Wednesday, April 6, 2011

April Harvest

The Summer vegetable garden is slowly drawing to a close. Yesterday I pulled out the last of the zucchini plants and most of the tomato plants. Only the Amish Paste tomato is still going strongly now. I also took out the entire northern section of corn (flop!) and the remains of the butternut pumpkin plants (almost a flop: I got one lonely, very little baby butternut from them). The veggie patch is starting to look a little bare now. The Lebanese eggplants are still ticking along, and we ate our first broccolini recently, although some of it was so insect infested I had to throw it straight out.




Yesterday we also harvested our last pot of potatoes. They are Desiree, and were planted way back in Spring last year. I have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the leaves to die down, but they were showing no signs at all of doing so and I was impatient for the big pot (so I could plant my kiwi-fruit into a bigger pot), so we upended the pot onto the lawn, and look at them all! OK, so perhaps not so impressive to seasoned potato growers, but I was very happy with our little harvest, almost 1kg worth (2 pounds). Next year I will plant more, all into pots (to avoid another in-ground failure), Kipflers maybe, and those purple ones Digger's sell....



Speaking of Digger's, my seed and garlic order arrived the other day so I got cracking, planting lots into where the old lawn was. Lots of broad beans ('Aquadulce'), peas ('Greenfeast'... and then I read the label properly and realised they're supposed to go in during Spring. Oh. Oops! An Out-Of-Season trial?). The Garlics I bought were 'Early Purple' (a hardneck variety) and 'Early White' (a soft-neck variety), I have never grown garlic before but how hard can it be? (Say she who can muck up with peas!)





And the Piece de Resistance: Our Watermelon!
It was a potted variety. The first time I planted it, it was promptly eaten by a marauding creepy-crawly, so I tried again. It made a lovely big plant, but only one watermelon ever grew properly on it. This is one expensive melon! I will try again next year, but make more of an effort to hand-pollinate it (I did this year, but only half-heartedly). The plant had shrivelled and wilted to naught, so we picked our melon and admired it;


We felt it's hefty weight;


We cut it open with an old knife, on what was once the foundation of the laundry wall;


Tasted it, and deemed it delicious!


1 comment:

Malay-Kadazan girl said...

I like those golden zucchini that you harvested. A friend of ours did suggested to us to buy potatoes at organic shops near Adelaide Central Market for planting. If you browse through The Mad Gnome Attack Blog which live in Adelaide hill, they have just planted their garlic cloves recently. So don't worry you still have time to plant them.