'Peas, peas!'

That's what our SP says, 'peas, peas!' These are Greenfeast and Telephone varieties: Y.U.M. SP and I have been picking them whenever we wander past the vines, and eating them on the spot. Poor Old D isn't getting much of a look in on the peas. Oh well, he does know they're there!

Radishes?

Goodness me; I knew radishes grew quite fast but I didn't realise that I'd be eating them within five weeks of sowing them! I didn't buy these 'Easter Egg Radish' seeds, they were sent as a bonus in one of my many batches of seed purchases. Radishes haven't featured highly on my 'to grow' list (daikon excepted) as I remember disliking them when I ate them as a kid. I've never enjoyed that bitey/spicy thing they can have going on. When these seeds arrived I figured I may as well give them a go and I sowed a few of them in a Styrofoam tub with some French carrots. That was back in early September.

Yesterday I noticed the rounded red tops of the roots were starting to poke out above the soil so I pulled these five radishes out. Such colours! I am always amazed by the vibrancy of home-grown produce. It might be a little bit battered, bruised, insect eaten and inconsistent but at least it wasn't harvested months ago and left in a cold store before being transported in a truck across half the country (or further) and then left to languish under fluorescent lighting waiting for someone to buy it and consume what's left of it's nutrients... The other day I saw Mexican garlic for sale at the supermarket - and no Australian garlic option. I went home and looked up how far it had come: almost 14,000km (8699 miles). That's a long way for a bulb of garlic.


I scrubbed them off and sliced off the end off a couple to taste. They still had that typical spicy radish taste that I remembered, and everyone else in my family refused to try them. But that was eating them raw, and for lunch I fried them off in a hot pan with some butter and sweet soy sauce, and a whole heap of Greenfeast peas and Aquadulce broad beans out of the garden and it was pretty good and not at all 'radishy,' so I think overall radishes deserve a second chance and I'll continue to grow them in the garden. Too easy!


Incidentally, I thought that white radish might have been a ring-in but when I googled 'Easter Egg Radish' I got a tonne of pretty pictures with reds, purples and whites so it seems that's just how they come. Random and bright, can't do much better than that.

Mid-September back garden tour

I have shiny new and uncorrupted camera cards so I am back to my old snap-happy self and to celebrate I'm going to share a dozen or so photos from the (mostly) vegie garden out the back of our house.

We've had a few little harvests lately:

There was a lovely big bok choy (growing in a pot with a baby plum tree).


And the experimental Greenfeast peas had enough fat pods on them to be able to cook enough for a side to dinner for three adults and a pea-'loving toddler.


And there are more peas on their way, although the whole plot is starting to look decidedly lopsided now and I don't anticipate it will last much longer.


There were a couple of baby beetroots (not my forte, not yet anyway!)


I was going to throw all these baby beetroot leaves into a stirfry - since the actual roots were so disappointing but I accidentally left them out in the garden overnight on Monday and it absolutely bucketed down that night and the were beaten down into the ground. Still, I thought the photo was too pretty not to share; those colours! Imagine the vitamins in them!


And, as ever, the rainbow chard is still providing loads of leaves for us for no effort at all on my part. It's not quite as vibrantly coloured as it was when the weather was cooler.


We've got more fruit and veg on it's way too.

There's the Aquadulce broad beans, which are taller than my waist. I have dutifully nipped out the top buds of each plant. Apparently if you don't do this they will not set fruit, and I can say that despite all the flowers over a month ago I didn't see a single bean pod until after I'd done the nipping.


The other broad beans - Bunyard's Exhibition, that I sowed much later - are only around a foot tall but producing flowers already. Now, do I do the nipping now, or let them get taller and then nip them? I always feel like I'm making up this gardening gig as I go along!


And for months and months I have been looking at the purple pepino flowers and moaning that they were doing nothing. And then, suddenly, there are at least a dozen fruit! I theorise that the weather had to warm up enough to bring out the pollinators (feral bees, no doubt). I don't know how long they'll take to ripen, and I don't know what they'll taste like (like 'melon,' I've read), and I don't even know if we'll like them but it will be good to find out!


Some of the recent sowings are doing quite well so far and not too attacked by snails, like these daikon which I'm growing in one of my Styrofoam boxes (the carrots have sprouted too, but are too tiny to photograph).


