I'm Over This Hot Weather...

...but it's really good for making sun-dried tomatoes :D

I have three Roma tomato plants, all are happy and have started to produce lots of lovely tomatoes... except that I'm not actually a huge fan of tomatoes! Not raw ones, anyway. Malachi and Zara take care of the cherry tomatoes, and some of the Romas would probably get used for sandwiches, but more would probably go mouldy in the bottom of the fridge.

But- I love sun-dried tomatoes! I don't have a dehydrator (it's on my list), and I really don't want to leave the oven on for 10-20 hours, which is how long I read it takes in the oven- it'd make the house way too hot, not to mention the power it'd waste.

As it turns out, I have a perfect dehydrator out the front of the house- the car! This was the other option I read about, and it really works brilliantly! I quarter the tomatoes and put them in a metal colander, as you need something with ventilation so they get evenly dried all over. Just put them on top of the dashboard for two or three days (I put them down on the seat when I drive, LOL) and they're done!

Apparently freezing is the best option for keeping them long term. I think they'd need to be soaked in oil for a little while before use though, as they're quite 'crispy'!

Return of the 28 Spot Ladybirds

The day before we went away, I found some weird little spiky yellow things on the zucchinis, and all the little growing baby zucchinis were turning yellow and shrivelling up. Argh! I didn't want to leave my garden for 12 days when I'd just discovered a new, unknown pest attacking my lovely zucchinis...

We came back, and none of the little zucchinis had made it, though the plants were still soldiering on despite half their leaves going brown and dying. I looked closer, and discovered that the tiny yellow things had grown... and some of them had grown up completely- into 28 Spot Ladybirds! When they were on my potatoes, I read that they also went for curcurbits, and moved the potato bins further away from the zucchinis (which are the only curcurbits we have growing at the moment). That was a few months ago, and they seemed to go away. But they're back! Bloody things.

I have implemented a Humane Euthenasia Program, which involves collecting any I can find each day, and putting them in a container in the freezer. I can't bring myself to squish them- it just feels too violent. So the container is filling up, but I've only found a few over the last couple of days, so I think I'm winning the battle. There are a few new baby zucchinis coming- hopefully they'll make it to maturity!

If anyone else has this problem, I found loads of the baby bugs right down the bottom of the stem, near the dirt- I had to lift the plant up to reach them.

In other garden news, LOL, my roma tomatoes are starting to ripen. I grew these from seed, so I'm feeling very proud of them. I'm going to sun-dry them :)

Garden Update!

OK, a big progress report on everything in my garden!

My one purple capsicum plant- just starting to flower.

Two of my tamarillo seedlings- growing well :)

Some of my strawberry pots- less than half of them.

Corn seedlings

Tomato plants- first tomatoes coming! Three Romas, grown from seed, and one cherry, self-seeded from the back garden and transplanted. There are more round the back that I want to move, but I need more room in the front garden first!

Two of my little eggplant seedlings.

Malachi's lovely watermelon seedlings.

One of the zucchini plants. We're about to be buried in zucchinis- there are billions of bubby ones coming!

Most of the cauliflowers are ready to harvest- I just need to have time to do it. As you can see, they've been a bit chomped by the bloody cabbage moth caterpillars.

My happiest looking potatoes. This is the fourth bin. The first one was emptied, just to see how they were going, and we got about 500g of baby potatoes. The second bin was looking very unhappy, and the tops look like they were just about dead, but they've come back now, new leaves and everything! The third bin is starting to look sick and unhappy now, but I'm not worried after seeing the other one pick up again. The fourth, as you can see, is looking great! And I've just planted the fifth today- the last of my seed potatoes.

Some capsicum seedlings in the overgrown back garden.

The parsnip seedlings, grown from seed, also in the back garden.

And the sugar snap peas, next to a wall of invading grass and weeds.

There's also a cabbage (yep, one cabbage... we had two, but had one for dinner the other night), but I ran out of camera space.

