I have never been a fan of regular lettuce. I prefer baby spinach or rocket. One day at the garden centre I found Mizuna which is apparently another kind of lettuce but I’d never heard of it, so I thought I would give it a try..

On the 11th of November this is little kitty sniffing them to see whether they are worth chomping on. She has a thing for grass and things that look like grass but she chose not to chew at these. They’d been in the ground for maybe a week.

I fed some to the chickens over the following days, picking from the centre of the plant as I hoped they would bush outwards a bit. This apparently encouraged them to flower. Here they are on the 22nd November –

And here they are just 3 days later on the 25th –

I had no idea they would flower. They taste great, and have the advantage of growing quickly and also tall away from the ground so they are easy to keep dirt free and rinse off when it is time to eat them.

According to Wikipedia they are resistant to cold and grown in winter in Japan, and you can eat them hot or cold. I’ll keep an eye out for them at the garden place and if I see more I’ll be buying them to plant in some of the large pots I have which are plantless. I think Mizuna would do great in a pot as well as in the garden and if it is close to the back door I can just pop out and cut some for salad.

The chooks absolutely love it – probably it is their second favourite green thing to eat after Kale.

I discovered a mutant cauliflower. Well all of my cauliflowers have pretty much been weird but this one certainly takes the cake so far. I’m not growing them for me – they are for the chooks and the chooks don’t seem to mind the oddness, or the caterpillars which have (irritatingly) overtaken these plants.

We had a couple of super hot days and then quite a bit of rain. The plants seem to be loving it, I can see real differences between photos I took on Friday and photos I took today.

Newly planted, can’t wait to see how they do.. ;)

We did some re-shaping of the garden

I put in some beans, celery, pumpkin and mizuna as well as cat grass, cat nip and tansy.

These plants have not enjoyed great weather, they have been rained on extensively and have suffered a bit as a result. Here is hoping for some better weather so they can go forth and prosper like the rest of the garden.

Which as you can see, is doing quite well.

Except we are having a little caterpillar issue.

The chickens enjoy eating them!

I have a few updates – lets start with the garden..

It once looked like this.

It now looks like this.

A lot of weeds had sprung up, so I have been slowly weeding and mulching. This is the half of the garden I have completed. I’ve put down sawdust formerly from the chook laying boxes, and also Zeolite and rice husks formerly from the run and coop.

A slightly closer view – you can see how much the seedlings have grown. What you can’t see is that my zucchini plant has flowers and a baby zucchini on it! I spotted that while out there today but couldn’t get good photos.

Strawberry flowers!

The chooks have been enjoying greens from the garden for a few months now. When they see me get in there, they go nuts bagerk-ing and took took-ing, hoping that greens will come to them as a surprise.

As you can see, there is still some work to do.

Unfortunately the weather has now turned to shyte, so it may not be done as soon as I would like.

Yes, that is a storage box full of weeds which I removed from the garden. :)

There is also a chook free ranging tent. That will be the next update.