Monday Harvest – 16th July 2012

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Liz

Much of my harvest this week is green, but I thought I’d start with a splash of yellow.  This Tahitian Lime went into some guacamole which I ate for lunch yesterday.  I’ve been pleased with my first lime harvests – 6 doesn’t seem too bad for a first year.

Despite the cool weather I’ve been enjoying eating salad this week, I can pretend I’m somewhere warm as I tuck into my Mizuna, Spring onions,  Lettuce and Chervil.

The side shoots on my Calabrese broccoli have started to appear regularly and so I have harvests like this a couple of times a week.  Not heaps but enough for me and kids to enjoy in a stir fry.  My partner is broccoli averse, some people have the strangest palettes don’t they?

The parsley harvest continues unabated, fortunately so too does my enthusiasm for eating it.

Every week I harvest a few Spring Onions, I very rarely account for the on my spreadsheet and they don’t tend to feature highly in my harvest photos.  To rectify this here are two spring onions which went into the aforementioned guacamole.

On Saturday I made a chicken Caesar salad for dinner.  The majority of this basket is actually Cos (Romaine) Lettuce but the highlighted leaf is ‘Salad Bowl’.  This is my first year growing ‘Salad Bowl’ and I have to say I’ve been hugely impressed.  It has grown equally well in both our summer and winter, its been relatively slow to bolt and the flavours good.  It is a loose leafed variety so you can harvest leaves whenever you need them.  What more could you want in a lettuce?

My Tuscan Kale continues to grow well, this fine bunch of leaves is destined for a Kale & Cannelini Bean soup:

And finally, not really a splash of colour but at least a variation on the green, I harvested my first cauliflower.  Its not very big, its not very attractive, but hopefully it will taste OK.  Once again I’ve learnt that attempting to grow brassicas in the shade is really not that great an idea…

Wanting more harvests?  Then head over to Daphne’s Dandelions and enjoy fruit & veg from around the world.

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Citrus Leaf Miners

Posted on July 15, 2012 by Liz

Annoying little critters aren’t they?  You can see their telltale trails on the leaves below:

Although I don’t tend to get other leaf miners, my citrus are frequently attacked by citrus leaf miners.  The general consensus seems to be that they are relatively harmless and that they shouldn’t really inhibit cropping, and/or growth unless your plants are really young.  Whilst I think that’s probably true my plants are fairly young so I would quite like to keep them at bay a bit more than I have managed to date.  Equally while I don’t mind them disfiguring the citrus I grow for fruit I do like my Kaffir Lime leaves to be bug free.

I decided to try an oil based approach to keeping them at bay.  I mixed together equal parts sunflower oil, washing up liquid and water and then sprayed it onto the leaves.  The plan is to respray fortnightly and monitor results.  I will be interesting to see if it works.  One thing I have noticed though is that spraying it on may have damaged the very juvenile leaves on my cumquat which is somewhat annoying, especially as the leaf miners aren’t particularly active at the moment.  Of course it may be the cool weather which harmed the leaves but I’m not too sure.  Anyone had issues using a similar concoction on their citrus leaves?

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I sowed tomato seed today

Posted on July 14, 2012 by Liz

I sowed tomato seed today, lots of it.  Because my parents have gone all grey nomad and headed north for what remains of the winter I am sowing seed for them as well.  As a result I’ve sown quite a few different varieties.  Their climate is a fair bit cooler than mine so the varieties that do best there aren’t always the same ones that do well for me.  Having said that there are some like Black Cherry & Rouge de Marmande that do well for both of us.

I am experimenting a bit this year with sowing timings.  I sowed some Tiny Tim seed during the 2nd week of May and they have grown slowly but steadily since.  Here they are on my daughters window sill.

I originally had eight seedlings but 4 died after being potted up.  This very rarely happens to me so it was a bit of a surprise.  I will be interested to see when these first fruit.  I will move then outside in a few weeks into a cold frame and hopefully they will enjoy having a bit more light.

I also sowed seed on the 30th June of both Rouge de Marmande and Black Krim, as an experiment as much as anything else.  Both have germinated but the seedlings are really, really leggy.  I’ve moved them to my daughters window sill which has a lot more light than the laundry where I kept them prior.  Hopefully they will now fill out a bit before I have to move them in to the cold frame outside.

Today I sowed a much larger range of varieties.   The kids helped so the process was quite messy.

