Harvest Monday - 18 March 2013

Capsicums or Peppers - what ever you call them I had a lot this week. I forgot to take pictures of the actual fruit but here is a pizza with some lovely red and green Marconi's.

Another ugly but delicious Wrinkled from Friuli. If you can't keep up with you Zucchini give this one a go, it grows slowly and the fruit is so much nicer than those 'black' varieties.

A fresh spinach, pan choy and rocket salad with cherry belle radish.

Borlotti beans - so pretty. I didn't get a very big harvest. I think I will just save the seeds for next year.

Saturday Spotlight - Australian Butter climbing beans

I had been looking for a Climbing Butter bean for a while when the Diggers Club released their annual seed catalogue - there is was finally. I bought a packet of their Australian Butter climbing bean for $4.00 (for 20 seeds) and planted them out in September. I had enough beans for dinner every few nights come mid December.

When picked young they were tender and not stringy at all - a warning though when they are producing you must check every 2-3 days as the can get tough quickly. Australian Butter produces a very sturdy vine and from the 12 seeds I planted I picked over 2kgs of fresh beans and then left the last flush of flowers to produce seed and once dried there was about 500g. 

Very vigorous and for me they flowered 3 times over the summer. I would say that they grew to be over 2m.

Surprisingly they produce a vivid purple seed that when dried is almost black. I have some spare seed if anyone would like to do a seed swap let me know in the comments below.

Thursday Garden Gobbles

Baba Ganoush - the name alone is awesome. I had so much eggplant this week, so a favourite from my time living in the middle east was made. This was eaten on turkish bread, with cucumbers as a dip and on flat bread with chilli tuna. Yum yum, I had totally forgotten how much I loved Baba Ganoush.

Start with some fresh from the garden beauties, roast on the bbq till soft. Leave to cool and peal off the skin. Blend with Cumin, Tahini, greek yogurt and garlic. I made mine super garlicky (that how I like it) and slathered it on anything I could find.

Sorry the last one is not that pretty but it was good.

Happenings around the garden

My chickens are laying an egg a day, I can't wait until the eggs really start rolling in - frittata, quiche and egg pies yum! They are getting bigger and more bossy - the hen pictured below is "yes dear" or Cybil depending on her attitude. She regularly tries to escape.

 

I bought a worm farm from Aldi for $49.00, half the price of the same model at Bunnings - so happy I have been wanting one for the past year. My worms are happily chomping away on egg shells from my chickens - I just love that, my Chickens eat greens from the garden provide me with yummy eggs then my  little wormies eat the egg shells and provide a nutrient dense fertilizer for my veggies.

My winter and autumn veggies are getting bigger and most likely I will begin transplanting them this weekend. I ordered row covers for all three of my raised beds. I have a few reasons I decided to splash out - The cabbage whites are filthy buggers and I get sick of picking them off, we get crazy wind in winter and autumn - being on an Island with wind coming off the Bass Straight can wreak havoc on vegetables, thirdly warmth and insulation on chilly winter nights. We don't get frosts but it all helps at the end of the day. In the picture you can see below the seedlings are covered in netting - that's just some cheap stuff I picked up but its keeping the cabbage whites out, just not the slugs (shakes fist at slugs).

 

Below is a garden guest, welcome any time she would like to come and feast on aphids - there actually haven't been any aphids that I have seen since winter.

Well that's what is happening in my garden at the moment. Have you made any interesting garden related purchases recently or any improvements ?

Harvest Monday - 11 March 2013

Summer doesn't seem to want to leave but I would happily say goodbye. This past week the temperature has been over 29 degrees every day. I'm personally over it, it was great while it lasted but bring on the autumn weather.

I don't have a lot of summer veggies left but what I do have is loving the heat. Above are Serrano Chillies - quite hot but have an almost vinegary tang which I like.

Still have plenty of capsicums and even though my cucumber is covered in powdery mildew its pumping out the cukes.

A lovely Marconi, I roasted a bunch of capsicums I had in the fridge over the weekend to freeze for later use.

Rosa Bianca - so pretty, productive too. The ones below are off the same bush.

I roasted these on the bbq until soft and made a big batch of Baba Ganoush, I ate quite a bit and froze the rest for later use.

The 'Wrinkled from Friuli' Zucchini. She an't pretty but she is firm and delicious, no soggy Zucchini here!

Lastly a selection of a few pumpkins from the garden.

Thanks to Daphne's Dandelions for hosting this awesome blog hop.

Saturday Spotlight - Big Rainbow Tomato

Today I'm taking part in Liz from Suburban Tomato's Blog  Saturday Spotlight- As maybe you can see this was not posted on Saturday, better late than never I suppose. Without further ado I would like to introduce you to Big Rainbow -  a large beef steak variety, not only productive but its beautiful and tasty too. I got my seeds in late as I decided after reading the Diggers Tomato book I had to have this in my garden. The seeds were started indoors mid September, surprisingly I had my first ripe fruit in mid to late January. These beauties average 200-400g. 

I mean look at them!!! as I said they were productive, the 1 plant produced over 10 kilos of beautiful, big, rainbow colour fruit. I had a little cracking in the fruits after we had about 20mm of rain one day and a small amount of catfacing.

I have at admit this was the least coloured inside of all tomatoes I've seen, I wish I took some more photos! Most have 3-4 colours marbled though out. Very pretty to look at. 

I'm so happy I read that book and made an impulse buy, Big Rainbow was my best tomato this season by far.

Garden Gobbles - Tortilla Espanola

Now that my Chickens are laying I thought this would be a great choice as I can almost make this completely from the backyard supermarket!

A big bunch of parsley and chives. I also used some spinach but its not pictured.

One of the eggs used.

Yummo!!!!

Harvest Monday - 4 March 2013

I can't believe its March! Where has the year gone so far? I have been so busy at work this past week that I missed out on Garden Gobbles on Thursday and Liz from Suburban Tomatoes Saturday spotlight, ekkk! Well I think the hectic-ness of last week has gone. Here is a quick run down of harvests(it was so busy I forgot to take photos, opps)

Lots of colours.

Basil - made a bunch of pesto and froze it.

The first Zucchini off my January sown plant.

This is a bad photo and I apologise. I can never tell what filter I'm using on my camera.

And in my opinion the most important of all, my first egg!!! so happy that my hens are laying now.