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 
We have had 22mm of rain this month (admittedly it has been dry but then its been dry all this year in Melbourne). 163 in a week is quite ridiculous. What is your secret – I can never manage to grow iceberg lettuce.
Maybe it’s the rain! It is in full sun and the bed didn’t have any nitrogen added this time before planting, although I have given it a few doses of liquid fertiliser to get it established (fish emulsion around the roots and *gasp* – Miracle Gro!) The leaves are really sweet, but I guess it is still very young. Still plenty of time to fail to form heads.
Your fall garden looks awesome. You’ll have plenty flowing in.
Oh to have tomatoes in the fall garden! Our fall season arrives with heavy cold rains and the tomato plants turn into a moldering mess.
You have some great stuff growing on in the garden right now. I am trying to get some crisphead lettuces to maturity this spring before they bolt. Trying to be vigilant on the slug patrol myself as they can wipe out a lot of growing in a very short order.
Wait a minute! So your fruit some in the fall? Will your Blueberries come again in the Spring? Curious minds want to know. It jsut seems so strange that the fruit are flowering after a hot season rather than a cold season. Our trees and shrubs need the freezing temps so set flowers. *shrug*
Yes, it does seem puzzling, doesn’t it! It confused me last year too https://500m2.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/confusion/ but it seems that my variety of blueberry starts flowering mid-Autumn, but the fruit doesn’t actually start to ripen until late Spring.
I planted 2 varieties of passionfruit – one that fruits in Summer and the other in Winter.
My apple trees are warm climate varieties, and the ‘Anna’ fruits twice a year – the main crop in Summer and a follow-up crop in late Autumn. Once my Golden Dorset, Granny Smith and Pink Lady trees start fruiting (probably next year), I should have quite a good spread of apples through the season, but my trees are only small, so I only get 15 or so fruit in a season at this stage off my Anna, probably less on the new trees as they come in.
Our climate is extremely mild, and we never get frost. So the fruiting trees/shrubs that I grow need to be carefully selected to be low-chill. I guess that means that they don’t require the cold weather to set fruit, so their timing varies quite a bit.
I’m with Barbie, your fruit seems to be on a very strange schedule, blueberries here usually bloom in the spring….
Just wondering if you’ve grown the Stupice in winter before? I have a few plants that volunteered from the summer plants and wondered whether or not to just leave them.
Last year I sowed them too late Dave (not until mid-May), so they grew through winter and the first ones ripened in late October/early November. I would would definitely leave them and see how they go.
I’m trying to wrap my head around the idea of a winter tomato. I know your climate is different than mine, but it gives me visions of iciles dripping off of the flowers. Not that you actually get icicles.
I think winter tomatoes are my compensation for struggling with fruit fly in Summer. Wouldn’t be fair otherwise 🙂
You’re really making me want to get out into the garden…