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With the earlier demise of the cucumber plant in the tunnel house, the 2012 capsicum harvest could start to get into full swing. And I use the word capsicum here in it’s widest sense, encompassing all the many bell peppers and chillies hanging out in there.

Given that they’ve been a bit sorely neglected this year as well as everything else, they’ve done surprisingly well. And we have all sorts. We have ones that hang downwards…

Some that point up…

And a good number of big, fat, bell peppers that are about the size of my fist. (Can’t really see them in a little pic, so this one’s clicky for a clearer look)…

And a few more types too that I won’t bore you with. Aren’t you lucky! But yum, yum, yum! Expect some sort of red pepper chilli jam post soon!

Given that there is no other news to report, I have continued on the blind making expedition. This room only had one window to cover so all in all should have been less time.

It has become easier as the calculations and measuring make more sense, the sewing is getting slightly better, and the hardware to add for hanging is becoming more automatic. So you would think on that note that this one would be the best yet. Hmmmmm, probably the most troublesome yet in terms of a straight top and bottom. Somewhere along the line I managed to be out by about a cm or two on one side. So down it came for some handy hem work to straighten it up. All good now and safely restored in it’s rightful place. So this room is now called the Paua room. At least for now.

Now there is just one more bedroom to go and we will have a complete set…

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…