Homegrown macadamia nuts

Macadamia nut trees can grow up to 12 metres tall. I have a dwarf version growing in a pot and it's still a good 2 metres high though the nuts themselves tend to be smaller than those available commercially.

I harvest the nuts when the outer casing splits though sometimes they will fall off the tree before this. Macadamia nuts are notoriously hard to crack, especially if they haven't dried enough to shrink from the shell, but I find the Crack-A-Mac handheld nut cracker works well on my home-grown macadamias.

Here's a 30 second video showing the process:

Pumpkin suprise

Update: the vegetable patches have been neglected for quite some time due to other commitments, and doing other creative things like knitting, so I was surprised recently to go outside and find a vine sprawled across one bed sprouting a bulb which I initially thought was a watermelon.

 

It turned out to be a pumpkin of course but unfortunately was harvested too early. I did however save the seeds - half of which I roasted as a snack, and half which have been put aside to sew next season.

 

 

 

We continue to generate some produce from fruit and nut trees like this handful of macadamia nuts, and oranges which have just been turned into juice. We had a glut of lemons and grapefruit. The rosemary bush is still growing strong, and we continue to get the occasional capsicum. Other than that I've been a bit stumped by the milder weather and long periods of dry followed by heavy downpours resulting in flooding and saturated soil. Perhaps I need to stop thinking temperate and start planning a subtropical one!