There's beans doing their thing. These might be butter beans, but I can't remember what I've put where (it is written down though!) For some reason, the beans in the pots sprouted weeks ahead of those in the ground. Maybe because the pots are warmer than the ground?


Oh gosh, I can't remember what these are either! Pumpkins? Cucumbers? Zucchini? Eek! It's a pot luck garden! These were sown in jiffy pots and then transplanted.


And just for fun, I've planted lots of red and yellow sunflowers, and 'black' and white hollyhocks along the fence. I'll write a whole post about this soon, I'm hoping.

The red-flowered sunflower seedlings have red stems and leaf veins too. These were planted in toilet paper tubes filled with seed-raising peat (I love that stuff!) I accidentally left the tube poking a bit above the ground but I'm sure it won't matter. Some bugger of an insect has had a nibble on a number of the sunflower seedlings which is a little bit irritating.


These are tiny baby hollyhocks. Some I planted singly, and some in pairs like these two, in anticipation of some natural attrition!

Seems such a shame that nasturtiums are a weedy nuisance when out in public! They are supposed to be total pest magnets in the vegie patch so it seems contradictory to plant them there, but the idea is that you attract the bugs - aphids especially, but also slugs, snails and caterpillars - to the nasturtiums and not to your vegies. However, I seem to have the healthiest, pest-free nasturtiums out there, and my brussel sprouts are absolutely covered in grey aphids and not fit to speak about (or eat, for that matter, might give the old brussels a miss next year)


It's a very exciting time of year, this ever-lovely Spring.

[and, even better, look at this! A new satellite photo of our little house:



It shows my still unfinished path out the front, the new extension out the back, the water tank which, thanks to the big downpours earlier in the week, now has enough water in it that some comes out when you open the tap, and finally no more huge pine tree! Compare it to this photo back in April:



Woohoo, rolling along quite nicely!]

Winter wednesday #12 - Bountiful

Before the weather rolled in yesterday afternoon I was able to spend a lot of time in the garden, appreciating it in all it's blustery and soggy goodness. Look at all this! Spring onions, a baby beetroot (yes, just one!), more rainbow chard and...


...a cauliflower! I'm super proud of this one. Who'd have thought I could grow a real, live, edible cauliflower?


This little section of the garden is doing fabulously. At the front is garlic, in the middle are the experimental greenfeast peas, at the back are my tall broad beans.


I tried to take a photo to show you just how many flowers are on those peas, but I don't think it quite conveys it. There must be hundreds, and they are starting to set peas. I can hardly wait to start eating them!


The broad beans are suddenly bursting out with flowers all over too.


There are lots of spring onions out there too. These are called 'red legs,' and they are planted in a pot with my Tahitian lime tree.


The globe artichokes I planted sometime last year are finally looking a little bit happier and less weedy. Perhaps I don't have to pull them out after all? Behind them, looking good, are the second round of broad beans I planted a couple of months ago, such babies compared to the early sowing!


This little unknown 'gambler's choice' fig is sending out it's Spring leaves already, well ahead of the pack (I have, I think, five fig treelings now!)


The weeds are doing beautifully too. Look at them go, so lush and luxuriant!


Yesterday wasn't just about harvesting and photographing, I got a couple of important jobs done too.

I planted my new 'Nellie Kelly' grafted passionfruit, it's new leaves are almost metallic.


Her new home is up against a west-facing fence with the brown turkey fig. Now, please, a special request to whatever bugger ate the passionfruit I planted last year down to the ground: Please leave my newbie alone!
I'll rig something up on the fence between the posts to give her something to climb up against.


I also completed 'round one' of the potato planting. You're supposed to plant after all risk of frost has passed, and I figured since we don't get much frost in my area I could take a chance and start now. I planted 7 out of 20 gourmet assorted tubers.


Well, I say 'planted' but as I mentioned a few posts ago, I'm using a no dig method this year for most of the potatoes, so they were just plonked on the ground after I'd turned it over and tried to take out the worst of the soursobs.


