April Harvest (2)

We made a visit to our little house the other day and found that there is still lots of edibles in the garden. The corn looked as ready as it was going to get, I peeled back the layers and had a look, poking it with my fingernail and the juices were foggy and yellow so I took the plunge to pick. The smaller patch had small cobs (although not as much as a failure as the back patch which had nothing!), the bigger patch had nice big cobs, almost supermarket-worthy. I gave half of it to FIL, payment for his excavation work so far ;-)
There were also a few long but thin Lebanese eggplants, and a couple of the 'Fairy' type which I picked even though they seemed quite hard. There were even a few purple capsicums ready to go. The capsicums and eggplants have all gone straight into a big pot of bolognese sauce for lasagne.

While I was picking the corn, I found a surprise! Here I was thinking that the rockmelons were a total flop, and yet, there, hidden amongst the corn was a fruit! I wasn't sure if it was actually ripe, the vine was still pretty green (though the leaves are just starting to yellow), but the millipedes had found it and were gnawing, creeping and crawling all over it, so I thought it best to pick it before our one and only rockmelon became food for legions of Portugese pests!

It wasn't bad actually, it weighed almost 1kg (2 pounds) and was very edible, though a little on the bland side. I think it just needed more time.

I pulled the last of the tomato plants from their pots because they really were just looking too shabby to go on with. They've been hung in the shed, a bit experimentally, because I've read that you can ripen late tomatoes that way. Besides, I want the big pots!

And out there, still growing surprisingly well is the pumpkin plant I thought wouldn't set fruit at all, and the rainbow chard which is so pretty and bright even though it's sorely neglected.