Sunday 20 January 2013

Harvest Monday - 21 January 2013

Summer so far has been pretty good to my garden, we did have a 39 degree day(nothing compared to South Australia, they had 48!!!) that burnt a lot of my Tomatoes and Capsicums as well as toasting my Rattlesnake bean plants. Thats small fries when there are out of control bush fires in other parts of Victoria and all over Australia at the moment. There is some more hot weather coming up so I hope everyone is staying safe and cool.

So heres whats good in the garden at the moment.

My Pumpkins(this one is an Australian Butter type) are growing and setting fruit like mad, I decided to pull this guy off after he passed the fingernail test. It seemed like the vine was putting all its energy into this pumpkin and not into producing more female flowers so I picked him. Low and behold the vine produced 3 new female flowers shortly after and they are getting fatter every day.

Blondkopfchen, or Blondie as I call it is such a sweet tomato. It is heart shaped with a little nipple and gooseberry like veins. Its a multiflora type that produces masses of little flowers followed by a ridiculous number of these little guys.


This is one of many hundreds of sprays that the Blondkopfchen is putting out!
I currently have a massive stash of these lovely Beit Alphas in the fridge waiting on my new Ball Mason jars to arrive. Yum, bread and butter pickles galore.

The Black Cherries are abundant and so yummy.

and the Purple Beauty Capsicum are getting nice and big. Aren't they such a pretty colour?
These little Red Kuri are the perfect size for 2 people.

Its not all been good though, in late december i started noticing holes in a lot of my Tomatoes. Caterpillars - not only Caterpillars but mice too, Dang it all. So far I have managed to get rid of the Caterpillars with Dipel but the mice are not so simple. I have been picking the fruit as soon as they get colour, if  i leave it any longer all thats left the next day is a tomato skin.

But everything is looking lush and green an we haven't had to buy any Veggies since before Christmas. Whats growing in your garden at the moment?

Here are the totals
Beit Alpha Cucumber              1.52 Kilos
Costata Romano Zucchini        1.15 Kilos  
Tomatoes                                  3.59 Kilos
Green Beans                    260g
Capsicum                           240g
Corn                                990g
In case your wondering, i'm not going to add in my Pumpkins until they are all done. That will most likely be mid April.

Thanks for stopping by!

2 comments:

  1. Very nice! Sorry about the mice but you have hit on the solution many of us have to resort to - picking as soon as there is a break in color and then ripening them off the vine. In our garden it is giant slugs that do the damage.

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  2. If it wasn't mice it might be possums! Sorry to hear about the slugs, I seem to have a healthy population of tiger slugs that eat all other slugs and snails. The only problem with picking before they are ripe is I can't tell what is what and then I can't be bother weighing them :).

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