Little harvest Monday

Ok technically some of this wasn't quite this week's harvest.

I harvested the zucchini Saturday week ago, before the big storm, which was lucky really because the host plant literally melted into a puddle of rotten, brown sludge after the hail stone infused deluge. Bye bye Zucchini, we have had many happy times together, the risottos, the pastas, the occasional frittata.

The habaneroes and beans on the other hand were harvested this week. The beans went into a cous cous dish while the habaneroes, they, um, well, they're still in the fridge. Still in good condition, looking at me longingly. Problem is, I don't think I want to cook with them or eat them. I am really not sure why I grew them, except perhaps for their aesthetic value. I will say it for all to see, I am not really a super hot food fan. A bit of chilli is great for flavour but I've never been a 'heat that could blow the roof of my mouth off' kind of girl. My neighbours may end up in posession of these, or someone else, who knows. Maybe, just maybe, I might try cooking with one.

I've been harvesting lots of carrots. One a day usually and they are crisp and delicious. It is only the yellow ones which are ripe at the moment but I also have white ones and purple ones in the garden. In the above picture is a small daikon which I harvested alongside the carrots in all its dirty glory. Usually they are ten times bigger, but this one was a little trapped around a sunflower so he was midget sized. Added a tastey element to my lentil and tuna salad. Yum!

Sorry the posts have been few and far between. The thesis writing is keeping me busy. However, I did manage a good few hours in the garden this weekend, taking out the debris and storm-broken plants and adding some good autumn crops. I'll post on that this week.

Harvest Monday

A new year and two new additions to the harvest, cucumber and nectarine! The cucumber was so delicious, I put it on my salad took a picture and sent the picture to my Mum!

Miss J also got to try the cucmber and she gave it two thumbs up. I still have no idea how the cucumber came to exist, due to the long running problems with pollination but who am I to complain. Now to wait for the L-shaped one to ripen and I can go in for round 2.

The nectarine tree had three nectarines on it this season (its first season) and I got to try one the other night. It was so delicate and sweet. Unforuntately I think the other two are suffering from sunscald and won't be as yummy, or possibly even edible, but we will see.

I also harvested from drawrf bush beans. The beans went in with some other greens and accompanied a veggie roast. Very tasty and not at all stringy. The spanish black radish and spring onion also went along with the roast.

As usual there were tomatoes, but not the same as before. Some were pictured above with the cucumber but there were many others harvested that were not as colourful. You see the rest of these were pretty much all picked green, in an effort to minimise wilt and sunscald damage. The wilt defoliates the bush leaving the tomatoes exposed to the dangers of the hot Australian sun. Indeed I am about to pull out half the tomato bushes for this season due to the wilt, with the others following very soon. Many of these will not have even produced a single tomato. Here's a picture to show the you damage I am contending with.

But with this difficulty there is always hope - here is a sneak preview of what probably will be in next week's harvest post - Eggplant!!!

Harvest Monday

I've wondered long and hard about why I have trouble having good posts for harvest Mondays. I actually use a lot of produce from my balcony garden at certain times of the year but I never seem to have a lot when I photograph it. Then I realised I only pick what I need when I need it. Some gardeners are far away from their gardens, mine is literally at the doorstep. It takes only minutes to get stuff from the garden into the pan and only rarely do I remember to photograph it along the way. So I will do my best to show you what has been harvested and eaten from the garden this week.

Zucchini has been an interesting producer. I have eaten 3 or 4 large ones any many more smaller ones. It seems to produce many more female flowers to male flowers, and with only one plant at present it has trouble pollinating. In fact at the moment it has 7 flowering female zukes and NO male flowers. Still I managed to harvest four small and rapidly deteriorating zucchinis which I will put into a curry tomorrow night.

Strawberries have been a winner. I eat one of two a day. Problem is they are rotting so shortly after ripening (some even while ripening) so the harvest isn't as big as it could be. Now for the piece de resistance, and I will do a seperate post on these gems also, but in tonight's harvest I included the first of the cherry tomatoes!!!

They were sweet and tasty. I mixed them in with some lettuce, a beet leaf and a very small daikon radish (I had to thin the radishes) as a base for a small smoked salmon salad.

Very delicious. Hopefully I remember to get the camera out a bit more often when I grab the produce for the garden. There should be a lot more coming in the future weeks, despite the major bug and other problems.

Monday Harvest

I am so, so, so excited, I finally had harvest worth mentioning. Ok so this is probably going to include a couple of harvests from a little over a week ago too, but it is not often in the middle of winter I get a haul such as this and I don't want things to miss out just because I pulled them out early. One such fellow was the daikon radish. He was smaller than a usual daikon but really really tender.

I also pulled out enough veggies for this salad.

Carrot thinnings, which I ate, they were like little lollies, slyly addictive! So yummy.

And some snow peas and broccoli found their way into my meal one night.

