Not much photographing of harvests occurred this week, but instead I’ll give you a sneak peek of what is coming along in the Autumn garden.
Handful of salad leaves (iceberg lettuce and beetroot tops)
My leafy winter crops are really growing quickly. I’ve been pretty vigilant with the (iron-based) snail pellets, so despite the copious rain (163 millimetres since last Tuesday) they seem to be relatively unscathed. I have noticed a few fluttering white cabbage moths though, so I can’t afford to let my guard down. I have been harvesting some outer leaves of the iceberg lettuces for salads and the occasional beetroot leaf.
800g green dwarf beans
The green dwarf beans never let me down. They are my staple crop, and I could have picked far more of these.
1 lebanese eggplant
The last remaining lebanese eggplant bush (on the far left of the picture) still has a few fruit remaining that I’m picking as needed. They grow when the weather is warm, but are slowly declining on the cool, damp days.
I used this in some pasta with roast vegetables last night, along with some of my golden nugget pumpkins stored from Summer. They are still in perfect condition, so now I’m wishing that I stored more of them.
In the picture above you can see my winter tomatoes – the variety is Stupice. They are looking great and are loaded with flowers. This is a potato leaf variety of tomatoes, and they seem to be much more prone to ‘forking out’ than the standard Grosse Lisse. I wanted to keep them fairly well pruned and upright in their growth, but they have branched out in multiple trunks, right from the bottom even though I was trying to be careful to pinch out the laterals.
24 eggs
Of my 6 chooks, 4 are laying now. I wonder if I’ll need to wait until Spring before the final 2 start. They are still laying far in excess of what I can actually use, so I’ve already started giving some eggs away.
Handfuls of basil
I’m honestly a little over pesto, so I’ve just been using the last of the basil before it dies back in dishes as-is. It is flowering with gusto now, and the bees swarm over the plant even on drizzly days like today.
On the other side of the front bed the peas are well and truly up, just waiting for me to get their supports ready. The new root vegetable bed is also looking great, with carrots, daikon, swede and turnip.
And something that always fills me with excitement – the first blueberry flowers.
In other news, the weather seems to have been great for establishing my onions – they have really taken off. I also spent some time over the weekend topping up Bed E with some cow manure and planting it out with potatoes. I will also plant some snow peas along here, which should fill this bed for the winter.
Hopefully soon I’ll have something more exciting to report than beans and eggs. The apples are getting close, and so are the winter passionfruit.
For more harvests from all over the world head on to Daphne’s Dandelions.
500m2 in Sydney 