Once again I have no idea what this is, but I’m 100% sure it’s regularly classed as a weed and a damn nuisance. But it is pretty though!
Alas, it is no more. Once I’d taken the picture it was ripped out before the flowers turned to seeds. Well it was choosing to grow on the pile of compost that’s waiting to go into a vege garden. Not the best thing to infest with weed seeds!
With thanks once again to my overworked and underpaid hand-model, meet the sum total of our 2011/12 fruit harvest.
Yes, that’s right. A single fig! We did think there might be an apple or two earlier, but the earlier grass-grub infestation ended that quite quickly.
But at least all the trees have had a good growing season to get strong without the burden of producing any fruit, so hopefully next year they’ll be all the stronger and ready to go. And we’ll know that when Pinot starts chasing brown beetles at night it’s time to spray the trees again.
As we’d got so busy ripping things out of the garden today, and as there’ll be a fair amount more when we pull out the corn patch, tomato and all the other summer veg, I thought it was about time I got around to installing the second compost bin to join its predecessor. Having already installed one, the second was a breeze!
So it can sit there for now until we rip all the garden stuff out which can go in the bottom of it, then I’ll have the fun task of shovelling all the stuff from the first bin on top of it all so it all gets a good bit of pressure and hopefully heat. Must go track down my How to Cook Compost book first. Or I guess I could try talking to Lauren. Who we used to give a bit of grief to for being interested in such things… Knew that might come back to bite!
With the welcome return of some warm weather it has been a bit of a gardening chore-day today, removing all the produce from the garden that was either on its last legs, or had grown well enough but had been neglected. Unfortunately, the carrots had been one of those veges that had grown well but had just been left to, well, do it’s own stuff. Until today we’d really not noticed just how well it was doing it’s stuff!
This whoppa weighed in at 800g – so I guess we can grow carrots. We’ll just have to remember in future to eat carrots! I’m not sure the photo really does the sheer mass of this brute justice. Let’s just say you could make a LOT of coleslaw with it!
And this little beauty somehow turned into some kind of Dr Seuss carrot ‘submarine’ or something. Made us chuckle, anyway. But starting an odd shaped vege theme is always a bit dangerous. Just ask Baldric.
In other gardening news I picked my first decent sized home grown aubergine so we can use it for tea tonight. We have picked small aubergines already that have not taken off and put them in Thai green curries, but they don’t really count as real ones (more like stunted growth ones), but they were nice enough too.
We also harvested all the borlotti fire beans that were taking up half a square bed as they slowly dried up and went crispy…
That’s right, half a small mustard jar worth of dried beans was all we managed today. Not the best use of space to date. But at least there’s enough to try again with next season, and maybe then give them a bit more care and attention and hopefully get a better crop. I guess with a decent sales pitch we could try to trade them for one of the local cows…
And then there was another 2.5kg of tomatoes harvested again today for some different tomato sauce, along with the required thyme and chillies…
Out in the hot house the tomato plants have just been chugging away, doing their own thing for the past few months. They’ve really been rather neglected, and most have taken to just sprawling out over the floor as they’ve wanted to with little in the way of guidance as to which way it could be awfully useful if they could just bring themselves to decide to aim in that general direction. Like upwards, for example.
I’ve been dragging the odd 5 or 10 off for salads etc, but today we went on a bit of a well overdue hunt for any ripe (or over-ripe) ones with the hope of not wasting them too. So 2kg of plum tomatoes later…
Bit of a rinse, bit of a “wazz-up”, bit of a boil up, bit of a spice up later, and we had some spicy tomato ketchup.
Not a lot of ketchup for 2kg of toms! But I’m sure it’ll be the very essence of summer and spice in a jar. I’m just giving myself a couple of days before trying it so the flavours meld and settle. Better be worth it!
But in other hot-house related news, there’s now a big, empty void where the cucumber plant used to be. Yes, I know. A very sad day yesterday when it was removed from the premises. For us and all those others that have been partaking of it’s prodigious product.
