What we are eating this week...

The golden zucchinis just keep on coming, there was a butter bean (yes, just one!) and lots of bok choy, but only briefly because I forgot to sow more until we'd eaten it all! The bok choy is a little bit pre-eaten by caterpillars, but you'll get that when you don't use poisons.




And for dessert, the occasional strawberry. Quickly learning that if you want a whole bowl of strawberries, you need lots and lots of plants. Half a dozen is not enough, not when the fruits ripen one at a time! They are delicious though, even when you go thirds with husband and child, yum yum.

Purple Capsicums.

I picked a capsicum today, a purple one, although I think 'black' would almost be a better description as it was almost that dark and hardly purple at all. I have been eyeing it off for some time, wondering when would be the right time to pluck it from it's parent and today was the day.


When I cut it open I found it was a virulent green beneath the skin.


I stir fried it with zucchini, onion, garlic, and tomato. To be perfectly honest, it was a little on the bitter side, although still quite edible.


In other gardening news, we are mere days away from picking our first yellow zucchini.
I am astounded at how fast they have grown!


I caved in and bought a pink-flowered strawberry, which is very pretty indeed.


And the nasturtiums are doing beautifully. These are from the local nursery, and not from the nature strip. I wonder, though, if they'll self-seed everywhere and I'll regret the bright colours, as I have an idea for a 'black and white' garden and the fluorescent oranges here won't quite fit. I did splash out on both black and white nasturtiums recently, but they have no flowers just yet.

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!