Tag Archives: home grown

Warm Weather Winners

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Midsummer in Australia is too hot for growing most produce but there are a few things in our garden which are thriving despite, or perhaps because of the heat.

Chilli bush. This is in a large pot on the front patio with a northern aspect. During the winter it was reduced to barely 2 dead-looking sticks thanks to a few heavy frosts. However, some warm weather and water and we have the start of another amazing crop of tiny, hot chillies. I use these fresh, frozen, dried and ground into chilli powder or made into my version of Tabasco sauce.

The small daisies are some escapees from a nearby garden.

Olive tree. Also in a large pot on the front patio. This tree is about 2 years old. Last season there were a small number of fruit which we completely overlooked. This year could be a worthwhile harvest so I will be researching how to brine and preserve them.

A close-up of the actual fruit.

Tomatoes. These are not loving the extreme heat hence we have them covered to protect them from the worst of the sun, however, there is a good crop on this single plant of the Roma variety and they are beginning to show signs of ripening. I am looking forward to a good haul and hope to freeze or bottle some for use during the winter.

A makeshift shelter.

Gradually ripening.

Labour Intensive

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The last week of May ran away while I wasn’t looking so welcome to a new month and the first official day of winter here in the southern hemisphere.

Towards the end of last year I picked a good crop of garlic that I grew. In fact, I harvested 1.7kg of garlic. I have replanted some, given some away and used it as required for the past 6 months. There was still a substantial quantity left so I decided to make my own garlic salt.

I spent a good few hours carefully peeling and thinly slicing the cloves.

Here they are laid out on the racks and ready to go in the dehydrator.

15 hours later the pieces were dry and crunchy. Here is some of the results.

I then ground the dried garlic pieces to a powder and mixed them with an equal weight of salt.

This is the 300g of garlic salt which I now have ready to use in cooking as needed.

Although it was a fairly time-consuming project, I feel that this was definitely worthwhile.

Harvest Time

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When choosing this title I noticed that I had used it before in 2021 – except that it was in early November. It is now late summer here and everything seems to be ripening in abundance so we are fully occupied making sure that none of it goes to waste.

Here are a few of the things we have been doing in the past few days.

When we moved here we inherited two espaliered nashi pear trees which have borne prolifically. We did not net them so the parrots have enjoyed quite a feast but we have still managed to pick several hundred fruit. Once we discovered that we really like the fruit stewed, GMan has made it his mission to peel and slice the seemingly never-ending supply and the freezer is full of containers of stewed nashi which we will enjoy in the coming months.

It is now about 6 weeks since I picked the first of our zucchini and I been managing to use them at pretty much the same rate as we were picking them until the last few days. So, today I made zucchini slice. I have been trialling making them in individual serves in the airfryer for some time now and am happy that I have finally got the amended measurements and cooking times right. I will post an amended recipe in the next blog post.

I also grated several extra zucchini and have them packed in bags of 200g in the freezer for future zucchini slice making.

Meanwhile, the tomato sauce was simmering on the stove.

This was the result.

I made another of my experimental versions of basil pesto and am pretty happy with this one. Almonds instead of pine nuts. Some grated zucchini mixed with the basil makes it milder flavoured. Nutritional yeast rather than cheese makes it dairy-free, vegan and reduces the cholesterol. Yes, minimising the cholesterol intake is going to be more of a feature of my cooking in the future. I also add the juice of half a lemon as it makes it a bit less oily.

The bumper harvest has not been confined to just our garden and our neighbour’s. I picked up a bag of plums from a roadside giveaway earlier in the week. I stewed these and have some each morning on my cereal.

Processing gluts of home-grown, gifted or foraged produce can be time-consuming but it is a worthwhile activity which helps to minimise the amount of food going to waste.