Monday Harvest – 4th March 2013

I start this week with a harvest I haven’t photographed in a while – curry leaves.  I harvest them regularly and my plant is doing really well despite being split almost in two and bound together with a pair of pantyhose.  It is growing well and has heaps of lovely leaves available for harvest.

While I’m on the topic of curry leaves, I had a request from a reader.  He has a curry leaf tree with the weird bumps on the leaves as you can see in the picture below.  Any ideas what it is – he can’t see any sign of insect infestation.

Growing very well at the moment are my silverbeet plants, although the occasional leaf has a dry spot or two, presumably due to the extended period of hot weather we are having.

The hot weather is helping to ripen the tomatoes which continue to yield despite the plants looking long past their best (ie mostly dead….).

The chillies are also enjoying the sun, I harvested Cayenne, Scotch Bonnet (Bishops Cap), Cherrytime, Hungarian Yellow Wax (pictured in the basket below this one) as well as Mini Mama capsicums this week.  I also accidently harvested some Sweet Mama capsicums – not sure how the branch broke off the plant but Mr 3 is probably the most likely suspect.

If you look closely at this next basket you will see 75% of this years strawberry harvest.  Okay so that is a slight exageration but it is close enough to reality for me to decide that I wont bother with strawberries next year.  Unless I can think of a way of keeping them away from slugs and snails and in enough sun to crop properly that is.

Although many of my photos this week have large tracts of red I am also harvesting a fair bit of green at the moment.  The celery has begun producing nice thick stems which I am cutting as I need them.  The Cavolo Nero is growing at a rate which allows me to pick a bunch of leaves each week, and thyme is available in huge quanities.  The bay I have to be more sparing with as something is eating the leaves and its not growing nearly as vigorously as I would like.  I suspect it would prefer a cooler climate.

I think I have managed to photograph most of the things I’m harvesting at the moment and just to prove it here is some basil, parsley and spring onions all of which I pick regularly.

What I don’t seem to have photographed are the eggplants, for those you will have to wait until next week but in the meantime head over to Daphne’s Dandelions for the party that is Harvest Monday.