Mixed Success With Onions

As the title says, I have had mixed success with my first go at onions. They were in the back vegie garden, which is on a slope, and they were right down the bottom. There is black plastic under part of it- left over from the smaller vegie garden which we expanded. Because of that, the drainage isn't great, and in some spots there's not much depth for root growth. I planted 67 brown onion seedlings, and 72 red onion seedlings, back in June. The back garden is being taken over by weeds and evil grass, and because I don't have that much time to get out there, and because we're planning on moving next year, I'm letting it go. Just trying to keep the grass and weeds at bay from the plants that are still in there. Some of the onions are as big as I'd like them some aren't, and some have hardly grown at all, and I decided to pull them out. I got all of the brown onions out this evening, and some of the red. So here's my partial onion harvest-


The cleaner-looking ones in the bottom right corner were pulled out about a week ago, the rest a few hours ago.

The two biggest are on the left, then the average size, then the smallest.

I think that with better conditions, onions will be an easy and rewarding thing to grow :)

Beetroot Relish

I decided to pull up our (very small) beetroot crop yesterday. Some were quite a decent size, some pretty small, but all bigger than the beetroot DH grew last year- he's too impatient to be a gardener and pulls everything out too early!


The whole lot were made into beetroot relish this morning. Here is the basic recipe (I ended up with six cups of grated beetroot):


Beetroot Relish

2 cups grated beetroot
1 Tbs honey
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/4 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cumin
3/4 cup water
1 tsp salt


Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan. Stir over high heat until honey dissolves.


Bring to the boil, then reduce to simmer. Cook for 1 1/2 hours, or until most of the liquid is gone.

Easy! And yum :)

FINISHED!!!

Well, sort of.

I've just (this afternoon) finished my first knitting project! But seeing as it's a part of a (much) larger project, it's not actually finished, but still, I'm feeling proud!

It's a square for a patchwork blanket:


I think it looks pretty bloody spiffy! Yay me. It took me a rather long time, cos having only just learnt to knit (thanks, Mum!) I'm pretty slow still, and I only got to do maybe three or four rows a day, when Zara's sleeping and I don't have anything else I need to do.

So now that I know the (very) basics of knitting - casting on, knit stitch and casting off, LOL - I'm going to move on to slighty more challenging projects! I'm not quite game to try making clothes yet, though. Malachi had requested I make him an orange and blue snake. This'll give me a chance to practice a few other funky things, like increasing (which I've done twice since starting the snake!), colour changing, and maybe other types of stitches. Then I'm planning a bag for me :)

Knitting Help is a cool site. Anyone thinking of learning to knit- do it! It's cool!

-------------

Also, a short vegie garden update...

I'd like to welcome the newest inhabitants of my garden, LOL- a little bubby Meyer Lemon tree, a little bubby Tahitian Lime tree, and some capsicum seedlings. The bloody dog has already gotten into the back vegie garden and dug up one of the capsicums (planted yesterday) and trampled another one. GRRRR....

And - big news - we have cauliflowers coming!


Two of the caulis out the front have visible flowers growing, and I'm sure the others won't be far behind! Woohoo!!

Baby Potatoes...

Just a quick one, but I had to record our very first potato harvest!
They were planted on August 16th, four little seed potatoes using the garbage bin method. Due to attack by evil 28 spot ladybirds, the first two bins aren't looking too happy anymore- the leaves are all droopy, chomped and some are a bit yellow... anyway, impatient DH decided it was time to empty out the first bin ("it'll be an experiment") to see what progress had been made.
Here are the results...
...about 500g worth of baby sebago potatoes. They were all down the bottom, growing off the original root system- none had grown off the stems which had been covered in the second layer of dirt and mulch.
So at least we know that there are some growing down there! The rest of the bins will be left until the leaves etc completely die off, so hopefully a slightly larger yield from them!

