First of March and a vegetable garden update

I keep hoping that the wet season is going to end soon, and over the weekend I tipped out a whole barrel of compost onto the vegetable garden, straightened up the eges, and planted some seeds.  Now I have a nice straight weed free path!  I cut back some of the branches of the pigeon peas (that should spread some nitrogen right into the soil.)  I planted gemsquash seeds on top of the mounds of compost, and then between the stems of the pigeon peas I planted some cucumber seeds.  I am hoping they will grow up the stems and after harvesting the pigeon peas I can cut the final leaves back to allow the sunlight in, while leaving the uprights as living stakes..  at the moment it is still a bit hot, so the light shade should be good for the litttle seedlings.

I also have a couple of pawpaw trees that have sprung up in the very front, but I will leave them until I see if either of them are female - they dont like to be transplanted. 

My eggplant seem to be all be doing fine,  behind the eggplant are the pigeon pea branches I cut down - I will be planting lettuces, beetroot and radishes in that spot later.   I transplanted a couple of volunteer cherry tomatoes alongside the fence.  That fence contains a bit of a mishmash of two kinds of snakebeans, loofas, jicama and my neighbours passionfruit vine who seems to like it more on my side!  Right in the  back section the passionfruit has got a bit thick and is completely shading that corner.  I have sweet potatoes,there but think it is a bit too damp in there, so will have to cut some back to allow a bit of sunlight and air in.

Nature has its own way of cutting back though.  Passionfruit in this area is short lived as it always succumbs to the woody passionfruit virus in its second year.  Rather than treat it, most people people just allow another vine to start growing up and take over. Here you can see the start of my vine, and how all the old growth has died off.

Just at the right of the photo is my new vine starting to climb up the arch.  The arch over the herb spiral has mostly died back vine, which is allowing some light in to the spiral, which is nice.  

I planted a few parsley and dill seeds on the side of the herb spiral.  The only things still surviving in my herb spiral are the rosemary and a type of  tropical oregano, along with my stevia.

I harvested 6 loofah already, and there are plenty more on the vine :)

So all in all I had a pretty succesful weekend in the garden.