Beating the heat?

Day three of a week-long  heat wave and the pumpkins seem to be holding up relatively well.

I have two varieties in  -  Butternut and Jap.

You might notice the bundle of shade cloth lying beside the pumpkin bed? That's why the pumpkins are surviving I think. Uncovered and I'm sure they'd fry! I have photographed the pumpkins in the early morning thus the shadow of the photographer (apologies!).

I am leaving the pumpkins uncovered until midday to allow any pollination to happen and then I cover them with a 90% shade cloth until about 8pm when they get uncovered again. That's the approach I'm taking anyway, let's see if this method works for the rest of the week. Temps are supposed to stay in the high 30s and low 40s until Saturday!

These two plants have started to develop little pumpkins.

Let's hope the shade cloths will enable these little fellas to continue their development.

Other pumpkin vines  that were reasonably advanced during the last period of belting heat did not get the shade cloth treatment.

Sad specimens aren't they? They are still alive but have never recovered and are certainly not thriving enough to produce. The only reason I am leaving them in the ground is that at least they are providing some shade to the roots of a nearby apple tree.

The longer I garden the more I think that the oft said  tip about vegetable gardening - the one that says 'plant your vegetable garden in full sun'  - is just clearly wrong for an Australian summer. I find that  most of the plants in the vegetable garden do so much better in considerable shade, especially when I can't freely water due to relying on tank water alone.

 The photo below is of my haricot beans and cucumbers under a 90% shade cloth which remains on them all day. They are doing very well.

Even some of my chilli plants are benefiting with a little shade from an off-cut of a shade cloth.

The only plants that seem to actually thrive in the extreme heat and radiation are the eggplants.

These look to be in the shade but aren't. They are just a little shaded from the morning sun.

How is your garden surviving the heat wave? What things are you doing to protect your plants?

Stay cool SE Australia!

Spring seed raising

Quite a few weeks ago now, Liz from Suburban Tomato gave us a great run down of the tomatoes she was raising. Sadly I didn't have my act together then to make a similar post, indeed, I hadn't even started to raise my tomatoes or any other seeds as I feared a late frost -  I thought it was too early for our mountain slopes climate.

But now that the weather has jumped from maximums in single digits to ones in the mid twenties in the space of two weeks I feel like I am starting too late! Ah, gardening in a new environment!

 Here is what I am currently raising.

Tomatoes
Last year my tomatoes were a complete failure, mostly becasue it was scorchingly hot and also because we only arrived at Highfield in mid-November. This year I am hoping I will have much better fortune especially seeing as I have so many wonderful varieties with different shapes and colours. All these seeds came from Yvonne - thank you so much, I hope to do them justice.

• Juane Flamme 
• Red Pear
• Yellow pear
• Verna orange
• Green grape
• Oxheart yellow
• Speckled Roman
• Peach
• Purple Cherokee

Chillies/Peppers/Capsicums
I have gone completely overboard here with the encouragement and seeds from Nina and Bek. It's just that these plants seem to be able to survive the hottest of summers, and I do like a chilli or too and I have a secret desire to hold a chilli-based food festival... one day...

• Chilli - Long Cayenne
• Chilli - Padron
• Chilli  - Jalapeno - thanks Nina
• Capsicum -  Orange Glory - thanks Bek
• Capsicum - Hungarian Wax - thanks Bek
• Capsicum - 7 colour mix
• Pepper  - Merlin - thanks Bek
• Pepper -  Chocolate - thanks Bek
• Pepper - Absa - thanks Bek

Eggplants

• Listada di Ganda -  thanks Yvonne
• Prosperosa - thanks Bek
• Rosa Bianca

Greens

• Lettuce - Salad bowl
• Lettuce - Freckels Bunte
• Pak choi
• Fennel Florence
• Rocket

Beans and Peas

• Bean - Kentucky Wonder - thanks Nina
• Bean - Sex without strings
• Peas - Snow peas
• Peas - Pigeon peas

Onions

• Spring onions

Pumpkins / Melons

• Pumpkin - seeds from Pat Murray's pumpkins (Pat is King of vegetable growing at the annual Adelong Agricultural Show)
• Melon -  Minnesota Midget

Roots

• Beetroot - Crimson Globe
• Radish - Round Red

Zucchini

I have shared with you previously my obsession to enter the Gundagai Agricultural Show in the category, Three zucchinis under 18cms. I am hoping that I can grow three great specimens of different colours just to wow the judges. So I have planted the following varieties so far - I have a few other varieties held back for planting later in the season as insurance.

