To Pick or Not to Pick – That is the Question!

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Liz

This cabbage is testing my patience!  Actually the 5 others I have growing that have not even reached this stage are more annoying but this one is causing me to have the most self restraint.

You see it has a heart and I could harvest it.  But then its grown so much in the past week that perhaps I should leave it to get a bit bigger…. But then I really want to know what it tastes like…But then if it tastes really good I might regret not letting it get bigger so I’d have more of it.  This is what it look liked 6 days ago:

I planted out cabbages as seedlings in mid April once I finally got rid of the pumpkin from the bed.  Little did I know quite how long they would take to mature…..

By the 3rd June they looked like this:

By the end of June they had got a bit bigger:

They grew and grew over winter, by the end of September they looked huge, but heartless.

Even on the 11th October there wasn’t really much to see:

But now, now one of them has a heart, albeit a small one, and I could pick it.  But should I?

I hope it tastes nice…….

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Another Woman’s Compost – Vegetable Stock

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Liz

As I mentioned in my Monday Harvest post this week, much in my garden is bolting making it fairly inedible.  Fairly but not completely and that’s where this week’s Kitchen Cupboard post comes in.  Today faced with a forest of flowers (parsley that is), an abundance on non hearting cabbage leaves, some celery heading rapidly skyward I cut it all down and made vegetable stock for the freezer.

I make stock about once a week, using some straight away and freezing the rest for those weeks when I really can’t be bothered.  Usually its either chicken or vegetable stock I am making – and to be honest the basic ingredients don’t vary that much (except for the chicken) its just that I add more vegetables to the vegetable version.  I use the stock for soups, sauces, pilafs and risotto in the main so tend to freeze it in a variety of different size containers ranging from a cup to a couple of litres.

This following recipe makes a well flavoured vegetable stock.  The recipe is fairly fluid and can easily be varied according to what you have on hand, for instance I commonly add fennel and/or leeks, but I always include aromatics, celery, carrots and onions in the mix.

Vegetable Stock (makes about 1.5 litres of stock)

*Note you want to have about 800g – 1kg of vegetables to 3 litres of water. The below is a rough guide of the quantities of each type but please vary it to suit what you have.

  • 3 large onions
  • 3 large carrots
  • 4 celery stalks and/or leaves
  • 4 large cabbage leaves
  • a clove or two of garlic ( I used green garlic stalks today)
  • a large bunch of parsley (the bolting stalks are fine)
  • zest of a lemon
  •  handful of thyme
  • 10 peppercorns
  • a couple of bay leaves
  • 3 litres of water

Place all the above ingredients in a stockpot.  Bring to the boil and then simmer for a couple of hours, ensuring that the vegetables are always covered with water.  Strain, cool and freeze.

I usually make double this recipe but to do so you will need a reasonably big stockpot.

For other ways to preserve your harvest visit Thursday’s Kitchen Cupboard which is at Jody’s Spring Garden Acre this week.

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Passionfruit

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Liz

We moved into our current house in July and remarkably (well I found it remarkable) for the time of year there were ripe passionfruit on the vine.  The next season we had an absolutely fabulous bumper crop.  This was 4 years ago and in the years since I have neglected the vine and now it is too old to produce much at all.  Passionfruits have a productive life of about 7 years, and although I don’t know how old this particular vine is it was well established before we arrived.

 

Today I planted a new one.

Its a “Nellie Kelly” Grafted Black Passionfruit, which I suspect is what the one it is going to replace was.  My understanding is that to get good fruit in Melbourne you really need to grow a grafted variety.  To my shame I bought the plant about a month ago at the closest outpost of the Wesfarmers empire,  but it was raining and they have an indoor playcentre and I have been to CERES 3 times since and and and.  Actually its pretty inexcusable really as since that particular hardware/garden superstore opened about 2-3 years ago it has already put the closest and really nice family run nursery/garden shop out of business.  Hopefully the plant overcomes its dubious origins….

I find passionfruits fairly demanding to grow.  I made a previous attempt to replace the current plant and this was the result.

In the end I had to pull it out.  My first mistake was planting in Autumn – it put on lots of new growth which promptly got too cold, died back and then something ate the rest of it.  Not a great start.  My 2nd mistake was probably not feeding it sufficiently.  I have since discovered that passionfruits respond well to being fed 3 times a year, in September, December and February.  So this time I will give it lots to eat and drink and hopefully it will establish itself sufficiently to cope with next winter.

