Mother’s Day was in the month of May. What this meant for me was taking a day out to potter in the veggie garden. Bliss!

My nature strip veggie patch was a jungle and needed some attention. In April, the patch exploded with plants and was looking lush, still looking lush in May but the weeds had taken over.

One night while getting some zucchini, beans, silverbeet and eggplant for a Thai curry I was making, I noticed my zucchini had tiny holes in it, like it had been stung by something. I could still eat the zucchini, but cut out the bits where the zucchini had been stung. I made a mental note to investigate this further, but my mental note was soon forgotten. It wasn’t until I was weeding near the zucchinis that I saw the culprits – tiny yellow wasps.

The other crop that suffered from being attacked by pests this month were my kale. Grasshoppers or caterpillars had a nice feast on my kale seedlings. At first when I saw that something had been eating my kale, I thought it might have been snails, so I sprinkled egg shells all around these little seedlings. Then one day when I was harvesting some greens there was movement amongst the leaves – it was then I noticed those pesky little grasshoppers but at the same time I noticed the white cabbage moths fluttering nearby! Poor kale. I think it is too late for them to recover – I shall just have to plant some more seedlings and make sure they are protected.

My Snowpea seeds germinated and were growing nicely in May. One night we must have had some strong gusts of wind, as the tripod that they were growing around had fallen over. Luckily the plants hadn’t been trained to grow on the tripod, so I could stand the tripod up. In addition, their tendrils were long enough to train them on the bottom of the tripod.

I had been given some cabbage seedlings this month by the gorgeous lady at the markets who I buy seedlings off. I had bought some purple cauliflower, Di Ciccio broccoli and various types of lettuce seedlings from her. As I was paying for these veggies she offered me some cabbages and I gladly accepted the offer. I haven’t grown cabbage in the veggie patch for years. These cabbages seedlings went in the nature strip veggie patch, as they will grow quite big.

My bush bean plants have been providing me with handfuls of beans this month. I actually don’t mind that I’m not getting this huge crop – it seems like I’m just getting enough for our family’s needs.

In May, I decided to give bush sugar snap peas one more go. Third time lucky, so they say… I was hoping this would be the case! I had learned my lesson from the first two times, so they were not going to be sown in the same place this time around. Instead, I had sown them underneath a trellis. It looks like they have all germinated and are so far doing great.

There is a quick rundown of what has been happening in my veggie patch this month. For more regular updates, don’t forget to Like our Facebook page.

WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR MAY HAPPENINGS IN YOUR VEGGIE PATCH? WE WOULD LOVE TO KNOW! PLEASE LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.