Wet and wintery that’s how Melbourne is at the moment. Fittingly my first harvest is a cold weather one – the first of this years broccoli crop. Although I could, in theory, grow broccoli pretty much all year round here I tend to only grow it during the cooler months. This is partially due to space considerations, partially because of the aphids which tend to attack during mid to late Spring and partially because I have yet to find a variety that enjoys our summers (although I do imagine they exist).
This is a very small head of Calabrese – hopefully a great many side shoots are yet to come.
In contrast to that rather insubstantial harvest the tamarillos are still plentiful, with another 30 or so harvested this week.
With the start of winter I did a bit of garden maintenance. I pulled quite a few of my remaining basil plants (I think the remainder will go this week) and froze the leaves of the Italian variety. I find that the variety of Thai basil I grow loses its flavour on freezing. I have bought Thai basil (for culinary purposes) in the past that doesn’t but I’m not sure what the variety was.
The other plant I pulled out was my last tomato. Rouge de Marmande was my best performing variety this year and I was sad to see it go but it was looking very sorry for itself indeed. Most of these remaining tomatoes had a trace of colour on them so I’m confident most will ripen inside.
I have yet to pull my eggplants, but I imagine with the cold weather we are having that will be a job for the coming week. Ditto the capsicums – they are last years plants and I think getting them through a second winter would be asking too much. I will overwinter the chillies though.
My daughter, Miss 5, is currently addicted to Masterchef and as a result is keen to cook regularly. This became her salad course. She combined celery, chervil, parsley and lettuce and then dressed it with a pomegranate molasses dressing and sprinkled it with pomegranate seeds (she is very partial to pomegranates). It was remarkably successful. The red in the basket is a tamarillo – I don’t have a producing pomegranate plant….yet.
My final harvest of the week is another first – my first Tahitian Lime. Very exciting. I didn’t do anything nearly as interesting as Barbara Good did with hers, mine just went into some guacamole (another of my daughters cooking projects) but was delicious nonetheless.
For more veggie ogling head over to Daphne’s Dandelions – there’s sure to be more than enough for anyone.