The other problem I have with grafted passionfuit is suckering from the root stock.  It is difficult to make out in the top photos but effectively you are seeing two plants, the suckered root stock and the grafted top.  Unfortunately the suckering occurred on our neighbours side of the fence in an area behind a shed making it difficult to deal with.  Fortunately the rootstock does have attractive flowers so at least that something.  The photo on the left is the flowers from the root stock(which doesn’t produce edible fruit), on the right is the fruiting plant.

 

Suckering is a problem because the suckered part is often more vigorous and can swamp the productive part of the plant.  This time I have planted on the back fence which backs onto an alley so I will be able to easily remove any suckered growth.

I love passion fruit so I will be very happy if this ones thrives.  Aside from the eating there’s also the photographic possibilities offered by the flowers….

I’ll stop at 3, for now……

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Monday Harvest – 24th October 2011

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Liz

It feels like everything in the garden is bolting at once.  First the parsley, then the chervil, the mizuna’s flowering, the lettuce’s headed skyward, the beetroot looked like it wanted to so I ate it, the celery’s started and so on.

     

Its making it hard to find anything to eat, but I did come up with a few things.  Mostly they were aromatics:

     

Kaffir Lime leaves and Lemongrass for a noodle soup.  My first chilli of the season which was both tiny and ever so mild (I photographed it on this chopstick holder to try to make it look bigger – I failed dismally….).  Curry leaves for lemon rice.  Mint, Coriander and Spring Onions for fresh mint & coriander dip for Chicken Kebabs.  And turmeric for a curry – I had intended leaving this piece in the ground to grow on this year but I had people coming, I want to make a spicy sesame sauce for the fish, I’d run out of ground turmeric and, well, this is the result:

I did harvest some actual vegetables as well.  Salad ingredients like mint (it gets in everywhere), spring onions, radishes and lettuce.

And finally some leeks and celery for risotto (it wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t post at least one photo with a vegetable in an unusual place, I bought that wind chime for my mother about 15 years ago but somehow never actually managed to give it to her….).

     

Oh and just for the record (he he he he) last weeks album covers were: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Flaming Lips), Bring it On (Gomez), OK Computer (Radiohead), Wrecking Ball (Emmylou Harris).  Musically my personal favourite is Emmylou Harris but for album art I’d have to give it to the Flaming Lips.

For more harvests from around the world cruise over to Daphne’s Dandelions.

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Tightly held – Cucumbers

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Liz

Yes this post title is a horrendous pun – you’ll see why later…..sorry in advance.

I planted my cucumbers this week (a bit late really they can be planted out from about September onwards in Melbourne), or rather I planted a punnet of Lebanese cucumber seedlings this week that I bought at CEREs.  I have also sowed a few (just germinated) seedlings from seeds which were very helpfully labelled ‘Cucumber’ – it will be interesting to see what eventuates.  I usually grow Lebanese cucumbers for flavour, size and texture and last year they were far and away the best performing of all the crops I grew.  I had a couple of ripe cucumbers ready to pick each day from about December until late March.  A perfect amount for salads and my favourite cucumber based preserve – Bread & Butter Cucumbers.

This is how I grow them:

Yes those are black tights (hence the pun) wrapped around three tomato stakes about 30cm apart at the bottom and meeting at the top. As the cucumber plants grow I simply put the growing tip up through the tights and that is sufficient support to keep the plant upright thus saving considerable growing space.  Here is a picture of them growing from last year, apologies for the washing in the background – sometimes my peripheral vision when taking photos isn’t great….

These plants are obviously looking past their best but as I mentioned earlier they were fabulously productive.  I plant one plant at the base of each stake – so 3 in a row and that’s it.  I do feed and water cucumbers pretty regularly throughout the season, usually applying a thick layer of compost mulch after a couple of months of productivity.

This year I have planted out 5 plants – 3 here and a couple elsewhere in the garden, plus I have a few more seedlings to come.  I want plenty this year as I ran out of Bread and Butter cucumbers in about July after the kids realised they love them – a sugar and salt thing…..

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Posted in Cucurbits | Tagged | 21 Comments