The Winter Vegetable Garden

I'm very happy with the way the winter garden is growing this year especially after the dismal year I had last year. 

Mammoth Melting snowpeas July 14th, 2020

August 8th, 2020

Brassicas July 14th, 2020

August 23rd, 2020

The harvest has been small so far. Mammoth Melting snowpeas

More snow peas and a very early asparagus spear.

Red Kitten and English Medania spinach

Violaceo di Verona cabbage, another white cabbage, Red Kitten spinach, Freckles lettuce and another tiny head of broccoli.

I've harvested two beautiful Purple Sicily cauliflowers that grew from seedlings planted last winter but that never made it to maturity before the warmer months arrived. I moved them to another part of the garden not thinking that they would make it through summer, but make it they did and this beauty was the reward for my patience.

I've since harvested another of these as well as a white cauliflower which I think is a Rober, but I'm not sure.

Some harvests have been smaller than some others.

 A tiny head of broccoli

Tiny turnips.

     What could quite possibly be the worlds smallest cauliflower?

Freckles lettuce

Everything else is coming along nicely and in a few weeks, I expect to be harvesting lots of cabbages, broccoli, beetroot, Speckled snowpeas, more cauliflowers, potatoes and carrots.

The beautifully coloured flower of the Speckled snowpea.

I miscalculated how long potatoes take to mature and the spot I had set aside for them was where I will be planting my tomatoes mid-October so they are growing in pots this year instead.

Apart from some very small broccoli heads, the only other problem I have had in the garden this year is whitefly. Normally they arrive at the beginning of winter, stay around for a few weeks and then leave, but this year for some reason they have stayed around much to my annoyance. Luckily, this year I invested in some insect netting which protected my young brassica plants from them as well as the Cabbage White butterfly. They have been a very worthwhile investment. 

I think that's all for now, I will be back next week with another post.

Until then, stay safe and be kind to each other, Jan.

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Sunday

I was so annoyed with myself this morning because I thought I had slept in, it wasn't until an hour later when I looked at the clock in the kitchen that I realised that daylight saving had started while I was sleeping. Can I just say, and I know that I'm in the minority here, that I hate daylight saving time, I always have! I realise that there aren't actually any more hours of daylight, but  I think it's so unnecessary in a country that already has so many hours of daylight during summer to artificially extend it. If they moved it to winter when we actually could use more I wouldn't have a problem with it.

It was another overcast, windy day today and so much cooler than yesterday, the BoM keeps predicting rain but so far there has not been a drop, it would be nice if they could get it right occasionally.

I took a walk to Aldi and Coles to pick up a few groceries (the stores don't open here until 11am on Sundays) and dropped into Bunnings for "a quick look" and I didn't get home until well after lunchtime, these came home with me.

Tomatoes Genuwine, Rouge de Marmande and Blue Berries, a purple capsicum and Fairy Tale eggplant.

I have sown seed for tomatoes and a few have germinated but not many and the ones that have germinated are growing at a snail's pace so I thought rather than wait until they're big enough to be planted I would get a head start with these. The eggplant and capsicum haven't germinated at all, I am going to sow more seeds but just in case they don't germinate either at least I will have these. The eggplant is only a small one but as I'm the only one who eats them it is a perfect size.

I did get the beans planted and I will take a photo once they are established and growing, I didn't manage however to get any more seeds sown.

While I was down in the garden I harvested the last of the sprouting broccoli, the rest is starting to flower so I will leave it for the bees until I need the space, a Purple Sicily cauliflower, my first time growing them and I will be growing them again next year.

I picked the one and only Violaceo di Verona cabbage, it's my first time growing cabbage and I'm not sure it was ready to be picked but the whitefly has arrived and I didn't want it to be ruined, as it was I found two Cabbage White butterfly caterpillar feasting on the inner leaves. 

In the basket along with the cauliflower and cabbage are some Golden Podded peas another first for me this year, some Sugar Snap peas, the first snowpea (Mammoth Melting) and a single broad bean. The asparagus is doing so well this year that I can barely keep up with them, not that I mind they are delicious.

Tomorrow is Labour Day holiday here in South Australia and at this point, I don't have any plans, some seed sowing maybe, we'll see. Anyway, I hope you all had a lovely day and if I do decide to do anything tomorrow I will be back with another post. Bye for now.

Edited: I actually wrote this last Sunday and for some reason, it didn't publish.

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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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The Garden in December

This post was meant to be my last one for 2016, but I got busy with other things so instead it is my first post for the brand new year.

While I might not enjoy the heat of summer it seems the garden does.  The butternut pumpkins are doing fantastically well this year and are starting to outgrow their beds and onto the pathway, they are producing lots of female flowers which I hope the bees are busy pollinating.

The zucchinis are doing the best of all the vegetables I planted and are all ready providing me with more than I really need, I don't know what I'm going to do once they really get going.

The green ones are sweet and creamy, totally different to shop bought ones.

The Yellow Crookneck has a much firmer texture than the green ones, but they taste good and at the end of the day that is what it is all about.

The watermelon and rockmelon (cantaloupe) are covered in flowers so fruit shouldn't be too far off.

The first planting of corn is doing well,

 and the tassels are starting to emerge.

I waited too long between planting the first and second lot of corn and so it will be quite a few weeks before the second crop of corn is ready which may not be a bad thing.

But not everything is doing as well as I would like, the Turkish Turban pumpkin which at first did well and produced lots of little pumpkins,

The only pumpkin that seems to have been successfully pollinated so far.

took a turn for the worse and looked like it might die, luckily it seems to be recovering now and is starting to put on some new healthy looking growth and maybe even some more pumpkins.

I have since sown another seed which will hopefully grow into a strong healthy plant and produce masses of pumpkin. #agirlcanhope

Some of the beans are doing well and producing, like the Tender Delight,

while others like the Borlotti, which at first was doing fine and had produced masses of bean pods,

suddenly turned up their toes and died.

The unnamed volunteer that popped up in the garden and is still unnamed, but I'm starting to suspect it might be a Kent pumpkin is going great guns and there is the real possibility that it could take over the melon garden if I'm not careful.

The eggplant that I overwintered, survived the powdery mildew and has started to produce fruit again and will shortly be joined by two more eggplant, a Rosa Bianca and a Snowy.

My last job for December was potting up the very slow to grow tomato seedlings.
I honestly did not think that the tomato grown from store bought seed was ever going to get big enough to transplant into larger pots, in contrast the ones that were grown from store bought tomatoes, sliced, and lain on top of the soil are much further ahead with their growth and look healthier too. Hopefully now they are all in pots they will flourish.

Tomato seedling grown from store bought tomatoes.

This one was grown from shop bought seed.

Just a couple more photos to share of the damage done by the storm that came through South Australia last week.
The trellis that I had been using to hold the shade cloth off the corn was blown over, luckily the corn was only bent not broken and was standing up straight again by that same afternoon.

The damage that upset me the most was my greenhouse which was a birthday present from my daughters last year. Even though it was tied down and had survived other storms this time it ended up over the neighbours fence and is unfortunately beyond repair.

I know I'm lucky to have sustained such minor damage it could have been so much worse and was for a lot of people.

So, that was the garden in December, I'm expecting a lot more produce to come out of it over the next few weeks and I will be back at the end of this month with another update.

Wishing you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR and I hope the year ahead brings us all an abundance of the very best that life has to offer.

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