Then I piled on the peastraw, manure, blood and bone, potash, and a sprinkle of Dynamic Lifter and a general slow release fertilizer for luck, and watered the whole lot in with a dash of Seasol (I love that stuff! It was a bit like making a giant, layered pie. I hope the spuds like it! It was quite a lot of effort.
I'd bought a bag of compressed peastraw to try out, and whilst I don't like to moan about such things, I have to say don't waste your money on it. I had this grand idea that I could keep the bag to plant some more taters in, and I did manage it eventually, but it was so hard to get out without destroying the bag that I ended up cutting it halfway down and making my bag half the size. That's not a reason not to buy the stuff of course, but the straw was very fine and would blow away in a light wind I think, and it didn't go very far and was quite expensive, so all in all I wish I'd just bought a couple of bales of normal peastraw and gotten at least 4 times as much for the same amount of money.


Lastly, just for kicks, I had to show you my 'firelight' kangaroo paw which has been slowly, slowly growing it's flower spikes up to chest height. Beautiful, hey? I wish I had more than one! That red against the grey of our house is pretty special.


Head on over to Hazel's to see how other people are getting through the tail end of Winter

Check!

I love making lists and then ticking things off them. Done! Check! Tick! The current gardening 'To Do' list was only stored in my head, but today was one of those miraculous afternoons when the sun is shining as though we are three months on from now, the air is still and nearly warm, lorikeets are bickering in the trees, and in four short hours I got so much done in our yard. It was amazing!

I managed to:

• Finish pruning the roses.

(View from new 'Nightingale' [astringant] persimmon through to pruned roses)

• Plant the quince tree (even though I swore I'd bought all the fruit trees I was going to this year I convinced myself I needed another one. Besides, quinces are one of Chef-D's favourite fruits.)
• Plant the asparagus crowns (one purple asparagus, one 'Fat Bastard' asparagus. I had a brainwave about putting them in amongst the roses.)
• Plant another round of broad beans (this time, 'Bunyard's Exhibition.')
• Tie up the Experimental peas.

(Experimental 'Greenfeast' peas already have some flowers)

• Transplant a living, healthy lavender from the end of the hedge (where it was an extra) to replace the dying one in the middle (why, oh why, is it always plants in the middle of hedges that turn up their toes?) The dying lavender went into the rose bed in case it proves to be a Lazarus cultivar.

(Dying lavender)

• My boy, wonderful husband that he is, got rid of the last of the Awful White Gravel for me!

• And the last thing I did today was plant the lomandra border along the driveway (I really need to scan that garden plan to show you...) I did it as the sun went down, as my grubby hands stiffened in the cold, and I completed just as it got so dark I couldn't really see anymore if I'd planted them in a straight line or not, and finished off with coffee and a biscuit from my boy while my babe caught a nap in the car.
  

And when we got back 'home' to MIL's there was a package in the post for me. Actually, it was addressed to D ('Um, did you order something in my name? What is this? It's really heavy'). That, my love, is 800g of mixed heritage and gourmet seed potatoes! I think I must have looked at just about every Australian nursery site on the Internet to find these babies. I wanted as many different sorts as I could get, but not too many of each because I don't want to fill up the entire backyard, and although I found a number of sellers who had a really good variety, only these people would post exactly what I wanted to South Australia.


In my 800g of potatoes, there are 20 individual spuds, and 16 varieties within them. Unfortunately, they're not separately labelled so which one is which will only be my best guess, especially under the layer of dirt. The other slight problem is that some of the photocopies of the labels are unclear and I can only read 12 out of 16 despite my best squinty efforts. Shall I tell you what they are? For the potato connoisseur, I have: Sapphires, Nicolas, Red Norlands, Pink Fir Apples, Toolangi Delights, Sebagos, King Edwards, Cranberry Reds, Kennebacs, Bananas, Bintjis, Brownells, and the four mystery varieties (not expensive either, less than $20 including express post).


What's the plan for all those potatoes? Well, this time, for once, I'm not winging it. I've actually done a bit of research, referring primarily to Peter Cundall's Practical Australian Gardener. I'm going to use a no-dig method which starts with a green manure crop (which I sowed about a fortnight ago, a bit late but oh well), then involves lots and lots of hay and manure and potash. I've even already bought the potash; I'm ready to rock and roll... sometime in August.

Little veggie update

Just a wee update of what's going on in our veggie patch at home. More pictures than text: here we go :)

The garlic is doing quite well, needs a bit more of a weed but I've gotten rid of the worst of them.


My experimental Greenfeast peas look great in their tangles.