Save the Strawberries! (And the Carrot Harvest)

I've tried to keep the dog out of the vegie garden, semi-successfully, but the slaters are still attacking the strawberries, so that out of the 50 plants out the back, we've gotten maybe three berries, and from the 10 plants out the front (in pots), we've gotten at least six.
SO! The plan is... dig up and pot all the strawberries out the back. Yes, all 50 of them!
In order to do this, I need all the pots I can get. The parsnip seedlings got planted, which freed up three pots, and three more with Roma tomato seedlings needed to be vacated, so I needed somewhere to plant them out. The solution- harvest all the carrots, and put the tomatoes in the carrot spot.
I originally planted 83 carrot seedlings, and used maybe 20 or so, which left me with 60-65ish carrots to pull up, wash, chop and freeze.
Zara decided to have a decent sleep, and it wasn't too hot outside, so Malachi and I went out the front and started pulling up the carrots. (Well, I pulled up carrots, Malachi rode his bike around and occasionally came over and pulled some leaves off a carrot plant).
Managed to get them all inside and in the sink before Zara woke up.

There were some pretty funky looking ones. Had to share this one-

And just to be immature... this one has a penis, tee hee hee...

Spent the rest of the day, whenever Zara let me, washing the carrots ready for chopping.

And by the end of the day, they were all chopped and in the freezer. Yay me.

And so since then I've been trying to rescue a few strawberry plants each afternoon. I've done 17 so far, LOL. 33 to go. Need to find more pots! And I've discovered that I'm mildly allergic to strawberry plants- I've come up with a rash along both arms after each potting expedition, just like a grass rash. Oh well.

Mission Accomplished!

I've been looking at my parsnip seedlings for the past week or so, and thinking that I really needed to transplant them out of their containers as they were getting too big to be in there... well, I finally got it done today! Zara had a decent sleep and I planted another bin of potatoes, bringing the total to four, and 38 little parsnip seedlings are now (hopefully) happy in their new home in the back vegie garden, next to the red onions.
My next mission is to transplant the self-seeded lettuces in the back garden around to the front with the other lettuces. I was having a look at them while planting the parsnips, and one is a red iceberg! Yay! My favourite kind of lettuce. There's only one in the front garden, and I keep pulling leaves off to eat them, but now that there's another one coming, I've got one to eat, and one to go to seed, to grow more for next time!
Also on the garden to-do list is to earth up the third potato bin, and, as always, weeding weeding weeding...

Turtles and Caterpillars

DH went out to check the vegie garden while I had the kids in the bath this evening and found a turtle in the backyard. I was a bit worried about it at first, as last week a snake came into the yard and the dog killed it (and killed it very thoroughly- it was in three pieces, poor thing) so I thought she might have had a go at the turtle too. It was upside down and hiding in it's shell, but has now been rescued and is in a box behind me, with a towel and some water in a dish.
I can hear him scrabbling around in there, so he seems fine. We'll take him down to the river tomorrow and let him go.
He's a longneck turtle, much like this one-

I was just out checking the front vegies, as I've seen cabbage moths hanging around. They totally destroyed my broccoli last year, and I don't want them hurting my cauliflowers!
Anyway, I found about 20 of the damn caterpillars (and another bloody 28 spot ladybird!) and chucked them all into the box with the turtle. When I checked just before, they'd all disappeared... I hope he's eaten them! Either that or they've just squiggled themselves under the towel.
I guess we'll find out tomorrow when little turtle dude is relocated to his new home.

First Zucchini :)

Yay! I picked my first zucchini of the season this evening :) A nice big fat one...


AND... then I made dinner using only (OK, almost only, my onions aren't ready yet so I used a shop onion) vegies from the garden! I used the zucchini, carrots, silverbeet, and sugarsnap peas frozen from last year's harvest to make stir-fried vegies and rice.
Here's the recipe... a bit vague cos I made it up and didn't bother measuring anything.

Stir-Fried Vegies and Rice

Rice
Onion
Carrots
Silverbeet
Zucchini
NotBacon
Slivered Almonds
Soy Sauce
Vinegar

Get rice cooking.
Heat oil in a frypan. Chop onion and chuck it in. Chop other vegies and chuck them in. Add almonds. Chop NotBacon and stick that in too. Add some soy sauce and vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar). Cook for a while.
Serve vegies on top of rice.

