Harvest Monday - 11th Feb 2013

The peach harvest has started in earnest. This morning I picked a small basket full of blushing, fragrant beauties.

They came off two different trees - one of the trees produces much smaller fruit than the other but both are delicious.

The smaller peach is a cling stone and the larger one a free stone. I don't know what variety they are at all.
Until now I have been eating 3 or 4 peaches a day, with this pick, I am going to need to find some peach recipes and get preserving.

My other pickings are still meagre.

This is the last of the tomatoes. The constant heat meant that the tomato plants just dried up. The fruit however because of the heat  had such a concentrated flavour. The chilli plants still produce.

My stash of mature spring onions is nearing its end now, more are just striplings having only recently germinated. These ones are so white because of the very deep mulch I have been applying.

There have been a few cucumbers to pick thru the week, every salad features cucumber at the moment. I wish I had enough to preserve as bread and butter cucumbers but the heat and the Wallaby has knocked the plants around a little too much.

I have also picked lots of mint and some oregano but I didn't take any photos...

I am contributing this to Daphne's Harvest Monday. Join her for pictures of lots more produce.

Harvest Monday - 4th Feb 2013

Well I finally have a range of produce to report on. While the pickings are tiny compared to this time last year, the move, the record breaking heat, the newly-made beds and the lack of water have meant that it's been a tough season.But enough explanations - here is what I have picked this last week.

Cucumbers and eggplants. The cucumbers are small but regular and very crunchy. The eggplants are tiny - no doubt from the stress of travel and transport, but there are eggplants!

Lots of mint. I pick a handful most days for salads and Middle-Eastern inspired dishes.

Rocket. I didn't take any photos of the rocket I have picked but again I am pretty much picking rocket every second day. Here is a picture of my rocket patch.

Radish. I's be picking more of these beauties but they seem to be a favourite of the raiding Wallaby.

Tomatoes. Tiny amounts of tiny tomatoes. Broad Yellow Ripple Currant and Brown Berry. The heat has pretty much wiped the plants out.

Zucchini. Just this one from my second Greenskin plant. There will be more.

And the first of the peach pick. I'm ripening some inside and some on the tree. These were too low on the tree within tempting reach of the raiding Wallaby.

Pilfered apples - These apples were not grown on the property, just a neighbour kindly brought them over after having gleaned them from the roadside. I was naturally delighted! They are better for cooking than eating. So far they have made an apple cake and tomorrow they are going into my Tomato Chilli Jam.

I am contributing the to Daphne's Harvest Monday. I am sure others will have much better produce to admire. Pop over and take a look.

Harvest Monday - 21st Jan

Finally I have something to show for myself! Pickings are meagre but they are happening. Here is what I have been picking this last week.

• two padron chillies - these will be gently fried in olive oil and dashed with sea salt this evening for a tiny  starter. Oh how I wish there were 20! My padron plant tries to give me more but each time the flower forms, the heat wave gears up and I guess the plant decided that survival is better than fruiting.

• small pickings of broad yellow ripple currant tomatoes and even fewer brown berries. This is today's picking but I have had similar pickings every two days. The yellow toms are very small, but actually really delicious.

• 4 cucumbers - yay! These were picked today and will go into a cucumber, pomegranate and feta salad.

One of them is quite wonky.

• Red chillies - I have picked many over the last few weeks. They are being stashed in the freezer for year round use, 

and from now on I am stringing some up on my trusty linen substitute to make dried chillies.

• I have also been picking lots of radishes - this is today's pick, meagre compared to other days.

Other things I've been picking that I haven't photographed.

• lots of rocket -  somehow this survived all the heat thrown at it.  It wilts but revives each day!
• spring onions
• herbs - basil, parsley and oregano

While pickings are slim, it feels great to be picking something.

Hope your gardens are surviving the heat (in Australia) and the cold in the other hemisphere!

You'll find much more produce to admire at Daphne's.

Master of space, master of heat

I love my Space Master cucumbers - they are actually growing and setting fruit, they are actually thriving.

This is a major miracle considering that most other things in my patch have either expired from heat exhaustion -  weeks of heat over 30c, most over 35c and into the low 40s.

I have 7 Space Masters in. I raised them here in Highfield more or less as soon as we got here. I started 8 off and 7 came up and I decided to plant them all out thinking that some might not make it - they all have.

They have benefited from the demise of others. As the beans expired from the heat or failed to develop becasue their growing tips had been nipped out, I re-distributed the grass-clipping mulch for the beans to the cucumbers. This picture below shows the ravaged bean patch. In front of these three cucumbers was once three rows of borlotti beans - now there is only one left and it is just hanging on.

