tasks
Tomatoes	Move seedlings into larger pots in preparation to plant out in late October/November.
Basil	Seedlings started, hopefully they will be ready to plant out in November.
Cucumber	Seedlings have started, lost a few to the cold and earwigs or slug/snail attack while still in their pots. Plant in larger pots ready to plant late October
Zucchini	Second round of seedlings started, move on to bigger pots, plant out in October/November
Carrots	Harvest last of the carrots in the beds. Maybe plant more seed direct into garden bed – undecided on whether to grow more
Lettuce / Salad Greens	lots of self seeded lettuces appearing, save some seed for sharing at the food swap
Potatoes	growing – no extra care needed
Peas	Harvest peas over October then cut at ground level and use as mulch (same with the broad beans)
Cabbage	I have a few seedlings that I have just moved to larger pots, they’re not looking great, but fingers crossed
Broccoli/ Cauliflower	–

Other tasks for October
I still have some mulch to add as the new plantings go in along with some extra bags of sheep manure, but most of the garden has been given a sprinkling of black grit, watered, weeded and now we wait.

There are so many flowers coming out – the apple trees are looking lovely, the early apricot is already setting fruit, so is the china flat peach and the almond. There are flower buds on teh raspberries (this year I only cut the obviously dead canes and left the rest – some have sprouted laterals and will fruit on their 2nd year canes so we will get our first harvest in summer and then hopefully an autumn harvest too – can’t wait.

Our rhubarb and asparagus has really taken off – I’ve had to organise contact-free door step swaps as we are still in lock down here in Melbourne and have been unable to run our usual monthly food swap.

I’ll be posting updates on Facebook and Instagram throughout the month, and will have a blog review of the month for you towards the end of October.

Until then – get growing!