Monday Harvest – May 7th 2012

I seem to have coloured coded my first few photos this week.  Here we have the reds – still more chillies, a few cherry tomatoes from my Tiny Tim plant which is still going strong in a pot and some tamarillos.

Next the greens (or more accurately a single green) – I have been harvesting a fair bit of basil lately and making pesto for the freezer.  My plants are still growing but we’ve probably only got a few more weeks left before the weather gets a bit colder and they start looking very sad and sorry for themselves.

Now for the oranges – the colour not the fruit (I do have some fruit developing but they are small and very green at the moment).  I have really enjoyed growing Sweet Potatoes this year – I will write a separate post about it soon – but this harvest of a kg worth came from one of the plants which I removed after layering some of its stems.  I am hoping the layered segments will get through the winter and start growing again in Spring.

I have yet to cook these but the weather is screaming soup at me so I suspect that’s what they will become.

These next few bits look a little pathetic.  I dug a small Kipfler potato plant from my side bed and found these few spuds – summer potato plantings really don’t seem to be worth the trouble here.  I have been harvesting a handful of beans every few days – this looks like one of the smaller harvests but it is the only one that made it in front of the camera.  For the record they were Jade and I ate them stir fried.

This final harvest isn’t something I grew myself, I found them on the footpath as I walked to the shops, in fact I’ve found a few of these everyday I’ve walked down my road in the last couple of weeks.  What are they?  They are feijoas.  Feijoas, for those unfamiliar with them, are a South American fruit which are particularly popular in New Zealand and to a lesser extent here in Australia.  Interestingly when I lived in London I got a weekly Fruit box from Abel & Cole and feijoas featured in that on at least one occasion, so I presume that they must be grown in or near the UK as well.  The plants are often grown here as hedging but the fruit is edible as well.  I really like them they taste a bit like a guava, a slightly perfumey taste with a lightly acidic feel.  If you don’t like guava’s you probably wont like feijoas either, but if you do I think they are definitely worth a try if you can find them.

It will be interesting to see how many more weeks I’ll be able to include colours other than green in my harvest – a few at least but come June it may become more and more difficult (at least until the cauliflowers are ready).

For more vegetable ogling head over to Daphnes Dandelions.