How much difference can a week make?

For those who don't know Adelaide - home of the Man v Carrot challenge, it is a city of around a million people nestled on the shores of a large gulf of water with the Southern Ocean only 50km to the south. 250km to the North is the great Australian outback, virtually nothing except desert until you reach Alice Springs, and then sub-tropical Savannah onwards to Darwin 3,000 km away. During summer, the prevailing Northerly winds heat up over the desert and give Adelaide blasts of hot weather topping in the 35-42C (95-107F) for days on end.  (As I write at 4:40pm, my automatic weather station is saying that it is 31.6C with a NNE wind at 2km/hr). Pretty typical really except that the humidity is at a high 47%. Nearly all the rain falls from late May to Early September. After that pretty well zilch. So it truely is a Mediterranean climate. Adelaide rarely gets frosts - it's all time record minimum is 0.0C but that was not in my lifetime. So all round it is a great place to grow vegetables (except in the height of summer unless they are really well established and mulched).

So, in early November we are cruuently in the growth groove. Warm days in the mid 20C's to low 30's. Still a touch of sub-surface moisture, and warm nights. So everything is growing like there is no tomorrow

Hark back to last weeks post. Here is the zuccini wtih two nearly full sized zuches on it. In fact I picked them the following day but they were whisked into a vegetable pasta and drowned in good Australian extra virgin olive oil and devoured before I could take a picture. 

The Queenland blue pumpkin has gone insane like they do. It's the first time I've ever bothered with them after being kindly given a blue and a butternet seedling by JenkoBianco. I plan to train it onto my carport roof and see how it copes up there.

My "2010 Selection" bean is just killing the other commercial varieties in terms of growth and overall healthyness. Tender Delight didn't like the little bout of warm weather we had during the week with a lot of leaf crisping. I can't recall having trouble with it before. It always seemed pretty heat hardy.

I planted some summer spinach with an expected maturity date of the challenge week. As we affectionally say here in Australia ""Pigs Arse"... It's ready now! Only 3 and a bit weeks after planting. Now if I can only get my kids to eat spinach. Recipes anyone?

Lots more to talk about but I'll leave that to next weeks post. The tomatoes have progressed enough to give a progress report on the different varieties. There are some real duds amongst them. More later. In the mean time a picture of my dog who guards my garden unless there is a car tyre around.