The Great Pumpkin Harvest

Well, maybe great is a bit of an exaggeration, but compared to last years harvest of one minuscule butternut,

this years harvest was indeed great.

10.4kg of Butternut and 4.8kg of an unknown volunteer.

As you can see in the photo one of the pumpkins has split, I have since found out that it is an indication that the fruit had been left on the vine too long.  It was the second one to have done it, my own fault, but I wanted to make sure they were fully ripened before I picked them. I was worried that they might have gone mouldy or started to rot inside, but when I cut them open they were just fine and the pumpkin soup that was made with them was absolutely delicious.

There are still three more Butternut pumpkins on the vine that should be ready to pick on the weekend, I will be making sure those are not left too long.

Did you grow pumpkins this year? How did they go?

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Snowy - At Last

After many seeds sown and a few false starts I finally managed to get a "Snowy" eggplant to grow this year. It started to flower, but never set any fruit or so I thought. Look at what I discovered this morning when I went down to the vegetable garden.

To say I got excited to see it is an understatement, but it's my first and grown from seed which makes it extra special in my book.

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Garden Update - March 2017

Well, here we are, March is over and the first month of autumn has gone, but March was a very warm month and it has only been over the last week that the weather has finally started to cool down. 

As I expected pickings from the garden have been small, both in size and quantity.

The only two eggplants I've had so far this season with three each of Honeybee and Principe Borghese tomatoes.

Surprisingly over the last two weeks the eggplant has really picked up and has doubled in size, it is covered in flowers so I am hopeful of a few more fruit before the colder weather arrives.

One thing that wasn't small in size was the rockmelon.

It weighed 2.2kgs, and was sweet, juicy and delicious.

I thought it was going to be the only one for this year, but as you know the garden is always full of surprises.

  I hope it matures quickly.

There are also two watermelon slowly growing in the garden as well, one is nearly ready to pick,

the other was a relative late comer so I'm not sure it will mature in time.

The pumpkins are getting closer to being ready to be picked every day. I can't wait to cut this one open to see what's inside. This was a volunteer plant that popped up in the garden, and although it looks a bit like a Queensland Blue I have never grown them or bought them so I have no idea what it is.

Looking forward to lot of pumpkin soup this winter made from these beauties.


Readers will remember this photo of a tomato flower from last month's blog post, I have since found out that it is a fairly uncommon condition called fascination. The cause of fascination is unknown, but it is harmless to plants and it doesn't spread to infect other plants.

This is the resulting tomato fruit.

It looks weird, but it tasted just like a normal tomato.

One last photo to finish this post, my orange tree is once again playing host to the caterpillar of the Citrus Swallowtail butterfly, and hopefully I will be lucky enough to watch them hatch again.

Photo taken October 2015

Well that's it for this month, hopefully my blogging mojo will come back soon and I will blog a little more often, if not I will see you next month. 

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