Relaxing after the hard work

The hard work we put in during spring is over and our garden is now established for the summer.  It's good that now the weather has warmed up there isn't much for us to do in the garden except keep an eye out for pests and harvest the tasty goodness the plants are providing.  (Oh, and to start thinking about what seeds to plant for autumn and winter!)

We picked our first corn of the season last weekend - sweet and tasty, but it needed a few more days, so we left the rest, but will pick some more tonight.  We planted about 40 corn seeds over 5 different plantings so we could have a reasonably regular harvest over the summer.  Sadly slugs ate the silk off the cobs of the first planting.  I'm hoping enough silk tips remained to fertilise the kernels, otherwise it will be a poor harvest.  The two cobs we picked on the weekend weren't too bad, but definitely missing some kernels.

We have been picking a couple of tomatoes each day - they seem to be attracting pests like magnets so we are picking them just as they start to change colour and ripening them inside the house in an effort to thwart some of the bugs.  We pick chillis, capsicums, herbs and rocket as we need it.  Ripe strawberries rarely make it into the house!

Last night we made a nice side salad of tomatoes, basil and rocket to go with some fritters we made using zucchini, onion and herbs from the garden.  It is so nice to be able to create a meal using ingredients we grew using no chemicals and watered with mostly rain water.

The traditional Aussie backyard of an expanse of lawn has been replaced with raised garden beds.  Thankfully the tomatoes calmed down after their initial booming growth and they have been concentrating on producing fruit, not sending more branches ever upwards!  If you look closely at the back of the photo you might be able to spot the lemon tree, apricot tree and nectarine tree.  Lost in the morning shadows are the cherry tree, fig tree and apple tree.

Our herb garden, but we also have a lot of other herbs in pots.

This morning, for the first time this season, I harvested more zucchini's than cucumbers, but this is probably because my husband picked a heap of small cucumbers a few days ago to pickle them.  And an egg from each of the chooks.