• Costata - thanks Bek
• Gold Rush - thanks Bek
• Greenskin
  
  
  

Don't you think a trio of green, yellow and speckled zucchinis would be a show stopper? If I am successful, perhaps  I can share my winnings  with Bek... but I am getting ahead of myself!

Herbs
I have put these seeds in but when they are up they will join my other more perennial herbs.

• Basil
• Thai basil -  thanks Yvonne
• Dill - thanks Nina

Flowers

• Marigold - French Bonita
• Marigold - Petite Yellow -  thanks Nina
• Larkspur - thanks Diana
• Nasturtiums - Red - thanks Nina -  the leaves are stunning, I am sure the flowers will be too
• Sunflowers -  Prado Red and Evening Sun, my usuals
• Zinnia
• my beautiful purple Holbrook poppies

That's it for the moment but I will be putting in some cucumbers and other things as the season develops.
What are you putting in?

Soon I will post on all the fruit trees I have put in over winter.

Harvest Monday - 24th June '13

It's been a good week for pickings despite the days being short and the mornings very frosty. It's also been a good time to hunker down inside and cook. This last week the pickings have been:

Fennel
Two lovely bulbs. These will be eaten tonight in a wild pork loin dish.

The tops of the fennel were huge - it seems such a waste not to use the tops, but I have never used them before, have you? And if so what for?

I tried offering them to my chickens but they don't eat them.

I cut my fennel bulbs off at ground level leaving the roots in the soil. I find that the roots re-shoot with more baby fennel and that these ones grow on pretty quickly as their roots are big and deep.

Parsley
There has been lots of parsley too, so much so that parsley now features in one of my vases.

Chillies
The frosty mornings have pretty much nipped back my chilli plants and I suspect it wont be long before the plants are knocked out completely. I have been picking chillies - green and red - to make sure I get the most of the produce. Still, when you think about it, it is pretty good to have chillies survive into late June when I live in a frosty mountain area.

Wombok and spring onions
Wombok and spring onions are featuring in many meals, mostly stir-fried and in Asian-style dishes.

What's coming up soon? Purple cauliflower - they are looking so pretty.

How are your pickings?

I am contributing this to Daphne's Harvest Monday.  Soon her blog will feature pickings from around the world.

Harvest Monday - 10th June '13

This week the winter produce has started to come in.  It's a great feeling. The pickings have been broccoli, chillies and some tiny capsicums picked green to beat the frost.

A little fennel - this bulb was picked as a baby fennel lightly sautéed to accompany a meal.

LOADS of parsley, loads and loads  - parsley with everything. At present I only have curled parsley.

More broccoli and the first of the cauliflower,

a rather pathetically small cauli, sigh!

A wonderful wombok,

much admired by Muriel the chicken,

Rocket, loads of rocket and a little rosemary. This rocket made a salad of rocket, shaved pecorino, garlic oil and lemon juice. It was fantastic.

It feels great to finally have so much produce. As a result, I have decided I don't need to buy any greens at all for the foreseeable. I have this produce and more coming thru. Finally after a horribly hard summer with almost no produce at all, this little pile of produce feels like true bounty.

How is your produce going? I am contributing this to Daphne's  Harvest Monday, pop over and see  the produce of others - there will be a little list of links to others' growings when the world turns a little more.

Harvest Monday on Tuesday

Kept inside by a heavy fog and warm heater I decided to document my meagre harvest of the last week and post it on Daphne's Harvest Monday.

