Strawberry Spinach

Ok so I know the above picture is simply a strawberry. We have a small pot with two Lowanna strawberry bushes on the window sill. Dwarfed by the triffid like tumbler tomato it sometimes gets a little neglected. I promised it a photo on the blog and there it is.

The strawberry I am more interested in is strawberry spinach.

I tried to grow some as a present for a friend. I planted it before christmas, and also sowed some seeds out on the balcony. The pot for the friend did not take off, but the ones in the large balcony pot did. The Strawberry Spinach shares its home with lime basil, and a lot of lime basil at that. I am yet to teach totally intelligent male friend the proper way of seed sowing (as in don't dump the entire packet of a thousand seeds in and not expect me to panic).


The leaves themselves are bitter but refreshing, good for a salad.


The berries are literally like a redder, softer version of the leaves. I took this photo a couple of days ago and the berries are much, much redder now. They too would be perfect salad fodder.


Indeed this Friday the Inept Balcony Gardener is playing host to a small dinner party. She who was to receive the mini pot of strawberry spinach that failed will be in attendance, and thus will get to try this interesting bit of greenery and redery (she also won't leave empty handed, I managed to get some lime basil to grow for her instead, albeit part of the panic driven fix it plan after the seed dumping 'catastrophe')

Will let you know what the consensus is on this interesting leafy German green.

On another note my garden today was covered with a small film of ash. And the fires continue to burn - at least the arrested and charged someone ...

*Updated photo below

gratitude and generosity

This blog has become an entity unto itself. My friends love to rib me about it ever so slightly, but are overwhelmingly glad it provides an alternative point of release for my relatively newly found love of gardening (after 20 minutes of detailed deconstruction about the deeper meaning of dirt not everyone remains as enthralled)

I love the people who read it, and whose blogs I also am drawn to (and beleive me if you post it, no doubt I will read it within the hour, I am a postgrad afterall whose pure existance is to perfect the art of procrastionation). There are the regulars and the occassonals. But what has struck me most is the wonderful sense of community that this forum has provided. Your thoughts and prayers and actions and words about the bushfires are so heartening. Now I am in inner city Melbourne, so away from the the firefront. Though no one it seems, is unaffected. Everyone knows someone whose lost someone or someones, and even the smoke haze each morning is enough to remind one that things are just not quite right. The horror that the fireswreaked, the anguish that yes, some of these were deliberately lit can be too much to consider. It is horrific, and quite incomprehensible.

But the kindness shown here and elsewhere is astounding. I went to a poetry reading last night, what was to be a launch, was in the wake of the fires both launch and benefit. The poetry community is not immune to the losses dealt out by the fires. Now the literary set, at the best of times are a necessarily frugal bunch. Poetry pays a pittance, and the crowd, while larger than usual, probably topped out at a hundred or so. What amazed me was, despite the funding shortage and miniscule numbers, this set of folks, through a donation at the door, managed to raise $1500!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was awed, in a shocked and good way. Money isn't everything, but anything to help the fire victims is useful.

So in all thanks for the kind wishes, and those who visited the red cross donation link are the kindest souls. Keep them up, and keep these people in your thoughts, because with the hot conditions returning this weekend, it is far from over.

Impressionist Heatwave

Ever wondered what a 46 degree day looks like?




Not sunny at all, none of those famous blue Australian skies, but cloudy, trapping in the heat, and windy. Plants huddled in the corner, or else battered about by the winds.

Luckily it looks the same today outside, but is 20 degrees cooler, let's hope the miniscule amount of rain can help the brave firefighters.

If you want to help them, visit here.

Our thoughts are with you

... and so are our actions

Victorian Bushfire Appeal

No Mum, that's not pumpkin soup

Despite what it looks like, the contents of that teacup is not a creamy pumpkin soup. It is, of all things, a yellow tomato paste that went in to making a rather decadent meal for two.

Saturday, our 46.4 degree day led me to hide out indoors. I had earlier pulled as many tomatoes as possible off the plants in a vain hope of saving them from the ills of the hot weather. After colour coordinating the tomatoes I realised with glee that I had just enough to make a batch of pasta sauce out of the yellow ones!

Peeled and chopped, I reduced the yellow tomatoes down, seeds, mushy bits and all, over a low heat. This took a good half hour or so. Then added some grated mushrooms, garlic, carrot and basil and simmered away gently until it was just the right consistency.


It didn't stop there. While I am a fan of homemade pasta, the lack of flour in the house, and a severe disinterest in exiting the walls of the place, meant I had to go the fallback option of store bought fresh lasagne sheets. Ravioli (of sorts) was on the cards, with a basil and 3 cheese filling (Brie, Smoked and Cheddar). I cut the lasagne sheets into shapes, placing filling gently between two and folding to close. What shape did I choose? See below!


