The summer is rolling on and my harvests have settled into a pleasant consistency, with the garden regularly producing tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, silverbeet and herbs. As a result I haven’t posted harvest photos every week. Here are the highlights from the last few:
The chooks are behaving themselves and are continuing to lay. 1-2 eggs a day between the 3 of them which is enough for our needs and I don’t think is too bad given that they are almost 2 years old.
I am regularly harvesting baby carrots. They are in a particularly shaded portion of the garden – I suspect with more sun they wouldn’t be ‘baby’ any more but the small size suits me (and the kids) fine.
I’m really enjoying eating basil at the moment, and I’ve put in a few new plants so I can continue to harvest as much as I like from the more mature ones.
The cucumbers seem to be producing lots at once and then none for a week, which isn’t so bad as I got to make my first batch of bread and butter pickles.
What is less good is that I have seen signs of rat damage on a few (half eaten one day, gone the next) fruit.
But summer is really all about the tomatoes isn’t it?
After noticing the rats I’ve started picking the tomatoes a little on the green side, which means they are less photogenic, but after a few days no less edible.
In these photos you can see a big Grosse Lisse with a couple of Tigerella on the right, and a basket of smaller varieties: Black Cherry, Broad Ripple Currant, Principe Borghese and an unidentified cherry/apricot sized red tomato on the left.
All the tomato varieties have done at least reasonably well this year, although a few of the plants are now looking a little worse for wear. We have had a bit of warmer weather this week and the Broad Ripple Currant and Grosse Lisse in particular seem to have suffered. Black Cherry remains the healthiest plant and the only one which I (well…actually my father) intentionally grew from seed. The others were either bought as seedlings or are volunteers.
I’ll finish with another basket of summer goodies, this one containing the first of the dried beans (well actually still a little bit green) that became a chorizo and bean stew. They worked well and the mixture of varieties made for a nice range of textures. The best though I think were the purple king and I plan to now grow these every year to use dried.
For more harvests head over to Daphne’s.
What a wonderful harvest! The only thing my garden is providing at the moment is chillies, capsicum and a few tomatoes.
I’ve just finished my last jar of your bread & butter pickles from last year and already have 5 jars in the fridge for this season. It’s a great recipe and I’ve handed it on to many friends via your website.
My black cherries have done really well this year, too.
I love it too – I harvested the next few this morning and will hopefully make the next batch later on today.
It’s always nice to see your harvests while we are in the middle of winter. Your basil is especially lovely, since all we have right now is dried and that really doesn’t compare to the fresh!
One year I had trouble with the squirrels eating all my cucumbers. But they would eat the baby ones so they never grew up. I finally had to net them to get anything.
On reflection I think it might be the chooks that are eating them. I might confine them to their pen for a few days to test the theory.
Such lovely basil – mine got infected with basil downy mildew fairly early in the season so I was barely able to harvest anything. This year I’m growing a variety that is supposed to be resistant…I guess we shall see.
How frustrating – fortunately that doesn’t seem to be a problem here.
I never tire of seeing beautiful summer vegetables, so keep the pics coming! Rats again, I’m so sorry, I wish I knew of a good way to keep them away from the garden, but they seem to be able to get through any defenses.
They don’t seem as bad this time. There are less of them and I think they mostly just eat the chook food, which although not ideal is a lot better than them eating my plants.
I am loving your summer goodies from your garden, so looking forward to spring which I know will be here soon, I hope.
What a beautiful harvest! I’ve got similar tomatoes on the grow at the moment and basil always goes crazy in Summer where I am (Brisbane). We’ve had a few extremes in the weather lately which has been hard on the plants. I’m really glad I just found your blog and am looking forward to following and learning more 🙂
Beautiful harvest, lovely colors, can’t wait to start summer veg seeds again.
I too am doing some more of your wonderful pickled cucumbers. They are a favourite here! I stupidly forgot to plant beans 🙁 Your tomatoes look great.
I did 4 more jars on Friday too. I reckon you might still get a bean crop if you sowed in the next week.
Hmm I’m thinking my blog comments have been eaten. I’ll try again. I love your baskets. They scream summer to me when I’m buried in snow. And the basil looks so beautiful. It reminds me I ought to be using my basil that I froze last summer. Maybe in a hot soup.
Shame about your comments – I think this is the first from you on this post. Trying to protect the site from spam seems to mean that you inevitably end up losing comments in the process.
Nice harvest! Look at the color on those purple string beans.
Lookin’ good, Liz! Did you work out if any of your beans are Kentucky Wonder?
My chooks are off the lay AGAIN. Sheesh. Whenever one goes clucky the other stops laying too. Maybe there’s is a pile hidden under a bush somewhere, I’ve looked but it’s a bit of a jungle out there!
I’m disappointed that I didn’t get around to staking and pruning the tomatoes properly and they are now just a tangled mess on the ground and not producing nearly as well as previous years. That’ll teach me.
Damn those birds. chooks are lovely, and yet very annoying at the same time.
Still not sure what the beans are – I should try a bit of googling.
Hi, Finally got my garden in order, almost! In January I planted peas, zucchini, golden beans, green beans, beetroot and kohl rabi. The zucchinis are doing well, the peas are fruiting but are all of only a few inches, I know now it’s too hot, can you tell me have I planted all these things at the wrong time. I get my info from Google, I’m aiming to replicate somewhat of a pantry, growing small quantities of things that I am able to use and then repeat the process. So hopefully I won’t end up with a mass of food. The other thing I planted early February is broad beans, cabbage, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, they are still in the egg containers I use to plant the seeds in.
We have two raised garden beds which I have covered with sugar cane recycled material.
Hi Tan, That sounds great. I think the timings on everything else should be fine. The beans and zucchini should have just enough time to crop before winter and the others will grow well into winter. The broad beans are a little earlier than I’d plant them but hopefully they wont mind. Some of it will depend on how warm an Autumn we have. The lettuce may run to seed but it will depend which variety you have put in. I plant lettuce year round.