Tag Archives: gardening

Choice Chutney

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I recently encountered a new ‘problem’. Here in central Victoria the weather had definitely turned quite cool. Summer is well and truly behind us and I was left with an abundance of green tomatoes. This never happened in Queensland as tomatoes literally ripened all the year round.

It was time to remove the tomato bushes so that we could reuse the garden bed so I harvested the tomatoes and found that I could use them to make chutney.

The first step was to wash them thoroughly.

I then sliced the tomatoes and layered them with the diced onion and sprinkled with salt. Then I covered the bowls and left them to stand overnight.

This morning it was time to make the chutney.

GREEN TOMATO CHUTNEY

Ingredients

2.5kg green tomatoes, sliced
500g onions, finely diced
1 tablespoon salt
500g sultanas
500g sugar
500g apples, peeled, cored and chopped
1100ml vinegar, I used half white vinegar and half apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
30g ground allspice
30g ground cloves

Combine all ingredients in a large stockpot/preserving pan. Simmer gently for about 3 hours. I used a stick blender sparingly to mash the tomatoes a bit more. I kept the pot covered for about 2 hours and then removed the lid for the final hour.

The mixture should be rich, thick and caramel coloured.

Spoon into hot, sterilised jars. This recipe yielded 12 jars so the pantry will be well-stocked.

Saving Seeds

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My vegetable gardening efforts over the years have sometimes involved buying and sowing seeds but have mostly been a matter of buying a punnet of seedlings.

I know that this is not the most sustainable option for several reasons. The seedlings come in a plastic tray and they are often grown in quite different conditions to your location which does not always bode well for their success. Finally, many are hybrids which are not suitable for seed saving as they do not grow true to type.

At the beginning of October, I was fortunate enough to be given some lettuce seedlings by a fellow gardener who lives about 1km away from us. These were very successful for several months until the hot weather and then they bolted as lettuces tend to do in the warmer months. A couple of them grew to almost 1 metre tall with masses of flowers.

GMan was keen to clear out the garden bed where they were so today I checked them and found dozens of seed heads with literally hundreds of seeds. I collected them, rinsed the detritus from them and spread the seeds out on a scrap of calico fabric to dry.

Wish me luck with my first real foray into saving and replanting seed from my own garden. These lettuces have proven themselves very successful in our climate and soil conditions so I am hopeful of reasonable success.

A Load of Landscaping

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This was the view of the front of our house when we first looked at it just over 12 months ago.

It was relatively unremarkable but we were not keen on the wide expanse of dusty blue metal.

We have been working on how to change it but still enable access to the driveway at the far side of the house.

Most of the plants have been removed and/or relocated as most of them were in the far front corner which has been repurposed into a vehicle parking/turning area. GMan also removed all of the metal edging from that area but since it was one continuous length we have reused it to border the new garden area.

This is a photo from an earlier blog post.

The first of the plants have been in for some time now. We had a load of mulch delivered a couple of days ago so have been busy covering the ground with layers of excess newspaper sourced from the local newsagent and then covered with a generous layer of mulch. The product we chose is called ‘bush bark’ and provides the most natural-looking cover for this area of the garden.

There are not many weeds to suppress in this area but the addition of a thick layer of mulch should help to moderate the soil temperature, particularly on extremely hot days like tomorrow with a forecast maximum temperature of 37C.

The two small raised vegetable gardens will eventually be relocated but the zucchini and eggplant are happily growing there at the moment.

We still have a small area left to finish, but not in the heat tomorrow. GMan is also creating a wire barrier to isolate the stormwater drain from the mulch during heavy rain.

We are looking forward to adding some more plants to this area to provide habitat for the local birds and wildlife.

A Summer Garden

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The past 10 days have been an alternating mix of warm, sunny days and some significant rainfall so the young seedlings are enjoying the conditions. The zucchini plants which I planted at the beginning of December are literally doubling in size overnight. You can see what they looked like in this post.

This is today. The eggplant in the adjacent bed are doing well, too.

The cucumbers and new lettuce are also getting established.

Then there is the basil. Some in pots.

