After a couple of week’s absence for the birth of my son (timed well, actually to coincide with a gap in production) I’m back on board this week. The winter garden shows a lot of promise. We’ve had mild nights, cool days and spells of torrential rain.
500g Cherry Tomatoes
The rain has played havoc with my self-seeded cherry tomatoes. Not sure of the variety because I haven’t bought or planted any with quite the same shape. Much of the early crop split during the first downpour, so I wasn’t going to risk any more of them. I picked anything that looked like it might ripen indoors.
I haven’t actually weighed anything, but it is approximately 500g, probably sightly more.
This plant is in almost full shade now, so not much more will come of it. Just holding out now for the winter variety (Stupice), which is loaded with fruit of varying sizes.
4 Apples
I didn’t thin the fruit sufficiently on the ‘Tropical Anna’. 13 fruit was a little too much for the small tree, so the resulting apples are quite small. The biggest one was 150 grams, and most (including the one pictured) are around the 100 gram mark. I’ve also discovered that if I leave them on the tree too long they go floury, so I’ll know in future not to let them go quite this red.
1 Choko
I planted the choko vine last August and this week I picked the first fruit. The vine still has a few more fruit on it, but I suspect the harvest this year will be fairly light. Probably a good thing considering how much P dislikes chokos.
Iceberg Lettuce
I’ve been treating the Iceberg lettuce like a ‘cut and come again’ variety, which it probably isn’t. Not sure of the weight harvested, but whenever we make a salad I just pop out and take the outer leaves from each head.
Despite my abuse it still seems to be forming heads just fine, so I think I’ll keep on doing that until the heads are big enough to harvest whole.
Please turn a blind eye to all my weeds – I’ve been out to wander and harvest, but maintenance has fallen to the wayside with all the baby feeding etc.
1 Chinese Broccoli (Gai larn) and a bunch of Broccoletti/Rapini
The brassicas are coming along nicely, including the chinese broccoli and new variety I am growing this year called ‘brocoletti’ or ‘rapini’ (pictured).
It is similar in some ways to chinese broccoli in that it forms small broccoli-like florets and the leaves are edible, but although I’m enjoying the leaves stir-fried, the stems are a little tough for my liking. Is anyone familiar with this vegetable? Am I preparing it wrong?
3 Daikon
Not actually harvested this week, but during my break. I went to ‘thin’ the daikon and discovered it was already enormous. It pushes itself up out of the ground, but still goes so deep below. Just incredible how fast it grows too. Lucky it is so adaptable, because I’m going to have a lot of it.
Other happenings
My super-productive beans came to a halt quite abruptly as soon as the weather cooled. Their leaves browned and they stopped producing almost immediately. I think I might save some seed and pull them out – that will free up quite a bit of space for something, but I haven’t decided on what just yet.
I have quite a bit of silverbeet ready to harvest now, as well as some tuscan kale and some type of self-seeded lettuce.
The passionfruit is finally ripening. I planted 2 varieties together – a Panama Gold and a grafted Black passionfruit, though this doesn’t look like either. This passionfruit is definitely turning purple, but the fruit are enormous – like a panama red. I was pretty sure that black passionfruits are much smaller. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
It’s good to be back blogging (and harvesting) again. For more harvests from around the world visit Daphne’s Blog.
500m2 in Sydney 