Winter tomatoes

When the frosts started last month we pulled out a few tomato plants that still had lots of tomatoes coming and we hung them by their roots from the roof of the patio.  It was a bit triffid-like under the patio for a while, but now the plants have shrivelled.  Some of the tomatoes are not faring well, but others are still plump and ripening.  They aren't as tasty as they were in the summer, but roasted and blended they make a great alternative to tinned tomatoes (and we didn't have to find time in the summer to bottle them!). 

An assortment of Red Fig, Black Russian, Green Zebra, Tommy Toe, Mortgage Lifter and Sunny Boy.

After the frost

We had our first frosts for the year this week.  It was a chilly -3oC last night.  Surprisingly our basil hasn't been affected yet.  The eggplants are also still ok, but I think it is too cold now for any more of the flowers to set.  

The zucchini's have been wiped out.

Floods of spuds

Ok, we haven't been inundated with 'floods' of spuds, but we have been fortunate with quite a good potato harvest.  As this was our first time growing them in the ground it could just be beginners luck, but in case anyone wants to try it (and so I remember for next year!) - here is what we did.

1.  Mix your favourite fertilizer through the soil where you are going to plant your potatoes.  We use commercially bought composted cow manure, blood and bone and a sprinkle of potash.
2.  Dig a trench - I think we went down about 15-20cm.  Put the soil along one side of the trench.  Place a thin layer of clover down in the trench (I read somewhere that it is good to use clover and since we have a big patch of clover in our lawn I thought I'd try it).  Lay the potatoes about 20cm apart in the trench.
3.  Cover the potatoes with about 5-10cm of soil and then a thick layer of your favourite mulch (we use either lucerne or pea straw).
4.  Water them in.
5.  Care for them and wait a while.  When the sprouts are about 10cm or more out of the ground cover them with the remaining soil (from when you dug the trench) and another layer of mulch.  The sprouts should still be poking above the layer of mulch.
6.  Care for them some more and wait a while.  When the sprouts are 10cm or more above that layer, add a layer of homemade compost and another thick layer of mulch.
7.  Keep caring, and wait just a bit more...
8.  After the potato plants have died, carefully dig up your harvest!

We are still waiting for all of our potato plants to die off before the final harvest - but we have several kilos already. 

New vegetables

There is a definite chill in the air in Canberra, leaves on the deciduous trees are starting to turn yellow and orange and our garden is changing.

The zucchini plants are starting to die, the flowers on the tomatoes are easing, and the chooks are slowing down on egg production.  But other things are just coming into full swing.

Today's beautiful eggplants.

I've dug up half of our potato crop, the others are still waiting underground.

An Autumn Garden

Our first (and only!) watermelon.  I forgot to take a photo of the inside - it was very pale pink, with lots of seeds, and it was very juicy. 

Our eggplants are about to reach peak production - so moussaka is on the menu for us next week!

I was going to leave our rhubarb plants to build up this year so we would have a big crop next year.  But they have sent up so many leaves that I decided to pick some.  I stewed it tonight with some of the apples we picked last weekend.  Lovely.

ps:  did you notice the stray Autumn leaf that came in from the garden?!

Apple picking

We've driven to the NSW south coast a few times over the past few years, but we've never driven down in the Autumn.  So it was a wonderful surprise for us on the trip down a couple of weeks ago to see that there are lots of apple trees by the side of the road!  Zipping past in the car we could see lots of different types (based on the colours!).  So on the way home we stopped and picked a bagful.  The apples are blemished on the outside, but beautiful on the inside.

19...

The number of zucchinis I picked yesterday.

15...
The number of zucchinis from the Tromboncino vine.

Thank goodness we have the chooks converting them into eggs!

Zucchinis!!

Wow, we have so many zucchini's we just don't know what to do with them.  We have been giving them away, eating them ourselves and giving them to the chooks.  The funny thing is - 95% of the zucchinis are coming from only one plant. 

Our Zucchini Tromboncino is highly prolific and we usually pick at least 4 every couple of days from that one plant.  Unfortunately the chooks don't like those zucchinis because they are all firm flesh and no seeds.  So the chooks don't eat the zucchinis, even if I cut them up.  Today I went through the fridge and pulled out all of the zucchinis that we haven't been able to get through.  The crisper section of our fridge was full of them!  I zapped the zucchinis through the food processor to grate them and gave the gratings to the chooks - they quite enjoyed scratching through the huge pile!

Pink beans

We harvested lots of scarlet runner beans last week - before they are cooked they are hot pink with purple spots.  I'm not a big bean fan, but how can you say no to pink vegetables?!

Leeks in the kitchen

Today we picked some leeks from the garden and made our Leek, Rice and Gruyere Tart for dinner.  Yum!

We tried something different today and topped half the tart with sliced Black Russian tomato.  A side salad with everything homegrown (except the dressing!) - green beans, rocket, four different types of tomatoes, cucumber, capsicum, basil and zucchini.

Weekend work

What a wild week of weather it has been - Cyclone Yasi in Northern Queensland and the icy conditions across North America, even our blazing hot days have been interspersed with rain storms.  Late on Thursday afternoon when we were going home a storm suddenly blew in.  As we were driving along a road not far from home we saw branches ripped off trees and the rain was so heavy the traffic slowed to a crawl.  The next morning when we drove back along that road we saw several trees had been pulled up.  Today the heat has been replaced by a pleasant (and welcome!) cool change.

Yesterday afternoon we made more tomato sauce.  We only used Sunny Boy tomatoes, which are yellow when ripe, so we were somewhat flummoxed when the sauce turned red...

