Monday Harvest – 15th April 2013

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Liz

A comparatively warm week has ripened a good number of eggplants and chillies.  While the eggplants are finishing – the plants have set far fewer fruits recently, the chillies still have a good few weeks to go.

Eggplants and chillies

I have Birdseye, Bishops Cap, Cayenne and Tobago Seasoning chillies ripening at the moment.  I love the shape and colour of the Tobago Seasoning.  Really pretty and pretty hot on the tongue as well.

Tobago Seasoning Chillies

I am also harvesting capsicums.  Purple Beauty, Cherrytime and Topepo Rosso are all hitting the harvest baskets and regularly featuring in our meals along with what is fast becoming a glut of Bishops Cap.  Oh for some time to make Sambal….

Chillies and Capsicums   KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA

Eggplant wise I have harvested a few Bonicas and a couple of Listada de Gandia.  I love the colour of the Listada de Gandia.  Just perfect.

Listada de Gandia Eggplant

I did harvest some other crops this week.  The Watermelon radishes were ready:

Watermelon Radish   Watermelon radish

As were some of the Easter Eggs:

Mint, radish and parsley

There they are buried under a pile of mint and parsley.  I have harvested heaps of both herbs this week.  I am eating a whole heap of tabouleh before the home grown tomatoes (note: mine dried up a while ago but mum & dad’s are still going strong) dry up.  I also gave my potted mint a good spruce up as it was looking a little ragged.  I took the opportunity to put mint in pretty much everything I ate today and enjoyed it all the more for it.

Mint

Finally I am also enjoying my spring onion crops at the moment.  I am trying to get through as many as possible as the chooks keep sitting on them and I’m not sure poo covered squashed spring onion is really that appetising….These were relatively unharmed though.

Spring Onions

And that’s it for me for this week.  For more harvests head over to Daphne’s otherwise I have a request:

Does anyone grow Jamaican Scotch Bonnet chillies?  If so I have a reader who is very interested in some viable seed.  I’m struggling to find an Australian source for Jamaican Scotch Bonnets (as opposed to the Bishops Cap that I grow) so if you know of or have a plant then please let me know by leaving a comment below.

Share
Posted in Autumn Harvesting | 27 Comments

Saturday Spotlight – Wild Rocket

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Liz

I had a lot of issues with my lettuces this summer – they kept bolting in the hot weather.  Thank goodness for my Wild Rocket though, which gave us lovely salad leaves throughout the warmer months.

Wild Rocket

Wild Rocket differs it’s wider leafed cousin Salad Rocket in a number of ways.  Although both are brassicas wild rocket is perennial and happy in my micro climate throughout the year.  It flowers and self seeds happily, while producing leaves without any trace of bitterness.

It is a bushy spreading plant.  I planted out 3 small seedlings in Spring and they now occupy a full square metre in the bed and would have spread further but for some judicious pruning and a whole lot of harvesting.

rocket and Beans

Wild Rocket can be sown, either direct or into seed trays throughout the year in Melbourne.   Seedlings can be planted out at any time.  It grows relatively slowly initially but when it gets going it is plentiful and comparatively trouble free.

I know some people who have had issues with cabbage whites attacking their rocket plants but so far mine have been relatively immune.  Otherwise I am unaware of any major pest issues.

I use rocket regularly in salads, on pizza as a fresh topping,  and occasionally in pesto.  Flavour-wise it has the pepperiness of salad rocket with a more delicate leaf structure.  To me it is at its best with onion, pear, Parmesan and a nice vinaigrette.

Do you grow rocket?  If so is it a wild or salad variety?  Or both?

Saturday Spotlight is a series of posts highlighting particular varieties of edible plants.  If you have a favourite, or even a less than successful variety of a plant and would like to include it in the series then please leave a comment with a link below.    I have created a page (above, just below the header) with an Index of all the Spotlights to date.   I will add links to any new posts below and in next weeks post as well as ensuring they appear in the Index. 