Add one garden fresh salad, complete with a home grown lettuce and green zebra tomato, add cooked pasta, top with the yellow tomato sauce, more cheese, some basil and voila!


Decadent and delicious and mostly homemade! Yum.

Hope

This was the picture that greeted me this morning, a rainbow on the balcony, just outside my bedroom window. It didn't stay long, but just enough seconds for me to roll over, grab the camera, and try to capture its beauty. It's small, but if you strain your eyes you can just make out a rainbow. A rainbow here means so much more than a dazzling array of colour. It signaled a break in the hot and dry conditions that have ravaged our state recently.

I won't complain about the heat, yes it is shriveling the local trees and causing an early autumn's worth of leaf drop, my tomatoes are sunmarked and many a small plant has spontaneously combusted on thew balcony. A friend described yesterday's intense heat as 'like aiming a hairdryer at one's face, and turning it on to full'. As I said though, I won't complain. For the loss of a few plants on the balcony pales into insignificance when I think of all the lives lost in the bushfires still raging in this state. The pictures of the devastation were the second image I saw today, after the rainbow that it. They are all over the news. Despite the mass coverage it is still pretty incomprehensible. I recieved a text from a friend this morning, letting me know that she was all right, and that her property remained intact. She said she could see the flames on the crest of her hill but luckily they remained at a distance. She also remarked on the eeriness of late afternoon yesterday, when the smoke became so thick it blanketed her property and day became night. However she escaped, hence the horrifyingly poetic text message. Other people, many other people, were not so lucky.

So instead of whinging about my paltry lost plants, I just look at that picture. Not of bushfire ravaged Victoria, but of the balcony rainbow. The rainbow that signals hope and regeneration. The rain that caused it was short lived, I think even calling it a shower is going overboard. But it is a beginning, it is a start, and it is a positive, and looking for the positives is how the balcony gardener works.

46 degrees and Balmy

Ok so it is 46 degrees celcius outside today, 46.4 to be exact, a record heat in Melbourne, and not by any stretch of the imagination is it balmy. It is hot, dangerously hot, and the balcony garden is not looking at all happy. While the weather isn't balmy, I am. Not sure it was the heat that did it, I performed this action a couple of days ago when the temperatures were lower and the city was coming to terms with the last heatwave, but perhaps it is the heat that is making me admit my embaressing action - I colour co ordinated the tomato haul!

I've always been known for my intricacies (read obesessions), my housemate has long suffered the particular way I must hang my washing (back home I even needed to colour co ordinate the pegs to the clothes, no mean feat!) I have other intricacies too, a phobia of watching people using toothbrushes amongst them (ooooh do my friends have fun with that one)

But i figured rather than fight this silly action, I'd blog about it an rejoice in its harmless ridiculousness. Behold the color co ordinated tomato haul (which has signficantly increased)


A lovely assortment of large and cherry yellow tomatoes with a solitary green zebra, most of which will end up in a quick pasta salsa for tonight's meal


Some red cherries, and a roma, though this pile has more than tripled in the last three days


A bowl full of black russians - destined for our black russian black russian evening this Tuesday - black Russian Bolognaise with a side of vodka/kahlua!

A Green Casualty in the Minty Empire

Ahhh Mint - old reliable mint. He's been on the balcony garden from the very beginning. Way back when it was just a big pot of herbs he was there. Albeit basil and he just never saw eye to eye and he entered into a land war with oregano, but on the whole he was content simply to grow, multiply, and provide the muddle for my Mojito. One day he graduated to his own pot, and there he has remained. Indestructible - except for occasional rust. The above hardy specimen has survived aphid, spidermite, and caterpillar infestation, not to mention the world's most excessive pruning post-powdery mildew. And that pic above was taken AFTER out heatwave, so obviously successive days above 43 degrees did not phase old reliable mint too much.

However, old reliable reliably informed me that he was getting a little lonely. He longed for another mint to come join him in his balcony abode. I think he wanted to expand his minty empire, to compete with the basil brothers who held 6 varieties and were multiplying. Perchance, he asked politely could I bring him home a companion - perhaps an exotic Vietnamese mint, a sweet but bitey chocolate mint, or something, anything, just to relieve the loneliness. Shortly before Christmas, perhaps in the spirit of giving, the balcony garden received another mint. It was a ginger mint (a cross between corn mint and spearmint)- shown here getting acquainted with her new surroundings.


Of course she remained quarantined at first - tucked away behind the large tomato pots, in the relative safety near my bedroom door. It was here I could keep an eye on her, make sure she wasn't going to pass on something nasty to old reliable.