Six jars of sauce this time (we used more tomatoes than last time).  But why is it red??

  

  Yesterday morning we went blackberry picking again - blackberry season is in full swing and for the first time we filled all of our containers, and it only took a little over an hour to do it.  2.05kg

Today we used 1kg of the blackberries to make blackberry and apple jam.  My husband was busy with other chores, so I was left in charge - sadly baking is the only thing I can successfully do in the kitchen and I overcooked this jam (like I have done with the other jam I've made).  It is VERY thick.  I'm not sure what bread or scone will be sturdy enough not to crumble if we try to spread this.  It tastes great though!

Fruit and spuds

The tomatoes currently filling up our kitchen.

We planted two dutch creams from the cupboard and they were growing nicely, but they started to die in the heat, so I dug them up yesterday.  The potatoes are small but tasty.  About 500g all up.

Our blackberry haul from yesterday - 1.35kg.  We froze them on trays and then poured them into these bags.  They will keep nicely in the freezer until we want them for pies or crumbles in the winter.

A harvest with a twist

Our afternoon harvest.

 

In case you couldn't see it - a twisted zucchini and the first eggplant of the season!

 And a monster parsnip.  My husband cut it before I took the photo - but I'm sure you can imagine how big it was before he cut up part of it for chips...!  I put my hand in the photo for size comparison.  We aren't sure how it got quite so big - it must have grown very fast!

And today's cake - there were lots of blood plums at the farmers market yesterday, so we knew what cake I would be making!  Blood plum and yoghurt.

Four little jars

Yesterday we converted 2kgs of home grown tomatoes into homemade tomato sauce.  We've made jams and chutneys before so we thought that 2kgs of tomatoes would make quite a lot of sauce, but it only made four little jars.  It smells amazing though!  Now we have to wait a month for the flavours to develop before we can use it.  We can hardly wait and are already planning a BBQ for that day!

1.1kg of Sunny Boys and 0.9kgs of Tommy Toes

Add vinegar, onion and spices (and we added a chili for extra zing).

A strong clove smell permeated through the house, but close up it smelt just like tomato sauce.

Finished product - we sieved out the tomato skin and spices, but left in the tomato seeds.  And even with all those yellow Sunny Boys it is still quite red. 

Tomato Festival!

Our zucchinis and cucumbers are still producing abundantly, and now the tomatoes are starting to really kick into gear.  If anyone has any good tomato sauce recipes please pass them our way - we hope we'll need it soon!

The plate at the front is today's harvest - including our first Black Russian and first Green Zebra of the season (to go with the Tommy Toes, Rouge de Marmandes [our favourite], Sunny Boys and Yellow Pears).  If you look closely you can see a funny 'snowman' shape Yellow Pear tomato.  The plate on the left at the back is yesterday's harvest, and the plate on the right are some older tomatoes.

From garden to plate

One of our corn plants developed three separate cobs - so generous!

 Home grown side dishes - makes for a quick and easy dinner.

Weekend lunch and long sleeves

This afternoon's harvest - four zucchinis (three different types); three cucumbers (including a super long one!), some tomatoes (three different types), dwarf green beans, oh and there was also a couple of eggs (not in the photo).

We picked some more corn on Saturday for lunch - yum!  There were a few missing kernels but the slugs eating the silk didn't do too much damage. 

Yesterday I picked the last of the boysenberries, but the strawberries are just starting to get into full swing so we should have another month of berry-joy.

And last, but not least - I managed to get into some solid knitting yesterday afternoon and finished off the first sleeve for my husbands stripey jumper (started about 9 months ago).  Then I attached it and sewed up the side seam.  I don't seem to have great curved seam technique, so the sleeve seam is a little bit lumpy.  Oh, and despite checking measurements about 20 times the sleeve still managed to be about 5cms too long!  Never mind.  I can't face undoing the seams and frogging back half the sleeve, so it will stay a long armed jumper.  Only one more sleeve to go and then the neckband and then it's done.  Hooray!  I think I can finish it in a couple of weeks.  So it is definitely time to decide what yarn to buy next.  Does anyone have any tips on how to prioritise potential projects?  There are so many projects I'd like to make and I just can't decide what to do next.

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.

Parmesan Bean Recipe

Growing our own produce has encouraged us to eat foods we wouldn't usually eat, just because homegrown tastes so good.  This winter we planted brussel sprouts and were left wondering why they have such a bad reputation - we thought they were OK. 

This summer we planted green beans.  My husband likes them, but I didn't.  Until now...

After picking a handful of dwarf green beans we wondered what to do with them.  So we had a look through a couple of recipe books for ideas and then I came up with this.  I'm sure it isn't a new idea - but it is definitely a tasty one!

Boil the beans for a few minutes.
Remove the beans from the water and drain on paper towel.
Toss the drained beans with chopped garlic and chili in oil in a hot frying pan - for about 10-20 seconds, take it off the heat before the garlic turns brown.
Place beans and garlic and chili onto a serving plate, season with salt and pepper and then grate fresh parmesan on top.

It is a wonderful side dish, but I could probably eat this as a main meal if we had enough beans!

The continuing berry story

This summer has seen our best raspberry harvest yet.  We haven't weighed all of the raspberries we harvested, but I would estimate there has been at least 600g so far.  That doesn't sound like much, but 600g of raspberries go a long way! 

Sadly they are reaching the end of their season, but...  the boysenberries are just starting.  Boysenberries are so juicy and zingy, but the thorns on the canes are very spiteful!