And yep, that's how most of my recipes go, LOL. I only measure stuff when it's something like bread.

ETA: I just remembered, I put chilli sauce in too :)

Carrots!

We pulled four carrots out for dinner this afternoon.


Malachi decided that the second one along was a 'person with two legs to go walking' :)

The carrot were from bought seedlings... I did plant some carrot seeds, but I think my seed-planting-enthusiasm mood came a bit early this year, as everything that came up from that batch of seeds died from the frost, except the dill.

Anyway, I planted 83 tiny carrot seedlings and they've done beautifully! I love the funky shapes, so much more interesting (and much yummier) than shop ones.

We had a carrot and silverbeet quiche for dinner. The silverbeet was also from our garden... I can't wait to have some land and a huuuuge vegie garden!

Potatoes and Ladybirds

I'm fighting a battle at the moment. With ladybirds. 28 Spot Ladybirds, to be precise.

All the gardening books say that ladybirds are a gardener's best friend. Many kinds are. These bloody ones aren't! But I'll get to them later.

First, the potatoes.

This is the first season I've grown potatoes. I found an article in the paper, about 4 months ago, about growing potatoes in bins.

Make sure there are holes in the bottom of the garbage bins and sit them on bricks or stones so that drainage is not hindered.
Place the bin in a warm, sunny position and put about 15-20cm of compost mixed with old cow manure and some controlled-release fertiliser in the bottom. Place six seed potatoes (available from nurseries) on top of the mix and cover them with about 10cm of the compost-manure, plus a 2.5cm layer of straw mulch. Water regularly and, when the leafy stems rise about 20cm above the straw, add more of the compost-manure mix, leaving the tops of the leaves exposed.
This method ensures the plants keep making tubers up the stem. Continue until the container is full. New potatoes may be harvested about a month after the flowers have finished. For 'old' potatoes, wait until the leaves have dies completely. You will be surprised how many potatoes you can harvest from an old dustbin.

Here are mine:
I've got three bins going so far, as you can see, and they've all been going really well... until I saw on of these:Argh! They're eating the leaves, not too badly so far, but after checking up about them on ALS, they can do a fair bit of damage, not only to potatoes and related plants, but also to curcurbits. The potato bins aren't that far from my zucchinis, which are just getting their first flowers and little tiny zucchinis!

So the battle begins... they are NOT going to hurt my potatoes or my zucchinis!
I picked four off the potatoes today, but I can't bear to kill them, and if I let them go they'll just come back At the moment they're in a container on my kitchen bench... I'll taken them somewhere else and let them go tomorrow, I think.

So I Suddenly Felt The Need...

... to start a blog.

So here's the plan- to be as self sufficient as possible. This might take a while! The first step in the plan is to get some land (25 acres or so), which will hopefully happen sometime next year. Then to build a house-shed to live in until we can afford to build a strawbale house. In the meantime, I'll be growing vegies and fruit to my heart's content. And getting chickens. And goats.

So where are we starting from? We're renting a unit in town. I'm growing as many vegies as I can, but really, there's not much room! Especially seeing as the vegie garden has to be fenced to keep the silly dog out... but lately she's getting in anyway! That's the back vegie garden, in which I have onions, strawberries, sugar snap peas, and a few cauliflowers, cabbages and broccoli. And one little self seeded tomato plant, who has popped up in the middle of the strawberries.

There's also the front vegie garden. I dug out all the agapanthus (noxious weeds!) and I've got cauliflowers, zucchini, lettuces, silverbeet, spinach, carrots, and beetroot. In bins I have potatoes, and in pots I have more strawberries, garlic and dill. There are parsnip seedlings coming, and a few roma tomatoes. Today I planted basil seeds (funky looking 'limelight basil'!) and tamarillo seeds. Yum!

It doesn't sound like we're doing too badly on the vegie front, does it? But there's not enough space to have decent quantities of everything... and I want a fruit orchard! And chickens!

Anyway, that's a basic rundown... and now I'm off to figure out how this blogging thing works.