I sowed my tomatoes in the middle of July last year and it worked well so that is what I’m doing again this year.  The varieties I sowed today are:

  • Tommy Toe – small tomato, somewhere between an apricot and a cherry in size.
  • Yellow Boy – Yellow Roma shaped tomato
  • Beefsteak
  • Burnley Bounty – Medium sized round slicing tomato
  • Broad Ripple Currant – Yellow currant sized tomato
  • KY1 – Short plants ideal for pot growing – producing medium sized slicing tomatoes
  • College Challenge – Largish slicing tomatoes
  • Black Cherry – As the name suggests
  • Yugoslav – Big pinky red tomatoes – great for sauce
  • Rouge de Marmande – Medium to large slicing tomatoes
  • Black Krim – Medium to large slicing tomatoes

Of these pretty much all are tall indeterminate varieties with the exception of the KY1 and the Tiny Tim I mentioned earlier, both of which are destined for pots.  The KY1s are for my fathers greenhouse (although I’ll probably keep one), the Tiny Tims are for me.

Rouge de Marmande conveniently doesn’t grow quite as tall as the other varieties but still needs a lot of staking.

My dad will sow some more varieties when he returns in mid August but my planting stock will probably come from these although I might wait to choose the best looking plants before I decide exactly which ones.  I also plan to sow another punnet each of Black Krim & Rouge de Marmande in a fortnight to see how much difference sowing timings make.

So which varieties are you growing this year?

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An experiment too far….

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Liz

Lately I’ve been getting bored with my stand-by meals.  I’m sure most people have them, the things they both like to cook and eat.  The things the family likes, the things that are easy, use ingredients at hand, and can be whipped up in no time at all.  Well sometimes I feel that that’s all I’ve been cooking and I feel the need to try something new.  Often these new additions work well, and occasionally they even become a stand-by meal in their own right.   Sometimes though they go badly, sometimes very badly indeed but more often they are just not quite right.  This dish is a case in point:

 Looks nice enough doesn’t it?

Well it wasn’t horrible but if I’m truthful it wasn’t very good either.

What is it I hear you ask?

Well, it’s a spiced potato & cauliflower soup, or aloo gobi soup if you will.  Frankly I wouldn’t because it just isn’t worth it.  In theory it should taste ok, potato & cauliflower have been cooked together for centuries.  Both are often made into soups, both marry well with spices so what went wrong?  Perhaps it was me but the result was just a bit of a blah gluggy mess.  I ate it – a lot of added greek yoghurt and chilli helped but would I make it again?…errr no.  So this week I wont share a recipe, more of a warning – potato & cauliflower soup might be nice but when you make it as you would a curry, add lots of stock and then puree there’s just something a bit wrong…perhaps it was the spicing…

I’m sharing this cautionary tale on The Gardener of Eden’s Thursday Kitchen Cupboard , and Greenish Thumb’s Garden to Table.

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Top 5 – Reasons to garden in winter

Posted on July 10, 2012 by Liz

This post comes with the proviso that your daytime winter temperatures are above freezing.  If they’re below I think behaving like a bear is probably more appropriate…but then what do I know never having experienced that sort of winter.

1. It gets you outside.  I feel better when I spend time outdoors but sometimes in winter it can be hard find a reason to be there.  I tend to exercise at the gym/pool because they have childcare.  Social events tend to be indoors, the lure of the TV and couch are strong, even Etihad Stadium shuts its roof so it can be hard to find time to be outside.  Gardening provides both the need and the motivation to put on a jumper or two and get dirty.

2. Far fewer pests – The cabbage white butterflies have gone away, the aphids are in reasonable numbers, the leaf miners don’t seem as bad and the all those little green sap sucking bugs that I don’t know the names of have moved on.  But best of all you don’t get attacked by mozzies whilst harvesting your evening salad.  Mozzies are mosquitoes for those of you who don’t insist on shortening every word and adding an ‘ie’ on the end as we Aussies do.

3. Brassicas & Broad Beans – There are some crops that just grow better in winter (provided you’re gardening in a temperate climate).  Most brassicas for instance are far better suited to winter than summer growing.  Ditto parsley, chervil and best of all – broad beans.  If you don’t garden in winter then you’d miss two of the best things about home grown – freshly picked broccoli and broad beans.  Yum! (Incidentally the above photo was taken last year – my plants are nowhere near that big yet.)

4. Flowering natives – A huge variety of Australian natives flower in winter.  Eremophilas, Correas, Pimeleas, Grevilleas, and Hardenbergias all have varieties which produce beautiful blooms in winter, and there are many more.  Getting in amongst them and weeding, tiding and ensuring they look their best is one of the most rewarding parts of winter gardening.

5. Preparation– If you want good summer crops this is the time to start preparing some of your beds.  Both Louise at Garden Glut and Andrea at Harvest with Glee have started their tomato bed preparation and have some great advice.   Louise favours: “stripping all the leaves off the brassicas that are finished and spreading them over the soil,  adding any spent snow pea straw, adding compost or manure and then topping with grass clipping and letting it stew for a good while.”  Whilst Andrea keeps: “adding leaf mulch, grass clippings, chook  and horse manure and turning it over every now and then”.   Whatever your secret of success is winter is probably the time to apply it.

Winter not your thing?  Then head over to The New Goodlife and find out why we should all be vegetarian.

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