After a little bit of rain in September the first serious deluge came in the first week of October after a week of warm, muggy weather. A front came through with electrics, wind and downpour, and the ensuing weather system spent the next week revolving more or less around the Balearics. So now the second spring is well under way, grass is growing almost fast enough to watch, insects are buzzing and all the other pests have woken up. Not just grasshoppers now, there are some rather destructive caterpillars that eat out the growing points of radishes and others eating the leaves (not cabbage whites). Also slugs, particularly on the chinese cabbages. Weeds: the main ones are wild asparagus and lords and ladies which are coming up everywhere from corms. Very decorative but still weeds when in the veg beds.
Things are growing and there has been more to harvest. The beans cropped well but now seem to be fading off, peas are going - norli turns out to be a miniature pea, tasty but a lot of work to pick. We have a good supply of lettuce, spinach, mizuna, bok choi, daikon, spring onions and coriander, with broccoli, chinese cabbage and stem lettuce looking close to ready. Trying to keep everything well mulched to protect soil from rain and wash in some organic matter, using a mix of pine needles and encina (holmoak) leaves.
Put in the first havas (broad beans) at the end of september, a bit earlier than traditionally done here. Will try some more in this month wherever there is space as they are good nitrogen fixers. With nice big seeds hopefully I can involve the kids in seeding them.
Sunlight beginning to get a bit short now. Having cleared a few of the big pines behind the house things are a bit better, and most of the beds get six hours or so of afternoon sun but the inside ends rather less. Temperatures dropping to a typical range of 14-20, but due to go a bit lower in the coming week.
