Friday, December 10, 2010

Summer's here, I'm getting there.

So it's Summer and I'm barely getting the rest of the vegie patches clear and putting the runner & bush beans in... but we have heaps of herbs, beetroot, lettuce coming out of our ears, celery and an a huge amount of passionfruits waiting to ripen.

We ran out of pesto the other day (shock!) It didn't dawn on me we had all the ingredients at hand until DH suggested it. I used plain and lemon basil, cashews, Parmesan and olive oil... er, can't remember what else.
It was GREAT! The colour was flippin' amazing! I used cashews because I wanted the pine nuts whole in the pasta dish.

The silverbeet/beetroot/lettuce/garlic/weed patch. Looking scraggly but very productive. Who has time for weeding?! I just about manage to keep my toddler and pre-schooler out of the vegies let alone stop them from copying me when I pull things out.

The re-vamped Strawberry patch. Since this pic (a month ago) the plants are tall and fruiting. Shame about that bane of my life -onion weed. grrrr!

Lettuce, celery and tomato bushes. I planted to the tomatoes as per Gina's instructions from Steve Solomon's book (Gardening When it Counts). I stripped the stem of all but the top leaves and made a ditch and duge it in lying down to have only those top leaves poking out of the ground upright. They've hardly needed watering and they're so healthy and producing like MAD! I'll be doing that every year from now on!


The garlic bulbs are small this year but the cloves are plump and pack a punch! I think these are the easiest thing to grow. I'm not sure if it's the done thing, but I always pull out the flower shoot that grows up from the stem. It only makes sense right? Why would you want all that nutrient and goodness going to the flower and seeds. It's what I do with everything else, pluck the flowers off or pick it before they bolt.

A few of the stems snapped when I was lazily pulling them out of the ground instead of doing it the right way. The beauty of that though is that they'll be perfectly fine there for another week or two ... or .. er...
until I dig it for the next lot of vegies.





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