New Spotlights last week were:

Flamingo Chard – From Seed to Table

And from this week:

Pennsylvania Dutch Crooknecked Squash – Our Happy Acres

Share
Posted in Brassicas, Greens - Lettuce, Spinach, Beets | 18 Comments

Thursday Garden Gobble – Eggplant Pickle

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Liz

Eggplant PickleThis has been something of a bumper year for my eggplants and whilst I have enjoyed eating them in a myriad of ways I’ve also had enough to preserve in the form of eggplant pickle.  I am still experimenting with my favourite recipe.  So far I have made a Stephanie Alexander recipe which I only realised was for a fresh rather than preserved pickle after I had prepped the whole lot and started frying off the onion etc.  It was really enjoyable though.

The pickle I have made most of though is an adaptation of this recipe, which I think should store for a few months at least.   It is definitely on the sweet side and if you prefer a more savoury pickle then I would recommend adjusting the sugar/vinegar a little.  (Keep in mind though that adjusting the sugar and vinegar could affect the storage properties of the pickle).  Personally I find this recipe slightly too sweet to eat large amounts by the spoonful but really enjoyable when paired with a hot spicy curry and rice.

Eggplant Pickle

  • 1kg eggplant* cut into 1cm cubes
  • 2 tblspn salt
  • 150ml canola oil
  • 2 onions – finely chopped
  • 4 garlic cloves – finely chopped
  • 6-10 hot chillies – finely chopped
  • 50g ginger – finely grated
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
  • 2 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 1/2 tsp chilli powder
  • 2 tbspns tamarind paste dissolved into hot water
  • 150g soft brown sugar
  • 300ml vinegar

Sprinkle the chopped eggplant with the salt and set aside in a colander to drain for an hour or so.  Rinse and dry.

Heat half the oil in a large pan and add half the eggplant.  Fry until golden.  Repeat with the remaining eggplant.  Set aside.

Add the remaining oil (if you haven’t already) and add the mustard and cumin seeds.  When the mustard seeds pop turn down the heat and add the onion, garlic, chilli and ginger.  Fry until golden brown.

Add the ground spices (coriander, turmeric and chilli) and fry for a minute or two.

Add all the remaining ingredients including the eggplants.

Stir until sugar dissolves and then simmer for at least half an hour.

Store in sterilised jars for a month before using.

* I used Lebanese (finger style) eggplants.

Veggiegobbler hosts Garden Gobbles on Thursday – always fascinating to see how others are using their produce.

Share
Posted in Chillies, Capsicum & Eggplant, Recipes | Tagged , | 18 Comments

Top 5 – Vegetables for Seed Saving

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Liz

I tend to grow most of my crops from seed rather than buying seedlings.  This is partially because I have far greater choice about varieties, partially because I know the plants have been well looked after from day one and partially (or should that be mostly) because I really like watching them grow.  What I don’t always do though is save my own seed.  This is for a variety of reasons.  Some crops take ages to produce seed, others cross too easily with other varieties and so it is too hard to predict what the offspring will be, and with others it is just too intricate a process to bother with.  There are exceptions though, there are crops which are particularly easy to save seed from.  These are my top 5:

Capsicums and Chillies

 Chillies & Capsicums – Chillies and Capsicums are probably my favourite crops to save seed from.  Whilst if you grow more than one variety you are far from guaranteed that they will produce offspring true to type I find they don’t actually cross as often as I think they will and if they do the results are generally interesting.  Saving the seed is particularly easy.  Simply scrape the seeds out of fully ripe chillies and leave to dry.  One of the biggest pluses about peppers is that because you generally eat the fruit fully ripe so there is no waste.  Eat the flesh and save the seeds.

Bean Seed

Beans – Saving seed from beans is simply a matter of leaving a few pods on the plant until they dry fully.  The seeds they produce are perfect for sowing the following year.  Whether you continue harvesting green beans from the plants while you are waiting for some to dry or leave all the pods to dry fully to use as dried beans you don’t have a load of unproductive plants sitting around in the garden purely to save seed from.

