Monday Harvest – 13th Feb 2012

After my complete failure to photograph any of my tomato harvest last week, this week I’ve sought to make amends.  Pictured are Rouge de Marmande (the big red ones), Yellow Boy, Black Cherry and at the bottom some Tommy Toes.

This next photo shows some more Tommy Toes with the first of the Black Krims.  I am hoping that Black Krim tastes good as its been a long time coming and there aren’t many more on the plant.  It is interesting how much longer some varieties take to fruit than others.  The seed for this was sown at the same time as other varieties which first fruited in December, a good 8 weeks earlier.  I do think my patience levels are more suited to the earlier fruiting varieties…..  I’m also wondering, and this is pure speculation, if the climate is better suited to the earlier fruiters too as this was may have been put off setting fruit by January’s warm weather.   

I did harvest things other than tomatoes, a typical basket of salad leaves, beans and well…more tomatoes.  I have been really, really pleased with the lettuce I put in my old potato bed, all that manure and pea straw is producing really quick growing lettuce, enough for a green salad everyday.

I made a really nice chicken curry this week using chicken thighs on the bone, it was just a standard chicken curry (onion, garlic & ginger base,  to which you add ground spices coriander, cumin, tumeric, chilli & salt then tomatoes) with some cumin seeds and curry leaves tempered and added at the end.  I do like using chicken on the bone it does get more flavour into the dish.  Here are the curry leaves I used, photographed in the only position inside the house with enough light at dinner time to not need to use the flash.  Unfortunately this does mean you also get a glimpse my windows – made filthy by the fingers on Mr 2.  I would clean them but they only return to that condition within days (if not hours)…..sigh – I’m just not very good at housework….

Well…perhaps its not that I’m not very good at housework, more that I am too busy harvesting and photographing chillies, garlic chives, capsicum and strawberries.  We have been getting a few strawberries each week – not many but they are still coming.  This autumn I plan to spend some time sorting out the strawberries to try and get a bigger and better crop next year.  One of the chillies along with the capsicum and garlic chives went into a Beef in Black Bean stir fry.

We also harvested some more Lebanese cucumbers – we didn’t get as many this week – only 4 and all at the start of the week, but there are quite a few new ones coming on so perhaps the lull is temporary.  And it would be remiss of me not to comment on my first passionfruit.  We have now had 3 and there are quite a few more to come.  Passionfruit harvest themselves so its more a matter of picking them up off the ground than harvesting them per se but that doesn’t make it any less exciting.  The kids ate this one about 2 minutes after this photo was taken.

And that is all in my harvest world for this week, but head on over to Daphne’s Dandelions and see what everyone else is bringing in.