Potting up, moving out

My patch is pretty empty now. I have harvested the last of my savoy cabbages and beetroot and now the only things left in the patch are some herbs (mint, Vietnamese mint, thyme, chives, parsley), some flowers (poppies, lupins, the end of the violas and pansies) and some self-seeded tomatoes from last year's crop. I hope that the new residents will like what is left and feel excited about planting up their favourite things into the patch.

Everything that I would have in the ground at this time of the year has been raised in pots ready for the move.

I have these vegetables ready for the move:

• eggplants
• tomatoes 
• chillies 
• fennel
• spring onions
• zucchini

and these herbs:

• parsley - Italian and curled
• mint - Vietnamese and just mint
• basil
• sage
• dill
• thyme
• chives
• garlic chives
• marjoram / oregano - I never know which -  do you?
• rosemary
• lavender
• bay
• yarrow

and then there is some fruit:

•  Collette the finger lime (this is probably overly optimistic as I am not sure how she will handle the frosts!)
• the blueberries

I have cut some right back -  the chives and bay have received a big haircut today. Others have been staked, well watered and mulched over some time so they might be more tolerant of the drive. I hope that it will be a mild day the day we move.

I am hoping that they all survive and that the vegetables will settle into a new, no-dig  raised bed  which will be hastily constructed soon after arrival. The herbs I am likely to keep in pots for a while. And then there will be other things to get started  as soon as I get organised at the new place - beans, corn, pumpkin, rock melon, cucumber ...

I will be leaving behind my special, special espaliered lime trees and my fabulous lemon tree. These citrus plants have given such pleasure.

This final picture is of my last harvest - 3 savoy cabbages and some baby beetroot.

Bye my Sydney garden - friend and comforter.

Harvest Monday - 15th October 2012

I was silly... I posted about much of my harvest this week last Friday.

It was a Friday thing... a post work stroll thru the patch and the sort of ritual of picking that helps to soothe the working week away  - and it was such a good picking that I had to post about it then and there so plenty more produce shots there.

But to cover off  the whole week, last week I picked quite a nice stash of produce. Here it is.

• 1 main head of broccoli
• lots of broccoli side-shoots
• 2 big heads of cauliflower
• several bunches of new baby radishes
• the last of the snowpeas
• lots of herbs - oregano, thyme, parsley, basil, mint and bay
• 1 fennel bulb
• lettuce leaves
• rocket leaves
• celery leaves
• a solid bunch of celery stalks
• a bunch of young sweet beetroot
• a big handful of  lemon leaves

I also raided my stashes of the chillies from the freezer from last summer's glut, opened  new jars of my rocket fuel chilli sambal and my sweet chilli and tomato jam and dug into the home made strawberry jam and lemon marmalade.

These ingredients have gone into all sorts of food:

• broccoli oreccietta 
• lamb kofte with mint and wrapped in lemon leaves
• roast beetroot and mint salad - one of Suburban Tomato's recipes that is now a regular on my menu
• fresh green salad with loads of different leaves, herbs and fennel
• radishes dipped into hummus
• vegetable juices with quite peppery celery
• piles of steamed snow peas

It's a nice time in the garden and on the plate. I am contributing this to Daphne's Monday Harvest list, there will be plenty of produce to look at there soon, when the earth turns a little more.

What are you enjoying eating at the moment with your home growns?

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

More bean feeds

Picked

• big pile of snow peas
• side shoots of broccoli
• parsley
• oregano

Not a particularly cold evening, but nonetheless a bean feed was in order. Tonight's bean feed  was a chickpea and chorizo dish. This one is adapted from a recipe which appeared in Gourmet Traveller April 1999 which had a Spanish theme. It is an absolute favourite.  I have put the recipe here as I now use it rather than as originally published.  It is such a favourite that I don't use the recipe any more, it's just in my head.

Chickpeas and chorizo with red capsicum (* from the garden)

2 red capsicum

1 large onion

4 cloves of garlic*

2 chorizo sliced

2 can chickpeas

1 can tomatoes

2 chillies*

half a teaspoon of  rocket fuel*

bay leaves*

saffron

smoked paprika

oregano* and parsley*

Cut capsicum into pieces and grill until skin is black, sweat in a plastic bag and remove skins. Cut into rough pieces.  In the meantime brown chorizo and once oil released cook onion and garlic. Drain chickpeas and add to pan with tinned tomatoes, chillies, rocket fuel, spices and bay leaves. Cook on a low heat until the flavours have melded. Serve with a sprinkle of oregano and parsley.

Dried beans and winter food

One of the great pleasures of winter is beany, soupy, stewy things. They are the kind of food, like good porridge and risotto, that warm you from the inside out.

It was a cold for Sydney (max 14c) and drizzly wet day yesterday (and is again today) and so I decided to make a beany thing. It all started by me remembering that, way back in the cupboard, was a stash of home grown dried beans.

I have two jars of a former season's dried beans. I didn't dry any of last summer's beans, I guess I didn't need to considering I had two jars! I tend to dry my beans when I have been away on holidays from the garden when the beans are in full flush and come home to beans too fat and bulging to be nice to eat green. I don't let them go to waste though and pick them off  just before they are fully dry and do the last bit of drying on the back verandah and then jar them up.

The two jars are of two different beans. One is a  lovely brown skinned bean. It was a green bean, but do you think I can remember which?  I am serially bad at noting varieties, its something I need to change.

The other jar is the dried bean of a climbing borlotti. It dries a two-toned brown rather than lovely red and cream pods they come from. The original seeds came over the fence from the Italian-origin neighbours. The pods were red and cream -  just like normal dwarf borlotti beans.

I made a beany, soupy thing out of the brown beans.

Lamb shank and bean thick soup
(* from the garden)

2 lamb shanks
1 cup dried brown beans*
1 onion chopped fine
2 carrots chopped fine
2 sticks celery chopped fine
4 cloves garlic chopped fine
1 can tinned toms
stock (I had home made chicken stock in the freezer)
risoni
bay leaves*
rosemary*
thyme*

Soak beans overnight. Drain and put on to boil  until cooked a long way thru they don't have to be totally cooked cause you will cook them in with the rest of the ingredients. Brown the lamb shanks and discard any excess unwanted fat. Sweat onion, garlic carrot and celery in the same pan that you browned the shanks in. Add all ingredients into a large saucepan and cook on a low heat. Eventually the meat falls off the bone, remove the bone and any of the bits that you don't like.When the beans are cooked thru serve with toast.

I am contributing this recipe to Greenish Thumb's Garden to Table Challenge.

But what's your favourite beany thing to eat during winter? Are you a chilli con carne fan like myself?
Which beans to you grow to dry?