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.

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...)