Oh how I love spending time in my garden. People tell me they go here and there, up mountains and down rivers, they tell me of their journeys near and far, they tell me of parties and festivals, they tell me of friends and family but the thing I love most is spending time in my garden.
Of course, having a deadline helps get things done and no deadline is better to work towards than a gardening workshop in your own garden. I spent day after day revelling in just this freedom last week as I prepared for a seed saving workshop I was due to run for Permaculture Tasmania on Sunday afternoon.
As I studied my garden from a seed saving perspective I ran through what I would say, in my mind, and how I would quickly transfer into the heads of the participants the passion I have for saving seeds. I could talk for hours about the history of human civilisation, about biodiversity, about climate change, about food miles and about eating for health but this was meant to be a workshop where people would be expecting to DO something, not just stand and listen to me for 2 hours!
The weather was going to be a challenge and Sunday started with torrential rain and developed to blustery winds….. both meant disaster for seed collecting and sorting, outdoors! So there was a rush to clear a big enough space on my back porch and find a couple of tables to display some of my bundles, bags, jars and chaos of vegetable seeds.
As the group began to arrive, the rain cleared and the wind died to a gentle breeze! Hooray, we were able to stroll about and chat in the garden before heading to the porch for some sorting and winnowing, followed by tomato seed collection in the kitchen and a video in the lounge.
I’d like to run more of these as I so enjoy them.
So, today being perfect in every way for gardening and now having a gorgeous free day to do what I please, I spent it planting out brassica seedlings and doing frivolous little things I’d not had time for, for months. One of these was photographing an interesting red cabbage plant regrowing since I harvested the cabbage by cutting it from the stem, about a year ago.
It is quite hard to believe but this is a photo of just one cabbage plant! After I cut off the cabbage it started to reshoot and it grew and it grew….. and then it flowered and set seeds, then it grew some more and then….. it developed cabbages again!
The biggest one is about 3/4 of the way up, on the far left. There are several smaller cabbages forming here and there too!
There are more photos of the garden here.
3 comments:
That cabbage is amazing - is it a tree cabbage or is it just the way you cut leaves away that made it do that?
Actually I have no idea! All I did was cut the original cabbage off about 10cms up the stem then left it in the ground. Since then I have done nothing except tie up the long "branches" that grew.
wow Kate never realised cabbage would grow back like this....u have made a discovery!
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