And more in the garden bed.

The basil is going to be trimmed this afternoon. I am planning to make a pesto/green sauce to serve with grilled eggplant, capsicum and pasta for dinner. As usual, this a creation I have have dreamed up. If the reality is as good as the idea I will hopefully have a recipe to share in a future post.

Gifts For the Garden

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Well, Christmas is over for another year and I do hope your day was pleasant, however you may have spent it.

We had a quiet but enjoyable Christmas. GMan received a gift voucher from our daughters which was for a garden nursery that he was planning to visit.

So, today we went to check out what was available that he might like. A specific focus was dwarf varieties of citrus trees and he was pleased to get a grapefruit and an orange tree. These will go in large pots on the front patio along with an existing citrus which he previously rescued from an unsuitable spot in the garden. We are not 100% sure but we think it may well be a lime tree which is very exciting. He also chose an olive tree which is a small variety which is supposed to grow to about 2m x 2m rather than 7m x 7m like many of the other varieties.

Finally, we added a selection of Australian native plants for the new area to be landscaped at the front of the house. There is a mix of different sized flowering shrubs and groundcovers which are bird-attracting. We will add more over time as it is quite a large area but we are starting with 2 banksias, 2 callistemons and a grevillea.

This is what it looks like at the moment. We recently repurposed and repositioned the rusted steel edging. There will be updated photos in due course, once we have added plants and mulch.

And yes, the sky today really is that blue. It is a welcome change after having received over 100mm of rain in 24 hours on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. Thankfully, it was just rain and not the wild storms/tornado/cyclonic conditions which have hit other parts of the country.

Getting Growing

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We have reaped the rewards of a few fruit and vegetables that were already planted when we arrived here. Lemons and raspberries have been prolific as well as some beans and chard. I recently harvested the garlic that I had planted early in the winter and we are picking lettuce for summer salads.

In the past few days we have taken some more steps to increase the amount and range of produce that we grow.

This citrus tree was languishing rather sadly in amongst some other plants behind the fish pond. GMan rescued it a few weeks ago and potted it in an old plastic bucket as an interim measure. It seems to be coming good. We believe that it may be a lime tree.

When we were in Melbourne yesterday we bought 4 large green plastic pots for the princely sum of $9 each. So the as yet unidentified citrus is now repotted and placed on the north-facing terrace outside the sewing room.

Another pot now holds a relatively advanced Roma tomato plant which we also bought last week. It is at the other end of the terrace.

Our other purchase was two raised garden beds which we have placed just inside the front fence for the time being. The landscaping at the front may change once the driveway entrance is eventually relocated but we decided that we really needed a bit more growing space now. These have been planted out with zucchini seedlings in one and eggplant in the other.

All of these plantings are in a mix of garden soil and organic compost which we sourced from a local supplier in Castlemaine. We have also topped up the raised beds in the back garden and planted out tomato and basil seedlings.

The remainder of the soil will be used to turn the disused fish pond area into a herb garden. More on that another day.

Berrylicious

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We have grown raspberries in two previous gardens. In South Australia we had a few canes but barely managed to pick any fruit as our dog at the time loved fruit and would help herself. Even the prickly stems didn’t seem to slow her down. At our last home in Queensland we did pick some fruit but the biggest problem was the actual bushes which spread rampantly and were a lot of trouble for the relatively small harvest.

When we moved here there was a small clump of raspberry canes against the back fence. I honestly wondered whether they would be worth the effort after our previous experiences. We had not made any decisions when, a couple of months ago, we suddenly noticed that the canes were absolutely laden with small green fruit. A couple of weeks ago we tasted a couple of raspberries but they were not quite ready. Today we picked the first decent harvest. 560g of fresh ripe raspberries.

Ice cream and raspberries for dessert tonight.

Raspberries are not the only berries around at the moment. There is a massive mulberry tree on council land in the middle of town so we and others have been collecting mulberries. It is a messy business and my hands have a distinct purple hue but it is worth it for the 5kg I have picked so far. About 800g went into making a mulberry and apple crumble for a BBQ dinner we had on the weekend. We got 12 serves from it and it was very well received. The remainder of the mulberries have been washed, destalked and frozen in 250g bags. I will check the tree again early next week and see if there are any more ripened.

