Harvest Monday – 20th Jan 2014

Happy New Year!  Apologies for the lack of posts for the last couple of weeks but I have been making the most of the holiday season and I don’t like advertising our holidays online.  Unduly paranoid?  Perhaps….

We are back now though and I am keen to start making the most of some summer crops.  If only I had some to make the most of….  Actually that’s not quite true, but it is fair to say that I have found this season challenging thus far.  Our cool Spring made way for a mostly mild start to summer until the weather woke up and decided to hit us with 4 days over 41 (106F) in a row.  Needless to say the garden wasn’t completely happy with this turn of events….

On the bright side it has meant that the first of the tomatoes are starting to ripen:

The back two are Tigerella.  I’m not sure what the front ones are.  Between the chooks and any number of small children almost all of my plant labels have either been moved or disappeared completely.

I picked the tomatoes under-ripe mainly because I am still concerned with the resident rodent population.  So far they seem to be content to feast on chook food and, more irritatingly, the figs, but I suspect its only a matter of time before they go in search of new flavours.  Hopefully they wont like the cucumbers even if they find them, as I’ve been really enjoying the first few of this seasons harvest:

Other than cucumbers and tomatoes the only other really summery crop ready in reasonable numbers are beans.

It has been a weird year for beans.  The chooks sat on my bush butter beans and the climbers haven’t put out many flowers despite masses of lovely green growth.  As a result I’ve getting handfuls of beans rather than basketfuls.

The Red Russian Kale, on the other hand, has been a far more predictable performer.

Thankyou to Nina for the seed.

I suspect the lettuce sensed the imminent heat wave and most of it bolted before temperatures even hit 30.

Another victim of the heat were these lemons, which the tree gave up, presumably to reserve energy for saving itself.  In contrast the turnips seemed unfazed by the temperature fluctuations.  I picked this one but in retrospect I’m not sure why as I have only ever used them in soup so now I’m at something of a loss to know what to do with it.

I know what to do with potatoes though so these Kipflers and Dutch Cream were most welcome for salads;

Other harvests this week included a handful or two of kumquats – the first my relatively young tree has produced.  I think I will candy these and then use them on top of cheesecake.

This week also saw the first of my padron peppers.  These came from a tree which overwintered in a pot. I planted it out in the beds in September.  I have yet to eat these so I can’t comment on flavour yet but I am intrigued by the fact they are fatter and more of a squat shape than those the plant produced last year.

My final harvest this week was a red cabbage.  The variety is ‘Red Express’ which I have posted on previously.  In the past I had only ever tried growing it during our winter and I had been completely unsuccessful.  Clearly it likes more warmth than our winters provide as this attempt was far more fruitful.  Pleasingly I have a couple more coming on to enjoy after this one:

As usual this post is for Daphne’s Harvest Mondays.