Yes, you are right, it is Tuesday here in Australia, but I figure I am still 'legal' as it is still Monday somewhere inn the world and definitely Monday in the US where Daphne's blog is based. So here is the meagre harvest of the week just passed.

A few finger limes.  Liz recently explained what these little fruit are. These seem undersized to me but they fell off in my hand when I inspected the bush  and I figured they must have been ripe.

The finger lime I have is 'Collette' a black skinned lime with bright green citrus bubbles. Liz's finger limes are pink inside. The bubbles are highly fragrant as well as being very citrusy.

Most of the rest of the pick this week has focused on chillies and capsicums. The chillies are gradually ripening up and each day I pick about 5 -  not huge quantities but still they add to my stash which will sustain me for a year.

I also decided to beat the impending frost by picking my developing capsicums. They were meant to be large red capsicums, but I picked them green and stuffed them with a mix of feta and ricotta and pine nuts, topped them with smoked paprika and baked. Delicious.

And there has been a small pick of padron peppers as well, eaten by quickly tossing in a saucepan with olive oil and skin blistered and dashed with sea salt.

A fist full of spring onions completes the pick -  these went into my favourite eggplant dish - Spicy Eggplant - a Chinese style dish made by the Lad.

That's it really.  Head over to Daphne's for more produce.

Harvest Monday - 25th March 2013

The beetroot that were grazed off by the Wallaby earlier in the season have managed despite their mauling to survive and their roots are now thickening.  This last week I decided to pick a few - they are small but I always deliberately over plant beetroot  and use the first pickings to thin the crop. As time goes on the roots will become bigger as more space is made for others.

I have also been picking zucchinis determined to get most from this crop before the frost shuts it down.

Other pickings this week have been peaches - lovely white ones,

loads of rocket, some radish, herbs and some chillies which are getting strung up to dry.

and the first four snow peas, only two pictured here as I quickly ate the other two -  they often don't make it inside.

I am contributing this to Daphne's Harvest Monday. My harvest is pretty meagre for this time of the year for Southerners. I am sure that others who occupy this half of the globe will have much more produce to show you.

Show off!

Well the 98th Annual Adelong Show has concluded for the year. The Yanco Agricultural High School Equestrian Float and their highly groomed ponies have headed back up the Sturt, the pampered breed sheep and cattle can now rest in their stalls without having their wool separated and their confirmation critiqued and all can contemplate the competition and the judging, and, if they took out a prize, can stroke their felted ribbons and admire their prize winning cards.

As you will know from a previous post, I decided to try my hand and submit some entries in Section J - Jams, Jellies and  Preserves. Here is the display for Section J.

I entered 3 classes:

• Class 9 - Tomato Jam, any added flavouring with my Tomato Chilli Jam, and, drum roll please.... I took out Second Prize!

The winner of the class was  Ms Dianne Newland. It appears that there were only two entries in that class but I am consoled by two facts, 1. that the Rules and Regulations of the Pavillion  clearly state that "The Judge will not award prizes to exhibits which are not considered to possess sufficient merit" and,  2. that Ms Dianne Newland won just about every other class of Section J AND consequently  took out Most Successful Exhibitor  in the Section and was awarded a wonderful blue felt ribbon. I feel honoured to come second to such an awarded competitor and prolific jam maker.

• Class 22 - Plum Sauce. Well the class had more entries that Class 9.  There were 4 entries and I did not take out a prize. Instead the winner was Ms Joanne Crowe and in second place was Ms Leone Mears.

Congratulations Ladies!  Reflecting on my own performance and the look of the winning exhibits, I suspect I should have put my sauce through the blender, cooked my sauce on a bit to get a darker colour and popped it in a bottle with greater pouring ability. My sauce was a chunky one and I think the Stewards were looking for smooth and perhaps dark? Mine is the tall bottle with the yellow lid - pale but interesting as my mother used to say of me.

• Class 27 - Chutney AOV ( that's chutney Any Other Variety other than tomato, tomato chutney being Class 26). 

There were only three entries but I am glad to say that I took out second prize.  This time the winner was Ms Marlene Pearce. Well done Marlene!

