Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes........!

Yes it is that time of the year again. We have loads of big juicy tasty tomatoes ripening daily. The varieties I grew this season are beefsteak, the red one is 'Brandywine Pink' and the green is 'Aunt Ruby's German Green'.

And they can grow pretty big, especially the Brandywines. Here we have a few heavy weights, the first weighs in at 444gs:

This one a little heavier 474gs.

But this is the winner (so far), 603gs! A record.

I should also note here that these tomatoes have done well pretty much all by themselves, they were planted with a good amount of compost in the hole, I haven't fed them much other than a slosh of liquid manure and they have pretty much relied upon rain to keep them alive (thankfully we had a fair amount in January while I was away). So these are winners!

So what do with all those tomatoes you might ask? Well we've been eating them almost at every meal, and are not sick of them yet! Last night they were made into sauce to go with meatballs and spaghetti (zoodles for me).

I've cooked up a few batches just simply with onion, salt and pepper, then processed preserving jars full of cooked tomatoes in my Fowlers Vacola. I now have several lovely jars of ready to use tomatoes lined up on the shelf for when needed.

Apart from preserving the tomatoes, I have also frozen quite a lot of them. I just chop them into big chunks, freeze them on trays then when frozen bag them into Ziplock bags. That way I can just take out however much I want for any particular use (i.e. making a pasta sauce or pizza sauce, or adding to mince for bolognese sauce).

Here are the Aunt Ruby's German Green variety:

These are quite big tomatoes also. They are ripe when slightly yellow. They are not quite so disease resistant however, but still a very nice tomato, and the green colour is pretty. This biggy weighs in at 456gs:

 

Tomatoes in the garden, early January 2016

Note to self: always stake tomatoes well! The sheep netting affair I have here is not adequate to keep them staked properly and with the weight of all those heavy tomatoes they are now flopping all over the ground :-(

Aunt Ruby's German Green

The garden late January 2016

This was the first season in the new garden space. It is flat, and fenced from the wind. Next time round however I will do things a little differently, like not having pumpkins and melons trailing everywhere! More photos and blog posts to come soon on these.

Asparagus time

I'm harvesting our first asparagus spears from the garden right now. It's been a while since these were planted and I've patiently waited 2 seasons so that the plants can get established. This has meant letting the spears grow fully (they develop feathery foliage) and then die off before I've trimmed the dead plant matter away. The spears grow rapidly - I harvest a few most days. I should be able to continue harvesting for about 4-6 weeks so far as I'm aware.

Some of the plants did not survive so this year I planted out another 10 'crowns' - and we will have to wait for about 3 years until these ones are producing.

Here we have dinner of rump steak, mashed potatoes and fresh homegrown asparagus baked in the oven with garlic and parmesan.

A healthy spring lunch and a bit of an update

Hey guys, how's your Spring going? Mine's a busy one with work, family, puppy training, gardening and cooking from scratch. Also getting a bit of a health kick going with some 'clean eating' and exercise. Booya!


Walking and running with the dog is great for weight loss, but doing yoga and weights/exercise/aerobics not so cool with doggie jumping on me during my workout!!

Being a bit of a sucker and not putting her outside in her kennel.......!

Anyhow, here's what I had for lunch recently:

Homemade roasted red pepper hummus with wholemeal pita and some nice greens, plus a few herbs and some nastutrium flowers. Yum.

I'm still doing well with avoiding cane sugar (as much as I can) and trying to kick the cravings for sweet food. In fact, the times when I have given in to my cravings I have instantly regretted it and found the sweet 'treat' all too sickly. A good sign huh.

Next up is green smoothies. I'm currently researching a suitable blender, although I have a gutsy stick blender that will suffice for now. I fancy one of those blend and go machines with sipper cups.. Bought this recipe book to get me started:

With green smoothies in mind I now aim to harvest the kale and celery doing great in the garden, blend it up and freeze in ice cubes. With warmer weather on the horizon (although you wouldn't think so today with a cold southerly wind and rain), these crops may soon come to an end. Some of the celery I spied yesterday trying to flower/seed and the kale might follow suit soon. Time to harvest these babies before they spoil.

Also on the gardening front, D wants to have a vege garden this year so we have got him his very own garden bed. On the weekend we sowed spinach, basil, carrots, and radishes. Indoors he has sowed some sunflowers in newspaper pots, and we 'repurposed' a plastic food container as a mini greenhouse:

This year I used my heat pad to help raise the tomatoes and it did seem to make a difference to germination - they now need potting on and moving to my small outside greenhouse.

