Harvest Monday Oct 24th

I planted the tomato plants out last week but we'll have to wait a while before I start posting about their harvest.  Not that I'm complaining though.  This week we picked another enormous cauliflower which I forgot to photograph but it weighed about 1.8kg.  I did take a photo of what I made with some of it, a cauliflower cheese filo pie- yum.

The snow peas are still going.I used some of them and the first of the broad beans in a simple risotto.

Here is the start of the strawberry harvest, although of course with LittleFB around the strawberries never make it inside. But that's the way it should be.

For more harvests head over to Daphne's Dandelions.

What's new in the garden?

We are trying to grow a  few new things in the garden this year.  These weedy looking plants are oca or New Zealand yams. Despite their namethey are not a yam at all, but part of the oxalis family.  I bought 5 tubers from Diggers and planted them about two months ago into a bed out the front. You can see three plants in the front and one at the back, and a volunteer tomato... and lots of weeds.   The NZ yams  have a really long growing period - 9 months I think - and the tubers should be ready to harvest when the tops die down, a bit like potatoes .. MMSTL is excited because being a Kiwi he has a fondness of them. I've never tried one but they are supposed to taste quite nice, and get sweeter if you leave the tubers in the sun for a bit (it reduces the oxalic acid content which is quite high ).  Has anyone ever grown these successfully?

We've also put in some berry bushes out the front, a jostaberry, a red thornless gooseberry.  There is also a thornless blackberry that I got at the last food swap waiting to go into the ground.  Ignore the random cabbage - I couldn't wait to clear the bed! We already have lots of strawberries planted  under the fruit trees and they are doing great this year - the first ripe berries are just starting to come now.

Out the back we've put in a male and female kiwi vine.  We need to build a proper support for these especially the female because apparently when mature the vine can produce up to 50kg of fruit. That's a lot of kiwis...  I should confess to not having a very good track record with kiwi fruit. I've managed to kill three so far, but MMSTL is also very keen on kiwis (do you see a New Zealand theme creeping into our garden here?!)  so we are having another go.

We also have some new dwarf fruit trees in pots: two nectarines, a each and an orange which don't have any particular nationality but MMSTL is keen  on them anyway.  Are you trying something new in your garden this year?

On my mind - sewing for the school bazaar

I'm loving putting my fabric scraps together (some nice florals from the recent Vintage sheet swap, now closed) to make doll quilts for the school fete. I'm not quite sure what it is about making quilts that makes me happy, but it does.  Find out what others have on their mind today at Down to Earth.

Op-shop finds

I find Savers to be a bit hit and miss and their pricing is all over the place. Often items are priced really high, especially if they are 'vintage'.  For example, I recently saw a fake fur jacket for sale for $150. It's an op-shop for goodness sake.  So, I was pleasantly surprised to find a big bag of vintage  wooden sewing spools in a whole range of pretty colours for $2.99.

I also picked up fabric; not for me, but for the school bazaar - I've volunteered to do some sewing. Still deciding what to make, but am thinking messenger bags and some doll/bear quilts with the vintage sheets. Anyone got any other good ideas?

For more flea market find, head over to Her Library Adventures

Harvest Monday - Pumpkin!

No, I haven't moved to a different hemisphere.  In fact only I've only just planted out my pumpkin seedlings but its true - we 'harvested' a pumpkin that had been in storage since April.  It's one of the tree-dwelling Queensland blue pumpkins and it had stored beautifully for 6 months  in a dark cupboardd in a cool corner of the house.  We left the pumpkins on the vine until it died, left a long piece of stalk on each and left then on the front porch for a few weeks before we brought them inside. This one was the best, with no blemishes on the skin and despite changing colour from a grey blue to a orangey-grey the taste was still good.

We've eaten it so far in a spiced Indian Pumpkin dish from Madhur Jeffrey's world Vegetarian (picture above, yum!), pumpkin pie from this recipe (yum again) and there is still half left of the pumpkin left.  I hope we have as much success this year.

Other, more seasonal harvests this week included lots of snow peas, cabbage, spring onions, herbs, the first of the broad beans, beetroot, carrots and cauliflower.

We had friends round for lunch and had fun cooking with some of the harvest  - baby beet, mint and haloumi salad, spicy stir fried cabbage, quiche with broccoli and eggs from the girls, and steamed snow peas and carrots with walnut and coriander pesto.  A very tasty spring garden meal.

For more harvests, probably also including pumpkin, head over to Daphne's Dandelions.

Tomato seedling update

These tomato seedlings were planted as seeds about six weeks ago into paper pots.  All but two of the 18 varieties germinated (Stupice and bush champion didn't want to cooperate) and a couple of weeks ago, once the seedlings had their first set of true leaves, I transplanted them to larger pots containing a mixture of potting mix, worm castings and compost with some sulphate of potash mixed in, to help with the fruit production, and watered the whole lot in with some seasol.   

They are still living in the laundry at night but I have been putting them outside during the day to soak up some sun and harden them off a bit.   I think I'll wait a week or so before I put them in the ground. Tomatoes don't mind getting a bit root bound - apparently it helps them fruit better once they are planted. I did plant this one  though- husky red hybrid - because I ran out of pots so it will be interesting to see how it goes compared to the others.

So, at the moment I have about fifty seedlings in the laundry, WAY too many for us (although I am planning on growing about 20 plants) but it's always nice to have some extras to give away.  How are your little tommy seedlings going this year?  Have you planted in the garden yet?

 

Harvest Monday - bring on the brassicas!

The brassicas this year have been mostly successful - check out this monster cauliflower and cabbage!  These were planted at the front of the house in the bed that MMSTL dug out while ago.  Before we planted the seedlings of these (back in Feb I think) we dug in a few bucketful loads of dirt/compost from the chook run and the plants seemed to love it.  I say that the brassicas were mostly successful because we had no luck at all with growing Brussels sprouts.  They grew to about 1m tall, taking up a heap of space, developed  lots of tiny promising looking swellings up the stem  and then about two weeks ago every single plant went to seed. Bugger.  Not sure what we did wrong - maybe planted them too late and the warm-ish days we had a while ago just sent them into a spin.  Anyone in Melbourne had Brussels spout success?

Anyway, not to dwell on the negatives, here is a picture of the cauli head on the scales - 1.2kg. A whopper as my Dad would say.  I just picked it in time: you may be able to see in the picture that the head was just starting to break up.  We had friends round for dinner and I made some curries so this found its way into a potato and cauliflower dish with mustard seeds, ginger, garlic among other things, based on the potato dosa recipe fro Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen garden.  Yummy!