All very small harvests. I don't keep tallies or totals or anything, except for the tomatoes, and the balcony garden is not a money saving venture nor a concerted attempt at sustainable living, it is simply an adventure, an adventure in gardening. The reason I had such a large harvest this week(ish) was due to a Sunday Roast we had here yesterday, the point of which was to show off my newly harvested goodies. I had leeks for the potato and leek soup, although when cut down there wasn't really enough of them so they were topped up with a couple of others from the markets.

Some greens which included snow peas, broccoli, beetroot leaves, silverbeet of plain and rainbow varieties and rocket. These were steamed and served as is.

Carrots for the salad.

Tomatoes for the salad.

And lettuce for the salad.

Stay tuned for my post about the roast and you will see what the salad looked like before we all attacked it. I took the last two lemons off the lemon tree for the dessert, deconstructed lemon meringue pie, but more on that feast later.

So there you have it, a pretty fine harvest if I do say so myself. And I am giddily excited that I finally get to join in on Daphne's Dandelions Monday Harvest extravaganza.

The Radish part two

A few days ago I posted proudly about my single daikon radish sitting in the garden. It had grown extra leafy and I suspected it needed to be eaten. Plus the foliage was shadowing the new little black radishes so I thought it best that I pull it sooner rather than later. This is what he looked like!

He was much bigger than any of the carrots I have grown, maybe because he had an almost adequate amount of space. Now in the shops they are a million times bigger than this, but I never want that much radish. This one was perfect for a very large, and decadent meal for one. I grated the daikon with some carrot and added some greens and coriander from the garden. Thinly sliced some fresh raw sashimi grade salmon to add to the top and dotted it with some soy.

Was extra tasty and also pretty healthy. The daikon acts as a digestive so it all settled quite well. The flavour is very mild, almost creamy. The crispish texture went to well with the soft salmon and greens. I'll have to wait several more months for another home grown one, in fact it will be longer because I am waiting for a pot to become available so I can plant some!

Ravishing Radishes and that Rogue Darwin

Just look at the green on the radish in the bottom most pic. It is a daikon that I decided to grow in a not so large pot who is destined for a dinner plate sometime soon. Originally he had 3 friends, sprouted from seed.

But space was limited and they all got Darwinian amongst themselves and this guy turned out the victor. I thought he was a goner at one stage as the aphids took a very strong liking to him.

But I like pyrethrum on occasions (when necessary) and the aphids didn't so Ravishing Radish was safe for another day. I thought he would be like my beets and some of the carrots, a good guy for green foliage but less effective in the growing of a root part. He surprised me and it looks like he will be a fair size for such a small pot.

Question is what do I do with him? I am thinking as part of a tuna sashimi platter ... and will the two black radishes I planted in his place thrive?

Radishes

Growing up I was never a fan of radishes. To me they were these weird pink and white things that Mum would cut fancily into rosettes whenever she had a dinner party. Even worse was that the leftovers would be in our dinner salads for days on end. They were bitey and the texture altogether not to my liking. Now I am older and possibly a bit wiser my view of radishes has altered slightly. I could never, ever eat the little pink versions, nor would I be inclined to grow them given the limited space on the balcony. However a fondness for Japanese food, founded in my late teens, meant that Daikon radish was a staple in my diet. Usually used as an accompinament in julienned form for Sashimi I love its delicate flavour. Said flavour is enhanced, rather than consumed by, the lieral addition of soy sauce. With carrots, greens and some raw fish of the day it is an absolute treat.


I live near the Vic Markets which are readily supplied with Daikon, but these are large and often pricey. So I thought why not grow some myself?!? I need to thin them out as all four seeds took in a rather spacially restricted pot, but hopefully, in some time, I will have two daikon radishes to enjoy in the balcony garden kitchen!

The Balcony Garden at Present

On the eve of Garden Bloggers Blooms Day I thought I would give you an update of how the Balcony Garden looks on the whole at present. There have been a few movement since this photo but on the whole it appears pretty much like this. Here is he view from the airconditioning unit looking down the balcony. That sunflower is the single headed one and is taller than me!


And then one in the reverse. In the summer this section behind me also contains tomatoes and the lemon tree because it gets an amazing amount of sun. Alas in winter it is slightly barer given the change in the sun's position. The empty pot now contains purple sprouting broccoli.


We have the crowded corner, which was filled with tomatoes when we last saw it. Now it is complete with snow pea squished broccoli and the lemon tree in its Autumn/Winter position. Here I am also growing beetroot, carrots, daikon radish, leeks, bush beans (by accident) and more. There are also some small mint cuttings and other seedling that I grew for a friend but we haven't put in her garden yet to plant them and time I am afraid is running out.


On the table we have the Gazanias, the Begonia and a few very small pots of corainder, rainbow silverbeet and an ash tray. I don't smoke, but as the eternal hostess I have to be prepared for anything and there is no way any of my guests are smoking inside! It is also a little bit cleaner at present.

So there we have it, the balcony garden as it stands. Well ok succulent corner was kind of out of the picture and the inside plants including the tomato experiment and the newly moved strawberries were conspicuosly absent but I'll post on them soon.