My entry was a Peach Chutney made from my farm-grown  peaches, the very peaches I was in competition with the Wallaby for. The recipe was entirely made up from me head and adjusted for my palate. I am pretty chuffed at this one being such an improvised recipe.

In total I won $2.00, $1.00 each for each second place.  It cost me $1.50 to enter three exhibits. I donated the winnings to the Adelong Pastoral and Agricultural Show.

I was pretty pleased and excited at just taking part. I met lots of lovely ladies and saw lots of beautiful produce all of which I am sure tasted much better than anything in the shops and that very often I bet was made from home-grown produce. It feels great to have such simple home-made things valued at shows like these dotted all over the country-side. Well done everyone for making the world a more home-grown and home-made place.

That I took out two seconds makes me feel pretty happy, a small but warm achievement and a mark of being part of the community. 

On collecting my jars, one of the Stewards remembered me and my produce and commented that I had done very well and that I must enter again next year. I will, I promise.

On the journey home my prize-winning cards sat on my knee. Now at home, here they are along with their produce. 

On hearing that I had submitted entries, my mum joked with me that I will have to start a trophy wall, I guess I will have to find some way to show my cards... but perhaps not a wall. 

And The Lad said before the Show that if I won he'd carry my on his shoulders through Adelong. It's just as well I came second! Just as well as the main street of the town is so short.

Should anyone want to make my award-winning items, the recipes can be found here, I am happy to share:

• Tomato Chilli Jam
• Peach Chutney

Thursday Garden Gobbles - Peaches

Veggie Gobbler has started a new theme for Thursdays - Garden Gobbles. As the only glut I have at present is a peach glut this Garden Gobble features two dishes using peaches that I cooked this week. (It is possible that every Garden Gobble will feature peaches at this rate!).

Peach and almond muffins (*from the garden or thereabouts)
1 1/2 cup almond meal
1/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup  shredded coconut
pumpkin pie spices
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 eggs
75 gms butter
*1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
*2/3 cup of peeled and stoned peaches

For the topping
*Three pieces of peach for each muffin
Slivered almond pieces
Mix of pumpkin pie spice and raw sugar

*I have included the  honey as a garden product. It resulted from hives that were put on the neighbouring property  but just down the track from us. Given that we have lots and lots of trees, it's my bet that in part at least, this honey came from our Red Box tree flowers.

The recipe made 9 muffins, I ate one before I took the photo. They are pretty yummy but quite grown up in flavour. They do have an almondy taste (which I love) and are not very sweet.

Peach chutney (from the garden)
*8 peaches, peeled and stoned
8 tomatoes, peeled
2 capsicums (1 red, 1 green)
*1 long cayenne chilli
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
a nob of ginger grated
10 black pepper corns
10 white pepper corns
3 tsp black mustard seeds

This long cayenne was grown in my former city garden and kept in my frozen chilli stash

Cut fruit and veg up into chunks, add all ingredients into a saucepan and cook until it has thickened into a jammy thick sauce. Put into sterilised jars.

This quantity made 4 jars of chutney. I have tasted it, its a unique sharp and sweet chutney. I reckon it will be perfect with a really tasty cheese and a biscuit. I love the colours!

Pop over to Veggie Gobbler to see what others have contributed to Garden Gobbles.

Flaking it

One of the plants that just goes on surviving thru the heat and one of the few plants that the wallabies don't like to eat are my chilli plants. I don't have many -  just 4 - but they are ample for my needs. I always grow chillies cause I think they are so beautiful in the patch and because I like my food spicy.

Last year I preserved my chilli harvest in a number of ways - by making my rocket fuel recipe, a tomato and chilli jam recipe, by pickling in two different ways  and by freezing some for winter use. I still have plenty of jars of these left so I decided to take advantage of the dry heat to dry some chillies for making chilli flakes.

With the drying over I ground the chillies up yesterday in my big mortar.

I like the slight sting in the nostrils while grinding the chillies (dont rub your eyes Louise!).

I like the jar of chilli flakes that results!

How are you preserving your chilli harvest this year?