Spring seed raising

Quite a few weeks ago now, Liz from Suburban Tomato gave us a great run down of the tomatoes she was raising. Sadly I didn't have my act together then to make a similar post, indeed, I hadn't even started to raise my tomatoes or any other seeds as I feared a late frost -  I thought it was too early for our mountain slopes climate.

But now that the weather has jumped from maximums in single digits to ones in the mid twenties in the space of two weeks I feel like I am starting too late! Ah, gardening in a new environment!

 Here is what I am currently raising.

Tomatoes
Last year my tomatoes were a complete failure, mostly becasue it was scorchingly hot and also because we only arrived at Highfield in mid-November. This year I am hoping I will have much better fortune especially seeing as I have so many wonderful varieties with different shapes and colours. All these seeds came from Yvonne - thank you so much, I hope to do them justice.

• Juane Flamme 
• Red Pear
• Yellow pear
• Verna orange
• Green grape
• Oxheart yellow
• Speckled Roman
• Peach
• Purple Cherokee

Chillies/Peppers/Capsicums
I have gone completely overboard here with the encouragement and seeds from Nina and Bek. It's just that these plants seem to be able to survive the hottest of summers, and I do like a chilli or too and I have a secret desire to hold a chilli-based food festival... one day...

• Chilli - Long Cayenne
• Chilli - Padron
• Chilli  - Jalapeno - thanks Nina
• Capsicum -  Orange Glory - thanks Bek
• Capsicum - Hungarian Wax - thanks Bek
• Capsicum - 7 colour mix
• Pepper  - Merlin - thanks Bek
• Pepper -  Chocolate - thanks Bek
• Pepper - Absa - thanks Bek

Eggplants

• Listada di Ganda -  thanks Yvonne
• Prosperosa - thanks Bek
• Rosa Bianca

Greens

• Lettuce - Salad bowl
• Lettuce - Freckels Bunte
• Pak choi
• Fennel Florence
• Rocket

Beans and Peas

• Bean - Kentucky Wonder - thanks Nina
• Bean - Sex without strings
• Peas - Snow peas
• Peas - Pigeon peas

Onions

• Spring onions

Pumpkins / Melons

• Pumpkin - seeds from Pat Murray's pumpkins (Pat is King of vegetable growing at the annual Adelong Agricultural Show)
• Melon -  Minnesota Midget

Roots

• Beetroot - Crimson Globe
• Radish - Round Red

Zucchini

I have shared with you previously my obsession to enter the Gundagai Agricultural Show in the category, Three zucchinis under 18cms. I am hoping that I can grow three great specimens of different colours just to wow the judges. So I have planted the following varieties so far - I have a few other varieties held back for planting later in the season as insurance.

• Costata - thanks Bek
• Gold Rush - thanks Bek
• Greenskin
  
  
  

Don't you think a trio of green, yellow and speckled zucchinis would be a show stopper? If I am successful, perhaps  I can share my winnings  with Bek... but I am getting ahead of myself!

Herbs
I have put these seeds in but when they are up they will join my other more perennial herbs.

• Basil
• Thai basil -  thanks Yvonne
• Dill - thanks Nina

Flowers

• Marigold - French Bonita
• Marigold - Petite Yellow -  thanks Nina
• Larkspur - thanks Diana
• Nasturtiums - Red - thanks Nina -  the leaves are stunning, I am sure the flowers will be too
• Sunflowers -  Prado Red and Evening Sun, my usuals
• Zinnia
• my beautiful purple Holbrook poppies

That's it for the moment but I will be putting in some cucumbers and other things as the season develops.
What are you putting in?

Soon I will post on all the fruit trees I have put in over winter.

Harvest Monday - 24th June '13

It's been a good week for pickings despite the days being short and the mornings very frosty. It's also been a good time to hunker down inside and cook. This last week the pickings have been:

Fennel
Two lovely bulbs. These will be eaten tonight in a wild pork loin dish.

The tops of the fennel were huge - it seems such a waste not to use the tops, but I have never used them before, have you? And if so what for?

I tried offering them to my chickens but they don't eat them.

I cut my fennel bulbs off at ground level leaving the roots in the soil. I find that the roots re-shoot with more baby fennel and that these ones grow on pretty quickly as their roots are big and deep.

Parsley
There has been lots of parsley too, so much so that parsley now features in one of my vases.