The bed where three more cucumbers are growing is heavily mulched with bark and leaves from  the eucalyptus. This was the only other free mulch available. I couldn't get more mulch from mowing - it was too hot and a fire risk in itself, so I went out collecting the leaves from fallen limbs and the bark that the trees had shed. It has been very effective. The young chillies and capsicums have benefited as well.

I am looking forward to eating the first  produce from these little survivors. It is possible that I will have a glut  with 7 plants all setting fruit. I think this one is going to be a little wonky - I like wonky fruit.

The growing tips of the cucumbers are laden with flowering buds and look beautifully woolly.

What is your best survivor of all this heat? Got any good cucumber recipes or am I getting ahead of myself? It's good to dream that there will be some produce from this garden!

Harvest Monday - Christmas Eve

I am not sure whether to be delighted or despondent. Normally, I would be hauling produce in from the backyard in my favourite basket, providing  the Christmas table with tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, herbs, lettuce, rocket, radish, chillies, lemons and limes and sundry other things. But as we moved in mid November to our new place my beds are new and my produce scant. Still I guess I am picking something. Here is today's pickings...no where near what I would normally be bringing in and the chillies are tiny  -  a consequence of needing to be careful with the water at the moment?

Over the week I have picked a few other things too but in tiny amounts. I have had some more tomatoes - these are Brown Berries and Broad Yellow Ripple Currant.























Decent hands full of blueberries with another picking ready for harvest for tomorrow's breakfast.

But there are things on the way. My zucchs are fruiting up nicely now - the bees must have found them.

My zebras are doing very well, and, as it looks as though there are no fruit fly here, I may have them all to myself for a change!

My junior cucumber plants (Spacemaster) are looking very happy despite the heat we have had.

Tigger the melon is starting to run and the eggplants are forming.

Last night we had 40mm of rain and an amazing light show via the most  dramatic thunderstorm  you could imagine. The whole sky lit up at times like momentary daylight with sheet lightening across the distant hills.

This year we are sharing our Festive Season with new co-residents - the native wildlife that live at Highfield with us. Take a look at our Wildlife page to see who we have met already.

Best wishes everyone, may your garden prosper over whatever type of Festive occasion you celebrate at this time of year.

Winter wrap - '12

Winter here in Sydney has been a season of two halves.  The first part of winter was decidedly wet and the second half quite dry -  a harbinger of the return of the little boy  El Nino? The last part of winter has also been unseasonably warm - I am not complaining....

Here are some of my observations from this winter.

Harvests

• cabbage - mine have been savoy
• cauliflower - these were fabulous
• broccoli
• snow peas
• spring onions
• lemons, lemons, lemons
• limes
• fennel
• rocket
• herbs - rosemary, thyme, oregano, bay and mint towards the late part of winter
• some chillies in the early part of winter
• some sunflowers in the early part of winter

What I have learnt

• lime your brassica patch lest you get mini caulies
• broccoli is less fussy liming-wise than caulies
• snow peas are heaven on a stalk
• my mint needs more winter sun
• never take your parsley for granted - it can lure you into a false sense of supply cause it lives for two years, but when it's time is up, it's up and you are left without even a sprig
• fennel loves lots of water - it will grow well without it and produce lovely bulbs, but when it gets water a plenty, the bulbs are fat and white and juicy
• plant more fennel in succession
• late winter chives are incredibly flavoursome 
• bok choi is pretty and easy
• brassicas planted in winter avoid the cabbage moth when they are babies but get the moth visiting in late winter - but by that time they are growing strongly and are little affected
• this year I was rubbish at having something to pick in late winter - I still have my second crop of brassicas in the ground and only now forming heads!
• prunning your citrus in late summer and again when the growth re-awakens is a good thing to do
• the beans you dried in summer are fantastic for winter meals
• baby rainbow lorikeets have black eyes and beaks
• lemon trees are sacred

Pleasures

• lemons all winter
• the beauty of a cauliflower
• seeing my first blueberries flower and form fruit
• thyme flowers
• the glut of lime flowers and miniture forming fruit
• the birds that visit my garden - rainbow lorikeets and currawongs especially
• Half-tail would be a comedian if s/he was a human

Homecoming

Plenty of those lovely spiders that live in curled leaves.

Back at home.  Phew!  Survived the retreat without saying or doing anything embarrassing.

After greeting the man, it was into the garden to survey, prod, determine progress, revive. Here are some things I found.  All is well with the universe!

And the big round spider is in its usual little nook on the eucalypt.

The lambertia is flowering (some might know them as 'mountain devils')

Laurie (or is it Keats?) still dropping in.

The radish and the rocket I planted in seed form on Saturday are already up! - this is the radish.

A cucumber is ready to pick