Category Archives: Gardening

The Last Pick

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We have several citrus trees here and the fruit is generally ripe during our cooler months from May through to August. The earliest one is the grapefruit closely followed by the Washington Navel orange and mandarin. The two Valencia orange trees are much later and seem to have an extended season with fruit lasting quite happily on the tree for a few months.

In the past we have finished picking in mid-November but the season last year lasted even longer. Today I picked the last of the fruit from the older tree beside the driveway. I thought there might be about 30 but there ended up being 93 fruit!!

I have juiced and frozen all of the juice as I do with all of the harvest. This provides us with enough juice for the entire year. It is just as well that I have plenty of freezer space as there is currently 29 litres frozen juice.

The juicer I bought in 2018 is worth its weight in gold. You can read more about it here.

The 2022 crop is already doing well and larger than the size of a golf ball.

There are still a small number of fruit to pick on the other tree but they can wait for a week or so until I have used some of today’s haul.

Stocking the Pantry

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Fresh produce from the garden is wonderful but there are times when you definitely can’t eat it all at harvest time.

This basket of cucumbers was a case in point.

The recipe from a friend has clearly been passed down from an earlier generation.

I tweaked it slightly and will modify it a little more in the future.

Cucumber Pickles

3.2kg cucumbers, thinly sliced
2 large onions, thinly sliced
3/4 cup salt
Iceblocks
5 cups sugar
5 cups vinegar
1 tablespoon yellow mustard seeds
2 teaspoons turmeric
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried celery leaves

Layer the cucumbers and onions. Sprinkle with salt and cover with iceblocks. Allow to stand for 3 hours then drain and rinse thoroughly twice.

Place cucumber, onion, sugar, vinegar and spices in a large pot and bring to the boil. Do not boil the mixture. Turn the heat off and fill sterilised jars. Make sure that they seal before storing.

NOTE: I increased the turmeric and altered the celery salt from the original recipe to match what I had available. Additionally, in future I would reduce the sugar and vinegar to 4 cups of each as there was more liquid than I needed.

In deference to our industrious ancestors, it only seemed right and proper to use these two mixing bowls that belonged to my grandmother and would be around 100 years old. I use them on a regular basis in my kitchen.

The end result is ready to be stored in the pantry for eating throughout the year.

A Handsome Bunch

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We have had bananas growing here previously but this most recent clump was planted where we can see them from the house rather than up the back and totally out of sight. This is the view of them from my kitchen window.

Can you see the 2 bunches of bananas which have formed?

Here are some closer views.

They are not the biggest bunches but we are patiently looking forward to our homegrown fruit.

A Bouquet of Basil

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GMan was weeding the vegie garden today and discovered that the basil had grown too large and had collapsed under its own weight.

So, I was the lucky recipient of a large bunch of basil.

I removed all of the leaves, washed and spun them dry. Then it was time to make basil pesto.

I did not use pine nuts but instead I used a combination of almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds and pepitas. There is no recipe as such but I used garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. In addition to the standard ingredients I also added some nutritional yeast and a tablespoon of lemon juice.

This was the yield. It is not the most exciting photo so I added the jar of home-grown flowers which I was gifted yesterday.

There is no photo but we had pesto with our homemade gnocchi, tomato sauce and olives. YUM!

Harvest Time

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I feel as though I am repeating myself when I write about dealing with the masses of cherry tomatoes we are picking. I guess that is to be expected since it happens every year and I have been writing this blog for over 10 years. Some things never change. 🙂

GMan and I picked a couple of buckets of cherry tomatoes the other day. Then it was a matter of rinsing them, removing the stalks and sorting them.

The ripest ones went in the blender then I simmered until the liquid was much reduced.

The final step was to pour into icecube trays and freeze. This is a simple version of tomato concentrate.

Others were bagged up and frozen whole. These are great for throwing in a casserole or making tomato sauce (ketchup) in the off-season.

Some that needed another day of ripening were spread on various trays. Here is one.

The next few weeks will see these activities repeated time and again as we make the most of the seasonal abundance.

A Pile of Gold

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Well, it is not strictly gold but we had this pile of compost delivered today. This rich, organic material is like gold for our vegetable garden beds.

GMan and I moved it all to the various garden beds this afternoon. We also pulled up plenty of weeds which are thriving with the recent rain. At least the ground is soft which makes them easier to pull out.

Most of my posts, like this one, are about things that happen here that are a little bit out of the ordinary. However, tomorrow I am going talk about some of the everyday jobs. The ones we do day in and day out. They get very little recognition but they definitely need to be done.

Spring has Sprung

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Here in the southern hemisphere it is springtime.

The romantic ideal of spring promotes images of renewal, growth and new beginnings, however, the reality can be somewhat different.

We have very few deciduous trees in our climate so we enjoy being able to witness the changing seasons through the liquidamber tree in our garden. Here it is looking magnificent and covered in new leaf.

Spring serves to remind us all that we never know what is around the corner.

In the past 6 weeks we have had wild thunderstorms, ferocious winds and a couple of heatwave days all interspersed with some glorious and moderate weather. The extremes and sometimes violent weather events are becoming more frequent as the climate changes.

A couple of days ago we heard creaking and cracking. Upon investigation we discovered that a couple of the lower limbs had come off the liquidamber tree. I suspect this was as a result of the wind we had experienced in recent weeks.

Time to clean up the debris.

Being prepared is not just something for the Boy Scouts. We should all be prepared for whatever might happen. Whether it is driven by the weather, linked to the pandemic or of global origin out of our control, there are plenty of things that could immediately and suddenly disrupt our comfortable lifestyle.

As the seasons change we need to prepare ourselves for the shocks that natural and other events may have.

Storms and bushfires are our main threats in the coming months. If you are in the northern hemisphere and approaching winter, what are your risks? Blizzards? Storms? Flooding?

I am interested in what your seasonal risks are and how you prepare yourself and your family.

Take care and stay safe, wherever you are.

The Kitchen Garden

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It never ceases to amaze me that I can find some produce in the garden even when things are looking a bit sparse.

Today I picked a couple of sticks of celery, some parsley and spinach to add to our quinoa salad bowls for dinner.

I also planted some seeds – zucchini, cucumber and eggplant as well as ordering some corn seeds which I will pick up tomorrow.

Hopefully, the summer garden will be thriving in a few weeks or so.

Last Grapefruit

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This morning I picked the last of the crop of grapefruit and juiced them.

Although our vegetable gardening efforts can be a bit hit and miss, our fruit trees continue to provide with minimal effort on our part.

There are still plenty more citrus with the 2 Valencia orange trees still loaded with fruit.

I also picked another 270g of mulberries from our young tree. I now have just over 700g of mulberries in the freezer and will hopefully make some jam in due course.

Homegrown & Reused

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Today some of my family went to the memorial gardens where our mother’s ashes were to be placed.

These are the native flowers which I took from my garden.

The arrangement is not quite up to the standard of commercial floristry but I was pretty pleased with my effort. Especially since flower-arranging is definitely not my forte.

The wrapping was some that I had squirrelled away from previously received flowers and I even managed to find a piece of matching ribbon.

Rest in peace Mum and Dad. We love you and miss you both always.