31 July, 2022
Month: Jul 2022
24 July, 2022
17 July, 2022
Twenty members worked in the garden on Sunday. We welcomed Myrtle as a new member.
We dug up baby carrots and continued the harvest of greens: celery, spinach, silverbeet, broccoli, spigariello, kale, sugar snap and snow peas, land cress, celtuce, red dandelion, golden streaks, ruby streaks, mizuna, mibuna, rocket, cos, sorrel, red-veined sorrel, coriander, dill, parsley and Chinese cabbage.
We also dug rhizomes of turmeric (Curcuma domestica) and ginger (Zingiber officinale), both belong to the Zingiberaceae Family (photo below).
We sowed more silverbeet ‘Large White Ribbed’ (Beta vulgaris var. cicla , Amaranthaceae Family).
10 July, 2022
Heavy showers again on Sunday kept most members snug at home. Eight members and one child had fun digging up baby carrots between showers. We also dug turmeric and harvested celery, spinach, silverbeet, broccoli, spigariello, kale, sugar snap and snow peas, land cress, celtuce, red dandelion, golden streaks, ruby streaks, mizuna, mibuna, rocket, cos, rhubarb, sorrel, red-veined sorrel, coriander, dill, parsley, Chinese cabbage, green papaya, lemons and limes.
This very wet year has highlighted how rainfall affects our plants for both good and bad.
We have been diligently measuring our rainfall for the past seven years and the record is interesting. In the graph below the yearly totals are compared with the Bureau’s measurements at Observatory Hill 3km away as the crow flies. Sometimes we get a bit more rain and sometimes a bit less. By the middle of this year we had passed the yearly totals for the previous six years and double the drought years of 2018-2019.
Note: 2022 rainfall is up to July for us but only June for Observatory Hill. Sydney’s average is 1211mm (~48 inches).
The weekly totals for the seven years in the graphs on the next page show much variability as expected. In general we get our rain in weeks 5-14 (Feb-March) and in the middle of the year weeks 21-28 (June-July). Of the four highest weekly peaks that stand out on the graph, two are this year and the others in 2021 and 2020.
3 July, 2022
As expected our Sunday meeting was washed out due to rain. Our rain gauge has recorded 272mm (~11 inches) in the past week. Waterlogging and erosion has damaged our shallow rooted seedlings and leached nutrients from the soil and along with the lack of sunshine this has resulted in slow growth for our veggies this winter. Nevertheless we have several “pick and come again” greens to harvest for salad or stir-fry. Two are illustrated below.
English spinach (Spinacia oleracea, Family Chenopodiaceae, same as silverbeet)
Mibuna (Brassica rapa var. japonica, Mustard family Brassicaceae)
St Helen's Community Garden 