Chillies
The frosty mornings have pretty much nipped back my chilli plants and I suspect it wont be long before the plants are knocked out completely. I have been picking chillies - green and red - to make sure I get the most of the produce. Still, when you think about it, it is pretty good to have chillies survive into late June when I live in a frosty mountain area.

Wombok and spring onions
Wombok and spring onions are featuring in many meals, mostly stir-fried and in Asian-style dishes.

What's coming up soon? Purple cauliflower - they are looking so pretty.

How are your pickings?

I am contributing this to Daphne's Harvest Monday.  Soon her blog will feature pickings from around the world.

Harvest Monday on Tuesday

Kept inside by a heavy fog and warm heater I decided to document my meagre harvest of the last week and post it on Daphne's Harvest Monday.

Yes, you are right, it is Tuesday here in Australia, but I figure I am still 'legal' as it is still Monday somewhere inn the world and definitely Monday in the US where Daphne's blog is based. So here is the meagre harvest of the week just passed.

A few finger limes.  Liz recently explained what these little fruit are. These seem undersized to me but they fell off in my hand when I inspected the bush  and I figured they must have been ripe.

The finger lime I have is 'Collette' a black skinned lime with bright green citrus bubbles. Liz's finger limes are pink inside. The bubbles are highly fragrant as well as being very citrusy.

Most of the rest of the pick this week has focused on chillies and capsicums. The chillies are gradually ripening up and each day I pick about 5 -  not huge quantities but still they add to my stash which will sustain me for a year.

I also decided to beat the impending frost by picking my developing capsicums. They were meant to be large red capsicums, but I picked them green and stuffed them with a mix of feta and ricotta and pine nuts, topped them with smoked paprika and baked. Delicious.

And there has been a small pick of padron peppers as well, eaten by quickly tossing in a saucepan with olive oil and skin blistered and dashed with sea salt.

A fist full of spring onions completes the pick -  these went into my favourite eggplant dish - Spicy Eggplant - a Chinese style dish made by the Lad.

That's it really.  Head over to Daphne's for more produce.

Birds and onions

I love my chickens and I love the wonderful native birds that we share our patch with, I really do!

Myrtle and Mavis eyeing off the baby spring onions

Except when they eat my oniony things! For instance, on Monday morning I emerged from the house to find this.

All my shallots dug up and flung around their little oniony bed. Hmm, a busy tribe of choughs! Thank goodness they had only just started to put down a few roots and no shoots. And there were other casualties in that bed as well.  The shallots were sharing their bed with some onion seedlings  and a row of snow peas that had started to sprout. Gone, all gone.

The shallots have been put into another bed and the soil has been covered with wire to stop the choughs scratchy feet and flicky beaks. Hopefully!

What are choughs (pronounced - chuffs)? Well they are fabulous black and white birds with lovely curved wings and beaks and quite mad red eyes. They hang out in groups and spend a lot of time turning over leaves and other forest litter and they chat to one another as they do. Trevor's Birding has a nice picture of them hanging out together.  They have the most amazing big mud nests. This website has great pictures of them and their nests.

As for my chooky girls, well they like chives,

garlic chives,

and spring onions.

I am guessing that their eggs are going to have a nice oniony taste? Better not make a cake! And better find a solution to their onion tribe snacking.

What irresistible birdie treats do you have in your patch?

The garden in mid-April - Onions

If you are not tired of my garden in mid-April tour yet, here is the third instalment - the onion family.

Garlic
This season I am making a serious attempt at growing garlic. I have tried growing garlic before, but I am not sure I have ever been focused enough in the past to get a result I was happy with. This year I am trying Monaro Purple which are reputedly suitable for colder climates. I wonder what their origin is - the Monaro Plain of NSW? They look pretty good so far, I am certain every bulb I put in has come up.

They are Rocambole-style garlic which are hardnecks. The neighbours up the track had great success with this variety last year and so I am taking their lead. It is of course possible that it was their gardening skills rather than the variety of garlic that made the difference, but for now I am placing faith in the variety and a liberal dash of lime.

Leeks
I love leeks, really love them. I also like how they look in the bed and love their huge round flower heads. These leeks I bought in punnet form, but I have another row in which is much less developed that have been raised from seed.

I always put leeks in quite close together, thinning out by pulling some quite young. On the right of the leeks you can see some parsnips on the way.

Spring onions
We seem to eat a lot of spring onions so I have a lot in.  They are mostly in pots but there are some in the beds. These have all been raised from seed. Again, like the leeks, I tend to plant densely.

