February is a fleeting month.

I don’t know if it’s because there are only 28 days but February is more like blink and it’s gone. We had two days where we had some decent rain in February. This was most welcomed, not only the garden enjoyed it but us humans as well! You get excited when you haven’t seen rain for a while and all of a sudden – it’s raining!

My snake beans have been tasty additions in my stir-fries this month. I will be saving some seed from these plants. I love snake beans and how they just grow seemingly overnight. Because they are so long, you don’t need that many to add to a stir fry.

The start of Feb was great for planting leafy greens, according to my moon planting calendar. I have been looking forward to having some lettuces that don’t bolt due to the weather for months. Some lettuces went in – only to be scratched up by a baby bush turkey…more about that later. My lettuces are the heat tolerant type and have been doing ok this month.

I also tidied up the nature strip veggie patch this month. With all of the hot weather we had in January, I hadn’t really looked after this veggie patch. Old sunflowers came out and the kids had a ball picking the seeds from the massive sunflower head that had drooped to the ground. Anything else in the patch that had seen better days were pulled out also. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of cucumbers from this patch, especially with no Armenian ones yet although there is a little Armenian cucumber developing as we speak! But as I said last month two cucumbers are better than none! 

After tiding the patch up, the kids and I sowed loads of sunflower, silverbeet, zucchini and bean seeds. We also put some eggplant seedlings in as well as some calendula flowers. We had an awesome morning in the garden. It has been a joy to watch my little one’s face every morning as she checks the progress her bean seeds are making and says ‘Look, I planted that!’ She gets really excited.

One thing that has started to take off  this month is a spaghetti squash vine. A friend gave me some seed to try and there is a little squash that is starting to develop. I have never grown these before so I would like to be able to get one spaghetti squash to eat.

Now to the new addition my garden has. A baby bush turkey. I noticed him (or her, I don’t know how to tell), one morning. I was hoping it wasn’t a bush turkey as it was tiny and cute –  I couldn’t tell for sure. So onto our Facebook page that night to ask you guys. The response I got was overwhelming – I did indeed have a baby bush turkey! As cute as he looked, (I also found out that they are left to fend for themselves once hatched) and although I felt sorry for him, these thoughts quickly disappeared once I noticed he liked scratching around in my lettuce patch. Most were lettuces were ok, (after I moved the mulch off them) but some were scratched out of the ground.

It will be interesting times with the bush turkey in the garden. If he stuck to one area like the far back corner of the garden where he can scratch to his heart’s content, I wouldn’t mind so much. The veggie patch now has some barriers around to discourage him from visiting this area – so far so good. Also, if the kids are in the garden they try to catch him because they just want to pat him…maybe he will realise it’s not so nice in our garden and will move along. Fingers crossed!

What has been your FEBRUARY happenings in your veggie patch? We would love to know! Please let us know in the comments below.