Tons of stuff still to do outside, it never ends. More mulch to apply to the garden and orchard, and loads more weeding. As always these things will get done time and weather permitting!

Today marks the beginning of our NZ Spring

and it definitely feels Spring like now. We have buds on our almond trees:

And on the plums:

the days are getting longer and the sun is warming up.

Work on the driveway has come to a halt as we've had a bit of rain lately so the ground is soft - not ideal conditions to have earthworks done. Hopefully it will dry up a bit soon so the digger guy can start up again. There's a fair bit of work to get done before it's finished.

Gardening wise I've planted out some cauliflower seedlings and sown my tomato, chilli, capsicum, and ocra seeds.

Weeding like crazy whenever I can, applying mulch to the beds as I go. I'm building up several compost piles and working with the compost that is ready.

Keeping the dog out of the garden is a priority because there are several entrances and no gates yet! Propped up sheets of corrugated iron are working as a barrier in the meantime.

How's your garden shaping up this Spring time?

I've been somewhat distracted..........

by a new arrival - meet Roxy the labrador cross.

Isn't she a cutie? Of course being a puppy she is requiring a lot of attention right now, just like having a new baby really! Consequently getting time to spend on to most of the gardening jobs is a little difficult. But I'm not complaining, we're having a lot of fun!

I have however planted my garlic and am finalising plans for planting out the new walled garden.

I'm steadily making more and more compost, and preparing new beds for planting by digging in lots of kitchen scraps (since we no longer have pigs - yes they are now bacon, ham and pork in the freezer). I then lay wet cardboard on top and put mulch on top of that to keep the moisture in and the weeds under control.

I'm also applying mulch as and when to the fruit trees, and onto the existing beds in our original vegetable garden. This is going to be more of a herb and flower garden this coming season. It is on a slope and quite exposed to the wind, and gets quite dry in the summer, so it's never been really suited to growing vegetables. The herbs and flowers on the other hand are doing well there, and I've got lots of plants self-seeding all over the garden. Looking forward to seeing the flowers in bloom come spring-time.

Flower photos - garden and orchard

Just sharing a few photos taken around CTF. We are in mid Spring and things are blooming nicely.

Potager garden

 I need to remove the large overgrown lemongrass plant (in middle of photo), split it up and replant elsewhere!

Flowers on the bank

 The bank is looking a lot better, covered in flowers at this time of year. Plenty for the bees to feed on.

A bicoloured Californian poppy (self germinated)

The original Californian poppy

Californian poppies - self seeded

Unknown variety of rose

Apple blossom

Quince blossom

Quince tree in flower

Now for a question: does anyone know what this palm is? It was given to us but we don't know the variety.

Farewell Winter

Today is (officially at least) the last day of Winter here in NZ. It has been appropriately wet and windy for the last few days, so I hope when Spring finally does arrive it will bring more sunny days and some slightly warmer temperatures. Mostly though, I look forward to those still days when I don't have to battle the wind to get anything done outdoors! We are quite exposed to the winds here being located on a peninsula in the Kaipara harbour.

With the advent of Spring comes a busy time ahead in the garden.

I have been busy sorting out seeds for the vege garden this season and will be sowing those very soon, starting with the tomatoes of course.

We have trays of seed potatoes laying around 'chitting' - they will be going in the ground soon. This year we are growing Jersey Bennes (early), Rua, Agria and (a new one for us) Purple Passion.

Have planted the new strawberry beds and dug up nearly all the raspberry canes. The raspberries were taking over the garden by sending up runners everywhere, so are going to be moved to a new spot where they can't be too much of a nuisance.

Harvesting peas and snow peas, broccoli, spring onions, cabbages and herbs.

Thinking I might put in some more asparagus as only have 2 surviving plants in the bed I planted a couple of years ago. The bed has been heavily mulched so I hope the plants will better handle the dry of the summer. I think it will be still too early to harvest any spears though, I think they are meant to be at least 3 years old.

In the kitchen we're eating yummy bottled peaches, figs, feijoas and apple sauce. I've preserved a whole lot of lemons (in salt) - will post on that soon. Also made these sour gummies with lemon and lime juice:

They are sweetened with honey - found them while looking for cane sugar free recipes - and the recipe can be found here. I thought they would make a nice treat, but neither D or G liked them very much! Maybe I'll try them with stevia instead of honey. Not going to give up that easily!

Shepherd's delight?

This was the sunset a few nights ago, after we had quite a bit of rain and wind. I have to admit that the next day was a little sunnier perhaps there is some truth to the old saying "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight".

