Who gets first bite of the cherry?

This week's excitement at our place was focused on the orchard. Now, I know you're not meant to let the trees fruit in their first year but we really didn't notice this sneaky cherry growing down near the trunk of the tree until it was too late (or just right, one or the other!)

The first cherry on the lapin tree.

Cherry-grower's rapture.

Overall the fruit trees are looking good and hopefully we'll have some lovely fruit next year.

And in the flower/herb garden the gladiolus are flowering...

...so there's a bit of colour around the place.

And some snap dragons too.

We have lettuces and rocket in & going gang-busters thanks to Ed & Tracy who started these ones off in their aquaponics.

The tomatoes are being kept company by some more sunflowers (they make me happy).

There are tomatoes on the tomato plants compliments of Mr Sibbing.

And oka or New Zealand yam thanks to Phil & Kate (it's becoming a real communal thing this garden).

I was very excited to see the first corn coming up - I've never grown corn before & I LOVE it so I hope we get a decent crop.

I also have purple basil coming along but it's been slow going, I think it might need feeding.

Apparently I didn't learn my lesson from the beetroot seed thrown in too close together & have done the same with these iceberg lettuces. I'll have to prick them out & spread them around to other parts of the garden.

This grew all on it's own - my bet is on pumpkin.

The zucchini seedlings have flowers already.

We still have plenty of beetroot and this weekend I made beetroot chutney, a recipe of my own devising! :)

And I'm hoping the cantaloupe kick on soon, they're don't look entirely happy.

BUT... in all that, who does get the first bite of the cherry? We do!

And this week in gardening news...

After the carrot saga, I thought it was time for a little bit of a success story (so you don’t all think I’m a complete vegie-gardening-failure).

The following pics are from our first harvest meal (so a bit before the carrots but I’ve been too lazy/distracted/busy to write the post about it.)

The first real "harvest"which included...

kohlrabi...

broccoli...

and kale.

I'd never eaten either kale or kohlrabi before so I asked google about it (as you do). The kale and broccoli were tossed around a hot wok with the crushed garlic to make some tasty wilted greens and I peeled the kohlrabi, sliced it thinly and seasoned it with oil, lemon juice and pepper. 

The chef at work.

Dinner consisted [almost] entirely of produce from the garden, the only ring-ins were the cous cous and the toasted pine nuts. Even the sage and garlic were picked fresh:

Last year's garlic finally harvested (it was too sneaky for us last year but we got them this time)

Dinner's ready!

In more recent news I have flowers, including some beautiful dwarf sunflowers, the seeds of which were a present from the lovely Lois.

And the beetroot is doing well despite the seed being strewn in too thickly and Nic telling me they'll never grow like that and making me thin them severely: 

We have tomatoes in and learning from the punnet planting of the last crops, we've planted seedlings in stages in the hope that we won't repeat the glut situation that we had with the kale:

And we have small but VERY delicious strawberries, which reminds me, I wrote a story about 'strawbs' while I was in Edinburgh last year...

So, have I convinced you that it all hasn't been a total loss? Come over for dinner, I'll show you how good kale and kohlrabi can be...

What IS that? ~ a vegie gardening failure

Things had been going along quite nicely really, especially considering I don't particularly know what I'm doing but this week things went a bit pear-shaped (or is that "carrot-shaped"?)

So the story with the carrots is this. I planted them from seedlings (something my father-in-law has since told me isn't really a very good idea) and I put in both orange and red varieties. The orange carrots never seemed to be particularly happy but the red ones were going gang-busters. At the time, I thought this was a testament to using heritage varieties rather than more highly cultivated ones and I had delusions of eating huge, yummy, red carrots. Apparently, the heritage variety was simply better at capitalising on the fact that they had all been planted in soil that had too much nutrient and wasn't sandy enough. (So, by the way, were the parsnip.) And yes, if I hadn't planted it, I wouldn't know what it was either - unrecognisable!

Anyway, the red carrots looked like they were growing well (from the top) but underneath they were going just a little bit nuts and then this week we got our first insect attack - aphids. Which left the lovely green tops looking like this:

So, today I pulled up the red carrots that I thought would be great:

Hmmmm...

And the orange carrots that I was sure would be a failure:

Better but even some of them were a bit on the kooky side...

Hmmm...

Anyway, I've learnt something for next time. More garlic spray, more ladybugs, less soil, more sand.

First blossom, first shoots

Our Orchard. It might not look like much from a distance as in the picture below:

But if you look a bit more closely, the orchard is actually doing something already:

I noticed the first signs of life on one of the plums...

Buds...

Blossom...

And even the first green shoots.

One of the apricots is giving it a red-hot go...

With leaf shoots waiting in the wings.

The other plum is the most noticeable...

Shoots...

Blossom...

More shoots...

And more blossom!

As I said, it's not exactly knock-you-down amazing but we're pretty happy to see the growth. 

So far we've put in:

a couple of apricots, "Trevatt"; 

plums, "Japanese Mariposa" & "Japanese Narrabeen"; 

apples "Pink Lady" & "Fuji"; 

cherries, "Stella" and "Lapins"; 

a pear, "Beurre Bosc";

a nashi, "Nijisseiki"; 

and down the hill a bit further where it (hopefully) won't wreak any havoc, a mulberry, "Hick's Fancy".

We also have two more apples to go in. They're an unknown heritage variety and are grafts taken from trees planted by Jan van Koesveld (my first Australian ancestor).

So, in the coming years look forward to getting sick receiving homemade jam as birthday and Xmas gifts! At this point I'll refer you to my other blog & a jammy poem I wrote a while ago now, perhaps it was prescience! :)

Cheers,

Deb