Curry leaf tree with berries

Curry Leaf Tree – I know this one is a little on the niche side but I do like a plant which saving seeds is simply a matter of pulling them off when they are ripe.  You can harvest leaves before, during and after harvesting seeds.  Basically the seed saving process is simply about grabbing the seeds as soon as they ripen and planting them pretty much straight away.  Curry Leaf Tree seed is generally hard to come by and in my understanding has a fairly short shelf life so saving your own is one of the only ways of propagating the plant from seed.

Lettuce boltingLettuce – I tend not to save seed from any plant that will occupy a large space in the garden for a long period while the seed ripens.  This rules out collecting seeds from crops like broccoli and silver beet because they are just to big for too long to justify the space.  Lettuce though occupies a much smaller space and the seed ripens quicker than many other plants which flower after the finish cropping.  Saving seed from lettuce is easy, seed is generally plentiful and given how often I sow lettuces it saves a reasonable amount of money to save my own.

Coriander and Parsley – I was tossing up between these two but given I save both for much the same reasons I thought I would include both.  Although I do actually save some seed from both, one of the main reasons I allow the plants to flower and the seed to mature is to allow the plants to self seed.  For some reason self seeded seedlings seem to do better than the ones I sow, they are stronger and generally happier in my experience.  This is particularly true of herbs I find.  Having said that I do actually save and sow seed of both, primarily because although self sown is usually best, nature doesn’t always plant things in the positions I want them.  The other bonus is that its nice to have things flowering in the garden.  The insects think so too.

Parsley flowering

They were my top 5.  What do you save seed from?

Share
Posted in Top 5 | Tagged | 31 Comments

Monday Harvest – Apr 8th 2013

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Liz

The garden is starting to slow down meaning that some of this weeks baskets look a little on the meagre side.

Beans and chillies

The beans were nice in a risotto along with some other veg and the chillies have gone into the fridge to make sambal at a later date.  As have the ones below.  Except for the Padrons that is, they were fried and eaten with a little salt.  This lot were all mild.

This is my first year growing Padrons so I have done a bit of internet research on them and I have to say I am getting sick of reading them described as “Russian Roulette”.  Almost every single time they are discussed on the internet it is with the analogy that eating them is like playing “Russian Roulette” and that 1 in 10 is hot.  Now perhaps that is true however:

  1. In my (admittedly extremely limited) experience it isn’t, for me they have either been all mild or all hot depending on how long they were left on the plant.
  2. Why must everyone use exactly the same analogy?  and
  3. One in 10.  Really? Everytime? Every plant?  In all growing conditions?  It does make me wonder about how much of what you read is just the same material regurgitated and how much is actually experienced.  I don’t mean gardening blogs but more often food sites, reference articles, gardening sites etc.

One thing the Padron’s research does demonstrate to me is how one idea can become ‘conventional gardening wisdom’ or in this case perhaps it is ‘conventional culinary wisdom’.   Or perhaps I am making a mountain out of a molehill and 1 in 10 really are hot.  What do you think?

Now that I have got down from my high horse I’ll let you see a picture of them:

Chillies and Cucumber

Just enough for me (fortunately Miss 6 and Mr 3 are scared off them by the “Russian roulette, one in ten” theory so perhaps it does have its uses after all).

Also this week; –  I needed aromatics for my risotto stock:

Stock basket

Some bits and pieces for a salad:

Salad bits and pieces

I harvested some eggplants that I failed to photograph.  But most excitingly, I pulled the first of my pot grown Sweet Potatoes.

Sweet Potatoes

Not a huge haul.  About 700g from one plant which I think puts then in the fun rather than functional category.  Having said that they are disease and pest free and pretty much take care of themselves.   You definitely can’t say that about everything.   Plus they should taste great.

For more harvests including some from a slowly thawing Northern Hemisphere head over to Daphne’s Dandelions.

Share
Posted in Autumn Harvesting | 33 Comments