Monday Harvest – 8th July 2013

Before I kick off with my harvests this week I had a question from a reader that I had no idea how to answer.  Does anyone have experience with apricot trees and their ailments?  If so Nola would love your help.  This is her query below:

Hi Liz (and all),

 I wonder if anyone has any ideas about apricot trees and their ailments? Mine developed what looks like a deep split in the bark last year which it sealed up with sap.
All seemed OK but I did think the harvest was down a bit. This winter the trunk has developed a bigger split about eight inches long..(20cm?) and a great gush of sap has come out pooling around the base of the tree. If it had been a person I think I would have called an ambulance. It is planted in a wet area of the garden…which hasn,t been a problem up until now…as you will understand. Could this split be a consequence of too wet feet do you reckon? Or has anyone any ideas…please? I,d hate to loose this wonderful tree.

Harvestwise the garden is slowing down, it seems to be really struggling with the lack of sun this year.  Ironically our weather has been lovely and sunny for the most part this winter (save the last few days) but the short days at this time of the year coupled with the long shadows and my neighbours trees mean that the plants don’t really get to appreciate it.  Despite this I do seem to have a few pics to share this week and here they are:

My third celeriac.  I have two more in the ground.  I’m really pleased I planted these.  The have taken a long time but I have a section in the middle of my biggest bed that I can’t actually reach from the outside which suits long growing crops like celeriac so the wait has been the issue it would have been otherwise.

Thinking about it many of this weeks crops are long maturing.  This ginger took a good 8 months to mature.  The leaves finally died down this week so I decided to harvest.  I was contemplating leaving it and hoping for a bumper crop this year but I just don’t have the self control for that.

Cauliflowers aren’t the quickest of crops either but I was pretty pleased with this one.

The broccoli was quicker but no less delicious for its brevity.

I decided this week to harvest many of the remaining chillies and capsicums.  A couple of the plants were looking pretty sad and sorry for themselves and I decided that they’d probably stand a better chance of surviving winter if they didn’t have fruit to worry about as well.

I have a tendency to forget to photograph greens, but this week I managed to capture a bunch of Cavolo Nero which I took to my local food swap (along with some Kaffir Lime leaves, Curry Leaves and Chillies).  I got some tamarillos and oranges in exchange.

My final photograph this week is of less of harvest and more of a thinning.  I’m growing turnips for the first time and have treated them much like carrots.  That is I sowed pretty thickly and have been gradually eating the thinings as they reach radish size.  I have no idea if this is normal practice but I have really enjoyed them with a sprinkling of salt.

And those were my harvests this week.  For more head over to Daphne’s where the Northern Hemisphere gardens should be producing some lovely summery things.