The broad beans - Aquadulce - have taken off. They're much more delicate and fragile looking than the variety I planted last year (I can't remember what sort that was, but it wasn't Aquadulce).


The pepino is looking blousey and lush, and it has striped violet and white flowers! I don't know how well it will set fruit, it's very cold outside and there aren't very many insects about for pollination.


And even though I pulled out most of the pea-straw peas a couple of weeks ago, I did leave one little patch to their own devices (mainly because they weren't in the way of anything else) and look how beautiful their flowers are, like dancing faeries.


SP thinks it's all super interesting. All the drizzle has been keeping us inside, and my poor little bird is bouncing off the walls a bit. She doesn't like being confined like that.


And last, but not least, I picked the little pumpkins and we ate them last night. I made that mistake of planting out a few varieties and not writing down which was where, and so of course I've forgotten which one this was. Most of them did nothing, but this wee plant made a couple of fruits. I think it might have been the Golden Nugget, but maybe it was just a plant which felt like making very small fruits? The little ones were too small and fiddly for me to be bothered with so they've gone to the fish tank for fish food. The bigger ones fit nicely in my hands, tennis ball sized, I cut them into slices and roasted them with Australian olive oil and a touch of salt. Pretty good! But if only they'd been more than two of them!


I've made a couple of gardening resolutions for next Spring:

1. Write things down! Make diagrams of what I've planted where, because my memory will surely fail me.

2. Plant fewer varieties of pumpkins, but more of each variety (ie not one butternut, one kent, one golden nugget etc, but maybe four butternuts, four kents...) and put some in the front garden where there are more flowers to attract the pollinators.

Experimental Monday

[Rewinding this one at 'And then there were four' because everything in it looks so delicious, and it's about peas, coriander and quinces, which are just a few of my most favourite things to eat.]

I hearby declare yesterday to be Experimental Monday (whether it's a stand-alone day, or a repeated one I am yet to decide).
On Sunday, on our drive out to the rose nursery, MIL, SP and I passed a number of places selling local produce. Naturally, we stopped at one and picked up a bag of cheap quinces, locally grown kiwifruit (a rarity!), some apples, and some very cheap persimmons. Oh, and a little frangipane tart, yummo!
Yesterday, D and I thought we'd try experiment #1 with the quinces. What if, we wondered, what if we cooked them in the slow cooker? We used the same recipe as last time, D washed them popped them into the slow cooker - whole! I was aghast! Until he told me that's how they did them at work and they were easy to peel afterwards, hmmm, ok, we'll see...


We covered them with the rest of the ingredients, the water, the fragrant spices, the sticky honey and sugar...


And then we went out, to our own house so D could help with the digging for the plumbing (becoming an interminable job, I'll not go on about it!) SP fell asleep in the car on the way over, so I was able to get loads of weeding done (I covered way more ground in weeding than the boys did in digging). The pea-straw peas were starting to take over and swamp everything, and there were lots of pea pods on them, so I thought it was time to pull them up. I ate a few of the peas (Experiment #2) and I thought they were OK, if a bit small. I got D to try one, and he declared it 'a bit bitter, ' but then he ate a few more and thought they were edible enough.
So we cleared all the pea-straw from the ground, stripped off the peas and then brought them home.


They were washed, and we tossed them whole into tonight's Green Curry (Experiment #3)


Along with masses of coriander straight out of MIL's garden.


And our curry was delicious (in Thai, "a raawy maa") So the verdict is in: Pea-straw peas are perfectly edible. I think the key is to pick them before they get too fat because then they're kind of hard and woody. Better to eat them whole, a bit like snow peas (this is also less work than shelling them!)
Then, back to our quince dessert, which by this point has filled the entire house with the most fabulous scent.


The skin had cracked open and begun to peel back, so once they were cool enough to touch I got going taking it off. And was it 'easy'? Erm... no. In my carefully considered opinion, peeling and coring cooked quinces is a bit of a bitch, and a messy one at that. Why I ended up doing it, instead of my chef who suggested it, is a bit of a mystery. But do they cook well in a slow cooker? They certainly do! It's a very easy way to prepare quinces, which is a bit of a time-consuming business, just peel and core them first to save sticky swear words flying all over your kitchen.
Eat, as usual, with cream and icecream.