A cucumber and a suprise!

Have had a steady supply of cucumbers this summer, they must be loving the rain. I saw this one growing and decided to leave it a bit. By the time I got around to harvesting it, it was a decent size. Also was pleasantly surprised to find a cherry tomato plant growing next to it. I don't remember planting it. One seems to pop up every year. I don't mind!

Freshest strawberries

Is there anything tastier than a sun-warmed strawberry picked straight from the bush? The strawberries have loved all the rain lately, and now that the chickens are contained they no longer get to them before I do!

Now that's a zucchini!

New South Wales temperate zone has been hit by a cold snap so we pulled out the last of the summer vegetables and replanted some winter veg - snow peas, cauliflower and cabbage. I've never had much luck with Brassicas but we'll see how they like the new plot location. 

We invited one of the chickens to help turn the dirt over but she was more intent on escaping. 

 

Butter knife for scale. The large carrot was a bit woody but still edible. The zucchini / courgette went into a zucchini slice.

 

 

Another even more impressive home grown zucchini next to a store bought one.

Let's talk tomatoes

Tomatoes are one of the easiest fruit to grow. This tomato plant self-seeded in the veggie patch so I transplanted it to a pot, which it didn't seem to mind at all. It is loving all the rain, but it is being loved by insects.

 

 

One of the easiest fruits to grow is seemingly also one of the easiest fruits to invade. You can see at the bottom of the pot there's a couple I didn't get to in time. I don't like using sprays so I bag my baby tomatoes to protect them as they grow.

There are a few different varieties of bags including mesh ones but I just use paper ones. I have two different types, the larger one has a removable tie while the smaller bag has the tie attached and is a bit more fiddly so I sometimes use small cable ties instead.

Simply pop them over the young uninvaded green tomatoes and they will continue growing in the bag. Yes the tomatoes will still ripen. The only issue I have found is that in heavy rain the bags get drenched and can split, or fly off in strong winds.

The result:

 

Moves and changes

We moved house so the veggie patches had to be dismantled. We rebuilt them at the new place but due to not be situated in a good location plus a drought, plus chickens who don't respect boundaries, the venture failed. The gardens here were well established but we had to replace a lot of the plants due to them being toxic, we are slowly moving to a more native garden but have kept the roses because they are beautiful and smell gorgeous.

The veggie patches have now been reinstated in the front garden and are doing well, loving all the rain we've had lately. I've also planted an orange tree and a fig tree in a pot to replace the trees that had to be removed to make way for a pool.

One thing we couldn't have at the old house was chickens, now we have three. Chickens are pretty easy to keep but at the moment one of them is broody and trying to hatch an invisible egg. Here are two of the ladies when they were younger. We've had them almost two years now and we're pretty sure they are Australorps. We've also since added a leghorn chicken who is a more consistent layer but way  harder to catch!

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!