Tomato lovin'

My tomatoes - all various heritage Digger's varieties - seem to be the only thing in the garden at present not being gradually decimated by earwigs. All but one are doing beautifully (that 'one' got eaten right in the middle of the stem when it was small. It's hanging on, but I don't have high hopes for a recovery). They're all fairly compact bushes, lush and green. I adore the smell; pungent and humid, they smell like dust and hot North winds, of long slow Summer holidays and boredom.
Some of them are starting to get little yellow flowers, others are following closely behind with tiny hairy flower buds. I photographed a few of them, but even though I was looking closely it took me some time to notice that there are little fruit already on one of them, my 99c pot-bound bargain is well ahead of the pack.



I had a heritage tomato seed mix, also from Diggers', and I sprinkled some of the seeds in pots a few weeks ago and they are starting to sprout and look like proper mini-tomato plants already.


In other garden news, the yellow zucchinis have their first flowers, the capsicums have some small fruits, and some beans have sprouted and I'm hoping they will survive the voracious earwig population.




And some babies have appeared in compost heap. I suspect they might be pumpkins because they look like the pumpkin seedlings I planted a few weeks ago. I'm going to leave them and hope for the best. Free plants, woot!


Next post: attempting to deal with the earwigs!

My first harvest.

A momentous day today. I have actually picked real, edible vegetables from my garden. I must be doing something right after all!
I rummaged around in the potato pots and found a dozen potatoes easily. They were blanched whole, then tossed in fried garlic and butter: yum!


We picked the biggest of the broad beans, even though I didn't know how to tell if they were ready or not. Shelling them, I discovered the beans were nestled in a luminous white and velvety fur.




I've also been picking snow peas by the dozen and snacking on them as I wander around the garden.


I've also planted out the tomatoes I've had waiting for me while we were away - a Digger's Club heritage mix - they arrived the day before we left and I didn't have time to plant them then. There's also corn seeds in the soil, and three capsicum plants so far: one yellow, one black, and one chocolate coloured version. Yet more beans - this time purple kings and yellow butter beans - have been scattered all over the place. I have a heritage mix of carrot seeds (also Digger's Club) to put in but have had no luck with carrots yet, my carroty efforts so far not yielding even a single green sprout. I got some raspberry runners and Japanese windflowers from my Mother-in-law's beautiful garden. It's probably not really cold enough here for raspberries to fruit ,but they're still pretty plants. Did I ever mention I wrote my honour's thesis on native raspberries (Rubus parvifolius)? I'd like to source some of them for our house too. They're indigenous to this area but not common anymore. The plants look much like introduced raspberries, but they're smaller and quite dainty. The flowers are pink, and in this area the petals do not fold back to look like a traditional flower, but stay clasped together like hands in prayer. My photos are not on this computer, but I have borrowed this one from Greg's Indigenous Landscapes website.