Garden Update

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It is nearly two weeks since my last post and I could make the excuse that I have been busy but that is not true. I have been well occupied and juggling a few different aspects and I have simply not felt enthused to write. However, I am back with a few blog post ideas buzzing around in my head so I hope there will not be quite such a hiatus in the foreseeable future.

Today I want to show off some of the progress we have made in the garden. As always, it is small steps.

The weather is slightly warmer, or perhaps ‘less cold’ would be a better description. Either way, the bulbs and spring blossom are in full swing.

I did not plant these daffodil bulbs until early June so they were a little later than many of the bulbs around our town which are almost finished. I am enjoying their sunny faces which are just beyond our back terrace.

While much of the blossom around town is ornamental, I am very excited by the flowers on our espaliered nectarine tree. If every one of those becomes fruit……….Yummo, in a few months time. I will keep my fingers crossed.

A couple of months ago we cleared out the remnants of last summer’s crops and I planted some garlic as well as cauliflower and red cabbage seedlings. I hastily covered them with some fine netting to protect them from any bugs.

Yesterday was a glorious spring day bathed in blue skies and sunshine so we spent a few hours out in the garden. The seedlings had grown enough that I really needed to create a better frame for the netting. I sourced some thin metal roads that we had salvaged from an old clothes airer and some irrigation piping that had been left by the previous owners and managed to create the perfect framework for the netting.

Here is a closer look.

Cabbages and garlic.

Cauliflower.

Some flat leaf parsley which GMan salvaged and repotted about a month ago.

Until next time.

Garden Notes – Getting Started

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For those of you who are interested in what is happening outdoors, here is a bit of an update.

While I have mostly been indoors due to being sick and the cold weather, GMan has been beavering away recently on numerous small but important tasks outdoors.

A sign on the side gate as a reminder to visitors. The small dog is not an escape artist but definitely an opportunist and we live on a major road.

The hose reel is mounted on the exterior wall.

The roses have been pruned.

When we moved from Maleny we left an area which hosted a wide variety of environmental weeds which thrived in the high rainfall, temperate climate. However, we have swapped them for some other undesirables. This time it is Red Valerian (centranthus ruber), quite a pretty garden plant which is self-seeding throughout our garden. It is rated as a moderately invasive environmental weed in Victoria so once we worked out what it was GMan set to work to dig it out of the many locations in our garden. We will need to be vigilant to remove any new growth but we are confident that we can keep our block clear of it.

There was quite a bit getting established in this garden bed.

It was also spreading quickly at the front. GMan also removed several shrubs from inside the front fence. We are still developing a plan for the large area at the front of the house but it will definitely include a new front fence at some stage once we work out exactly where the driveway will go.

In the Garden

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The past week has been full of activity which didn’t leave a lot of time for writing.

Lat week we had our first overnight guests as well as other visitors for lunch one day.

Meanwhile GMan has made a start on refashioning the garden a little. This photo shows the garden as we inherited it although the trees have grown somewhat. In fact they had grown so that much of the canopy was actually above the gutter. They are deciduous and as it is autumn (or officially winter in the past few days) much of the debris was ending up in the gutter. What wasn’t in the gutter was on the patio and subsequently being walked into the house.

So we agreed that these two specimens needed to go. This is the result. The next step is to hopefully dig the stumps out so that we can add some plantings more appropriate to the location and space.

Yesterday morning was a trip in the ute to the local rubbish dump to take a load of tree cuttings. The weather did not co-operate and this was the view. GMan persevered and had it unloaded fairly quickly.

We know that there will be more removal and renewal of plantings as we gradually decide on our preferences for the garden.

We would like to devote a bit more space to food production and some of this may be at the front of the house in the north-facing space but that requires some realignment of existing elements. In the meantime, we planted some broccoli seedlings this afternoon and rigged up some temporary fencing to protect them from the dog.