Not too much going on in the veg garden, because I hurt my knee not so long ago, and it has stopped me from doing all the things I wanted to do..aargh!

I am gradually trying to replant the strawberry plants into new beds, which have been given a good dose of home-made compost. There are more to dig up and move but I'm getting there slowly. Apart from keeping them watered it will also be crucial to keep them netted from the birds. I might try placing red painted stones around the beds, this is supposed to work to deter the birds from eating strawberries. Has anyone tried this?

Apart from the strawberries, I'm also in the process of tackling the raspberry canes which have spread all over the place. These are also going to be moved to another, less dry and slightly shady spot where a patch of them did well last year. Sadly I have now used up all of our frozen raspberries from earlier this year. I made a few jars of raspberry jam, one of our favourite jams. I do like to have frozen raspberries on hand for smoothies and baking though, so it will be good to get bigger harvests in future years. One can never have too many raspberries don't you agree?!

A feeling of Spring in the air

Today is sunny with a light breeze and warm - i.e. I can be outside gardening without a jacket. It feels like Spring although we are still in our Winter.

We were lucky to receive a gift of beautiful fresh lemons (thanks L x). I shall be whipping up lemon honey (curd) someday soon. Yummy.

This morning I've been hauling compost around and spreading it on the garden beds. Have transplanted a few strawberry plants and planted the rest of a bunch of leeks I bought a week or so ago. I find it very easy to get distracted when outside as there are always so many things to do, like weeding - my least favourite job! Anyhow, the veg garden is looking reasonably presentable for a change. I just need to finish off laying gravel on all the paths, which will make it look a lot better, plus be a lot less muddy.

The new calves are getting slightly less wary, and let me get close enough to take this photo without zooming

in much!:

 

 

I've also picked a few calendula flowers to dry, so I can make some oil for soap. Over at Down to Earth, Rhonda has a new recipe for calendula soap that I'm going to try soon.

Happy New Year everyone

Hope it is a good one for you and your loved ones. 2013 had its ups and downs for us so we are hoping 2014 is a smoother ride!

Christmas came and went in a flurry, with much time spent in the kitchen baking up tasty treats for gifts. I also made another chocolate and raspberry mousse layer cake for dessert on Christmas day:

I decorated the cake with a layer of ganache and then some fresh raspberries (from the garden), blueberries and chocolate sprinkles. Rather a lot of chocolate went into this cake but although it was rich, it wasn't sickly or too sweet. Had I more chocolate in the pantry I might have got more creative and put shaved chocolate on top instead of the sprinkles.

'Christmas' plums

 After enjoying loads of juicy sweet early peaches, we are now onto plums and nectarines.

Nectarines and plums

We have various nectarine trees, 'Queen Giant', 'Spring Red', 'Red Gold', 'Tasty Gold'. They are all good! We are trying hard to keep the possums off them, mainly by trapping. We are enjoying them fresh of course and as you'd expect I will be busy making chutney, jam, and bottling and freezing them too.

Lots more stone fruit to come as summer progresses!

The weather has been mixed, hot and sunny, with sudden tropical downpours as well. Hoping to get to harvest my 'Grosso' lavender sometime soon. I probably should have done this a couple of weeks ago before the showers started as it's better when really dry (the scent and less likely to spoil), also more flowers have opened than I would have liked but never mind, it still smells and looks pretty good!

Grosso lavender

Sowing beans

I'm sowing a few different types of beans this season:

Clockwise from the top - the white bean is 'Climbing Butter', then a purple bean 'Dwarf Royal Burgundy', another purple bean 'Purple Tee Pee' (both of these purple beans turn green when cooked), the small black beans are 'Yard Long Runner' and finally the big black beans are 'Italian Flat' (a climbing bean). I like all types of bean, but hubby prefers the dwarf/French bean. Both varieties of purple dwarf bean have performed well here in previous seasons. I will report back on the others as and when.

What kind of beans do you like/grow?

Spring flowers

The potager garden is in full flower right now and the bees and other insects are having a ball.

The bees are making a 'bee-line' for the poppies, especially these red ones:

Mostly all the flowers are self sown. There are snapdragons, carnations, nasturtiums, Icelantic poppies, coriander and parsley. My black hollyhocks (bottom right of the top photo) are developing buds but have no flowers as yet.

Rose 'De la Grifferaie"

My old-fashioned rambler rose 'De la Grifferaie' is doing really well this year, and has lots of blooms on it. The scent is to die for!

How's your flower garden doing this Spring?