Red Shallots
Years ago, when I lived in Britain, I grew shallots, red and brown ones and they were heavenly! Why it has taken me so long to grow them again I don't know.  It might have had something to do with space but now I have lots of space there is little excuse.

I haven't put these in yet as you can see. I intend to plant them in a couple of weeks, in the meantime I have prepared a bed for them and am asking the chooky girls to help out. This morning they ate a lot of slaters that were hiding in the parts of the bed that had lots of straw. They have done a fair bit of scratching around already.

(Apologies for the shadow of the photographer in the photo.)

Other oniony things
I also have chives and garlic chives in pots but I kind of call these things 'herbs'.

Onions
Yes, hmmm. You will have noticed that I don't have any onions in. To be honest, I am a little scared of growing onions. Scared is perhaps an exaggeration,  I think I don't like the idea of tying up a big area of a bed when I might be unsuccessful. If I think growing garlic is a challenge, I suspect growing onions is even harder. If you have any tips for success with onions (and garlic for that matter), It will be greatly appreciated. Perhaps I will take onions on next year.

Harvest Monday - 11th Feb 2013

The peach harvest has started in earnest. This morning I picked a small basket full of blushing, fragrant beauties.

They came off two different trees - one of the trees produces much smaller fruit than the other but both are delicious.

The smaller peach is a cling stone and the larger one a free stone. I don't know what variety they are at all.
Until now I have been eating 3 or 4 peaches a day, with this pick, I am going to need to find some peach recipes and get preserving.

My other pickings are still meagre.

This is the last of the tomatoes. The constant heat meant that the tomato plants just dried up. The fruit however because of the heat  had such a concentrated flavour. The chilli plants still produce.

My stash of mature spring onions is nearing its end now, more are just striplings having only recently germinated. These ones are so white because of the very deep mulch I have been applying.

There have been a few cucumbers to pick thru the week, every salad features cucumber at the moment. I wish I had enough to preserve as bread and butter cucumbers but the heat and the Wallaby has knocked the plants around a little too much.

I have also picked lots of mint and some oregano but I didn't take any photos...

I am contributing this to Daphne's Harvest Monday. Join her for pictures of lots more produce.

Thinking of winter

When it's 30c plus in February, it's pretty hard to think of seed raising for winter. Still over the last couple of weeks that's exactly what I have been doing. Some things have gone into the ground but most are being raised on the verandah away from tip nippers and Wallabies.

Here is what I have recently put in or will put in soon.

Beetroot - Crimson Globe
Love, love, love beetroot. I already have a few rows in but they have been pretty decimated by the Wallaby who seems especially drawn to the leaves. Now that the Wallaby has pretty much been excluded, I will put some more rows in.

Broad Beans
I will wait a while before I put these into the bed but I will be planting two types - Crimson Flowered and Aquadulce. Most years I have used broad beans as a green manure only, this year I might also harvest some to eat (a little good oil, some lemon rind, black pepper and parmesan I think).

Broccoli - Green Sprouting and Romanesco
I have never tried the Romanesco but they look amazing, all that crazy lime green spiralling.

Cabbage -  Red Drumhead, Mini
Must get some seeds of my favourite cabbage - Savoy.

Cauliflower - Purple and Mini
Never tried purple cauliflower before either...

Celery - 'Normal' and Chinese
The 'Normal' celery was a punnet I bought, the Chinese Celery seeds were provided by Kebun Malay Kadazan Girls -  thank you, they are coming up nicely.

Chinese cabbages - Red Bok Choi and Mini Wombok.

Fennel -  Florence
I have put some seeds directly into the patch and others in seed raising pots.

Leek -  Jaune Du Poitou

Lettuce - Cos
I'll be putting more lettuce in at some stage, not sure which type.

Spring onions - Ishikura and some provided by Kebun Malay Kadazan Girls -  thank you!

Parsley - Curlina and Continental
I find that curly parsley is more suited to dry conditions (thus my new patch) than Continental, but I like to have both types of parsley in the garden.

Parsnip  -  Hollow Crown
These I have put straight into the soil and they have come up quite well. This is the first time I have tried parsnip. I am really hopeful that they will thrive. We get enough frost here to make them sweet like they are in the UK.

