I haven’t posted in a while, a case of work & study getting in the way of real life. All this general busy-ness has meant I haven’t posted about all those exciting end of Summer, start of Autumn harvests. It means I haven’t posted on the seed sowing and the planting out of winter veg. And I haven’t posted on the general garden clean up.
And in all likelihood I never will. The harvests have been eaten, the seeds sown, and the seedlings eaten by wayward chickens who apparently like brassica leaves. Oh and the garden is once more back to its usual messy state. Oh well……..What I do have though is harvests, and some nice varied ones at that.
I have pumpkins:
given to me by my next neighbour neighbour as a seedling so I’m not sure what variety they are. This one is one that didn’t develop properly as someone (my partner) stepped on the stem (grrrrrr) snapping it before it had finished growing.
Most of my harvests at the moment are fruit. Not just pumpkins but also chillies, citrus and most excitingly tamarillos:
For those who aren’t familiar with them Tamarillos are sometimes called tree tomatoes. The flavour is a little like a cross between tomato and passionfruit and to my palate is absolutely delicious.
The lemon is a meyer – the first since I moved the tree from a pot to garden soil. The other citrus are kaffir limes. I use their zest in curries but it’s mainly the leaves I grow kaffir lime for.
Aside from fruit my main crops at the moment are herbs. The basil is still producing nicely. There’s some in the basket but you can also see Thai Basil growing in the photo’s backdrop.
My parsley is doing well at the moment and if it wasn’t for the chooks the silver beet would be one of my best performing plants.
All in all not too shabby for a garden that is suffering from almost as much neglect as this blog.
For more harvests head over to Daphne’s Dandelions for the blog fest that is Harvest Mondays.
Wonderful harvests!
I hear you about being behind on posting about all.of.the.things and appreciate your honesty. I will probably never catch up either and that’s quite alright with me at this point 🙂 Onward!
Beautiful baskets. Lovely harvests. I so would love to try a tamarind.
I’d forgotten how good tamarillos taste, since we can’t grow them here. Harvests are always nice and yours sound yummy!
Your chillies and basil look lovely, as do the tamarillos. I need your advice about growing them! I have one in a mostly shaded spot that has survived a few years but never fruited, and I also – til a few months ago – had a tall, healthy-looking one which flowered but then succumbed to a disease and died. I now have a third one growing in a sunny spot by a fence, but will appreciate any tips you can give me as tamarillos are my favourite fruit ever and I am DETERMINED to grow my own!
I reckon they are probably my favourite fruit too. They do seem to like a fair bit of food and water but they only other thing I really need to do is give it the occasional spray (with water) to dislodge aphids which the ants seem to farm on my tree.
What I can see of the squash looks like our Crown Prince.
We grow Crown Prince here too but no this one is taller and a lot lot bigger when properly mature.
Too bad about the pumpkin, but at least the other things are doing very well. I’m working on getting caught up with some chores at least today. I’ve missed posting too, not that you would know it as I preprogrammed some, but I’ve had family in and it keeps me away from the blog.
As you say, a pretty good harvest despite the (alleged) neglect! I had a Kaffir Lime plant once but I couldn’t stop it being infested with scale-bugs and got rid of it in a fit of pique. I looked closely at the chillis of course: they look like “Christmas Bell” aka “Cardinal’s Cap”.
Excellent chilli identification Mark
You have an awesome garden, lots of variety. You grow some fruits, which are quite hard to maintain, which is impressive. I always read your blog with a great interest. And the tamarillos look amazing, I’ve always wanted to grow them in my garden, but they always seemed a little too high maintenance for me, and I don’t have the time right now. Keep up the good work, I will continue visiting the blog to see the new cool things you post. 🙂