It had finally stopped producing any more flowers and was getting a bit over-run with some sort of nasty mite that we’d rather not have infest the whole crop so it was time to go. On the upside we did manage to harvest a last six cucumbers as we were dragging it out the door, so it will live on in the fridge for just a bit longer!
The “wildflower” of the month award this month really has to go to all of them! Seems like February you get the carpet of all of them. Lucerne, thistles, borrage, yarrow, dandelions, and all the others that I’ve yet to feature stretching out into the distance where the heat pump coils were installed.
I just wish I could actually get a decent photo of it. It’s really rather pretty. I guess we should maybe think about trying to find some even prettier flowers and see if we can replicate nature’s efforts…
Meet today’s pick of cucumbers. Yes, we did indeed harvest eight of them today. To go with the six and half still in the fridge. And many more still expanding on the plant. Want any?!
I’m pretty sure I’ve never been glad that a plant died before, but I’m now pretty relieved that the second cucumnber plant bit the dust early on.
And earlier this week I harvested an abundance of more green things…
Yup, a big pile of beans! The photo doesn’t really do them justice. I went out with what I thought was a pretty reasonable size bowl to grab them, but I had to do two and bit trips in the end. And with no need to eat that many beans this week I even got keen and blanched and froze a few bag-fulls for later. Now I just have to remember they’re in the freezer…
Unfortunately I think I left picking them a bit late. The bean plants (vines?) have now stopped flowering. I suspect that’s it. They might well have to be dragged out in the very near future to try to get one more crop of something in before it’s all over for the summer cropping.
Not that we’ll be racing off to get the milk with vehicle no. 2, but at least we’ll now be able to keep the lawn down now! A little ride on mower got delivered today. Yippee!
The first grass cut today was done with a fair amount of trepidation as I wasn’t sure just how many stones were lurking just below the surface waiting to fly through one of the large plates of glass lurking close to the lawn edges. But luckily we got through the whole mow with windows unscathed. Helped that we’re only just slicing the top off the grass for now. We’ll have to get a bit closer to ground level at some time soon, but it’s nice to get things looking a bit tidier. Next required step will be a big weed spray.
Didn’t seem to do a bad job. Me, I mean, not the mower! Getting used to the turning circle and the various acceleration and deceleration quirks was interesting, but entertaining. It looks like it’s possibly going to take a long time to work out the best mowing pattern to keep the most straight lines across the lawn. Still some way to go to even get straight lines, as you can see!
And the beast even coped with a bit of a blat through the longer grass and lucerne etc of the orchard. Hopefully I’m now done with weed-eating around there. Whew!
And as a bonus, tonight the soft scent of the local farmer’s silage pits that we get in a slight southerly breeze has been masked by the heady scent of freshly cut grass.
Now, all of you who said you’ll be more than happy to come out and mow for us can start to get warmed up. But you’ll have to wait just a little bit longer, as I don’t think I’m quite sick of it quite yet!
After two days of horrible winds that have made it just too unpleasant to be outside today was a pearler. Just as well as we needed to get some water on the grass, but that’s another story. But as it was nice I thought I better get out and enjoy it. By doing a bit of hard work. Go figure.
Today’s challenge was to finally bring the last two raised beds down from the top garden. Which I duly did. With only light strains and a couple of small blisters.
Even managed to get some pavers installed in the walkways, but I can’t quite work out how to finish the paths around the side as whichever way I turn the pavers I can’t quite get a nice straight edge. Guess that’s only to be expected when the garden plots were made before the pavers were on hand.
But at least that’s that chore done. Just in time to play with the new toy that’s just arrived!! YAY!
The star of the tunnel house is still the cucumber plant that’s taking over all available space around it. So to use up some of the six cucumbers in the fridge we made pickled cucumbers today. Not entirely sure what else you can do with a surplus of cucumbers really!
Yesterday I made a special effort and had salad for lunch to assist in using up the excess cucumbers. From the garden I had sugarsnap peas, radishes, lettuce, beetroot, spring onions, capsicums, tomatoes, with a bit of bought Edam cheese and olive oil…. and completely forgot to add the cucumber! I only realised that about 2 hours later. Idiot!