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.

The last 'few' tomatoes...

OK, house news is a little thin on the ground owing to the fact that I only posted something the other day so I thought I might regale you with a vegie garden story.

Last night we had quite a frost, so today when I was out at the house I decided it was a good time to pick the last "few" tomatoes as the frost will have done in the plants. I even brought along a little basket to put them in and grabbed some scissors that I keep in the glove box to cut them. Once I had filled the basket AND the tea towel I'd originally lined it with, I decided I might just duck back to the rental house, grab a bigger basket and my secateurs (the scissors were giving me a blister).

I ended up with 287 tomatoes of varying sized and shades weighing nearly 13kg (that's more than 28lb for mates in the USA or old folk!) The best part of the tomato story is that I didn't even plant them, all of the plants self-seeded from last year's tomatoes - manna from Mother Earth!

So, now I need you to forward any good Green Tomato recipes that you know to debwain(at)gmail.com, failing that I might have to fry them and open my own Whistle Stop Cafe.
Deb :)

PS The latest house news is that Nic is busy spraying paint around with a sprayer we've hired for the day and when I left with my booty of tomatoes, the builders were putting up the wire 'railings' (for want of a better word) on the upstairs balcony (well, two of them were and the other one was leaning on the top rail and watching...)