Well, my hatake garden is pretty much full now. A week or so ago I transplanted eight capsicum plants and planted out a bunch of little basil seedlings. I also popped in a few lettuces purchased at the garden store across the road (which has been doing a wicked trade with the big Golden Week holiday here recently). I checked with my old gardening friend and he told me he cloches all his lettuces so the next day I ducked off from work and bought the necessary gears; not in time before the rain started falling though. Lucky not too much muck got on the lettuce leaves and the tiny little basil sprouts surprisingly stood up to the rain pretty well.

On a beautiful sunny Wednesday I also popped in a trellis for the couple of cucumbers I have at the end of the poly tunnel. This was really simple and fun to build. It juts out on an angle from the tunnel for ease of access and so as not to block any light from the tomatoes – I’m fairly sure I’ve crowded this tunnel a bit as is.

My potatoes have all popped up and seem to be growing vigorously. My gardening friend tutted tutted their late planting (seemingly potatoes go down here mid to late March but I was unable to get mine into the ground until the start of May when I got given the plot… I was going to try sweet potato instead but then my landlord gave me some seed potatoes). He told me of a certain disease that affects young potatoes when a lot of rain falls (as is going to start here in a few weeks or so) but I can’t remember the name of it – can anyone help me out there…? He also said this disease can spread easily to tomatoes so most growers don’t plant tomatoes and potatoes next to each other… woops…

So most things are looking pretty happy. The exception is the runner beans. I have two varieties – one I’m not sure what its called, the other is Kentucky Wonder. The former I transplanted from some small pots I’d started on my window sill at home. Two of them are doing ok but one seems to be getting worse and worse. It’s started to show some buds but the leaves are limp and dying… I’m sorry, I forgot to grab a photo of it. The Kentucky Wonder – one seed has popped up ok but the others are kinda just stumps. One has no leaves at all, the other has the two little starter leaves but very little else. In the last couple of days it seems like they may have got their legs a little bit and coming on but I’m not sure yet. Any ideas what’s going on…? The soil is quite thick and clay-like so I’m wondering if they are having trouble rooting… I added some fertilizer (seed weed based I think… it came from my landlord and was all in Japanese…)

Right, off to do a bit of weeding and to turn the compost pile!