Peas - Snow Climbing
I always have snow peas in the patch, they are one of my favourite things to grow and eat. I will also be putting in some climbing sugar snap at some point. I was so impressed by Daphne's sugar snaps that I have to give them a go.

What am I missing?  I will get frosts here but no snow, have I planned on something that just wont work?  I don't have any micro climates to take advantage of at the moment...that will change eventually as things get growing.

What are you putting in nowish for winter? Those in the northern hemisphere, what are you getting excited about?

Take a look at Suburban Tomato to see what she has recently put in.

Potting up, moving out

My patch is pretty empty now. I have harvested the last of my savoy cabbages and beetroot and now the only things left in the patch are some herbs (mint, Vietnamese mint, thyme, chives, parsley), some flowers (poppies, lupins, the end of the violas and pansies) and some self-seeded tomatoes from last year's crop. I hope that the new residents will like what is left and feel excited about planting up their favourite things into the patch.

Everything that I would have in the ground at this time of the year has been raised in pots ready for the move.

I have these vegetables ready for the move:

• eggplants
• tomatoes 
• chillies 
• fennel
• spring onions
• zucchini

and these herbs:

• parsley - Italian and curled
• mint - Vietnamese and just mint
• basil
• sage
• dill
• thyme
• chives
• garlic chives
• marjoram / oregano - I never know which -  do you?
• rosemary
• lavender
• bay
• yarrow

and then there is some fruit:

•  Collette the finger lime (this is probably overly optimistic as I am not sure how she will handle the frosts!)
• the blueberries

I have cut some right back -  the chives and bay have received a big haircut today. Others have been staked, well watered and mulched over some time so they might be more tolerant of the drive. I hope that it will be a mild day the day we move.

I am hoping that they all survive and that the vegetables will settle into a new, no-dig  raised bed  which will be hastily constructed soon after arrival. The herbs I am likely to keep in pots for a while. And then there will be other things to get started  as soon as I get organised at the new place - beans, corn, pumpkin, rock melon, cucumber ...

I will be leaving behind my special, special espaliered lime trees and my fabulous lemon tree. These citrus plants have given such pleasure.

This final picture is of my last harvest - 3 savoy cabbages and some baby beetroot.

Bye my Sydney garden - friend and comforter.

Top 5: Cut-and-come-again vegetables

On Sunday, I posted about my discovery of fennel as a cut-and-come-again vegetable.What do I mean? Well I guess I have two ways of defining this. One definition is veg that you can harvest as a whole but that you only harvest in part by taking parts of the plant when you want, leaving most of the plant in the ground to gather more later.

Then I guess there is another way to define cut-and-come-again. Plants that, if you harvest in the right way by leaving their roots in the ground,  they will come again.

I don't do a Top 5 very often, but the post about fennel got me thinking about cut-and-come-again vegetables and how handy they are.

In no particular order here are my Top 5 cut-and-come-again veg.

1. Lettuce
Lettuce is a great cut and come again. While you cant take all of the leaves at once, selectively picking off  leaves from a number of plants at one gives you enough for a salad bowl without harvesting the whole plant.

2. Broccoli
A classic cut-and-come-again. Once you have harvested that central head, the sprouts keep coming. And they are such a handy size - no need to cut the side shoots up before cooking.

3. Celery
Celery is probably one of those plants that you can both harvest individual stalks and also cut the plant off at the base. I personally haven't cut it off at the base and had it re-sprout, but City garden, country garden has and attests to it and I will try it out myself.

4. Spring onions
I tend to pull my spring onions, as you can see from this picture, but many I know cut the onion at the base allowing it to re-sprout. I am going to try this to keep the crop going in future. Another version of getting the most from your spring onions is to buy them in the shops but plant them in the garden straight away. My mother and brother do this regularly they tell me. It keeps the onions nice and taught - preferable to them going limp and slimy in the bottom of your crisper!

5. Fennel
I accidentally discovered that fennel was a cut-and-come-again. Read about it here.

I guess there is another definition of cut and come again vegetables - they might be the ones you can 'bandicoot'. Bandicoots are cute Australian mammals that can raid your root vegetables. So in Australia we call raiding your potato crop by grubbing around with your hand and taking a few potatoes only without ripping the whole plant up - 'bandicooting'.

Which vegetables do you use as a cut-and-come-again? What's your Top 5. Which vegetables do you 'bandicoot'?

Suburban Tomato and The New Good Life  do great and regular  Top 5 which I read each week. Pop over to theirs.