Then the heatwave hit! The tomato plants were all moved into the shadey bit of the balcony during the heat of the day. Unfortunately somebody forgot to tell miss ginger mint that she should probably make haste for the shade too. Doubley unfortunately I forgot completey about her. So within an hour she had wilted, turned brown, and shrivelled up.

Needless to say when I told old reliable he was devastated. But we did not give up hope. Despite being crispier than pork crackling I continued to water her in her new shady home behind the BBQ. It has been a week, and miracle upon miracle - she is starting to sprout new minty goodness. I also took a cutting from her just before the heat hit, and it too fried, but it is looking even healthier than the original!



So old reliable is over the moon, as am I and hopefully we can keep expanding the minty empire in the balcony garden.

The Tomato Glut and Ducks

Please excuse the poor photography, no matter what I did I could not get a non-blurry picture of these two circus-freak tomatoes. Maybe it is the weather, but in my mind they resembled two little ducks, and therefore warranted photographic exploration. Apologies also to my Northern Hemisphere blogging counterparts whose only access to garden fresh tomatoes is through an imaginative journey, but here on the balcony garden, despite abhorrently bad temperatures (cooled to a humid high twenties today) the tomatoes are fruiting in spectacular fashion.

Granted a significant proportion of the crop was lost to the sun, with blistering and rotting commonplace by late last week. But of those I salvaged before the intense scorching, and given that up until today I was housemateless (so glad she is back) there soon befell a glut of tomatoes in the balcony garden kitchen.

So what did I do with them?

* Tomato paste from black russian (a waste given then are so good fresh) which then went into a delightful chilli con carne. Sorry no pics of this but below is a black russian ready to be crisped up with his cherry counterparts (details below) This gem of a dish also took up a roma and some of the larger red cherry tomatoes. It also utilised some of my new yellow chillis and some old red ones, ubnfortunately the yellow chillis were far less hot than their red counterparts and the dish sorely lacked in sweat inducing hotness. Perhaps I should rename it, from Chilli con Carne, to Hotter than a capsicum but not quite as hot as a chilli Con Carne!


* Green zebras, ripening at the rate of one a day have become a salad staple, they keep a green salad green, and will definitely be adorning my welcome back totally awesome housemate dinner tonight of Salt and Pepper squid salad. (photos soon)

* Tomato chips, I know I should have tried sundrying them, but given we are on a very main road I don't wish to match my culinary delight with tyre dust. Cherries, both red and yellow, sliced in half, with pepper salt, a little oil and homegrown basil, several hours on a very low oven later, presto, instant lycopene in a chip!


The season is far from over, so I am sure there will be many more adventures in the kitchen with the garden haul! Anyone in the opposing hemisphere feeling pangs of gardenolicious jealousy, I'll send some fresh tomatoes to you via courier pigeon (though I cannot guarantee the pigeon wont eat them on the way)!

Heatwave Expectations Askew

The cool change has arrived, and when I say cool change, I mean slightly less maddeningly hot change (from a record breaking top of 45.1 to a positively pleasant-by-comparison 27). Thanks to everyone for their kind words, reassurance and advice during this difficult gardening time (it's a time when ineptness can seem overwhelming, water restrictions are very difficult to navigate when you can see plants dying in a matter of minutes in front of your eyes.) Melbourne (and Adelaide and all of this region) has sweltered, power has gone out, transport in chaos. Those events, given the heat, were kind of to be expected. Another sad yet seemingly inevitable occurrence are the bush fires that come with the heat, and the arsonists of summer. To think a fire that claimed 20 homes could have been deliberately lit ... it's as close to anger as I can muster at present.

Yet other expectations, of total carnage in the garden, and conversely the survival of my hardier plants were not so easily met.

* Succulents, hardy, unbreakable, warm-climate ready individuals? Not so, as they all wilted in the intense heat. Granted they were not as shaded as their vegetable friends, but they have been the most affected negatively by this unprecedented heatwave

* Tomatoes, as far as I have read and been told, only fruit and flower in the narrowest range of temperatures (and 45.1 is well beyond this) Still my mutant balcony tomatoes have defied this, with blossoms AND new fruit appearing in spite of the intense heat.



* So too my darling lemon tree continues to fill the balcony with lovely citrus bloom smells



* Sprouts of beetroot, leeks and welsh onions are defying the odds and breaking through the soil



So it's certainly not all bad. Yes the heat has been terrible, unbearable even, it was a permanent outdoor sauna here for nigh on 3 days, and the city is going to take a while to recover. With the current bushfires there are still threats to our power supply (and more maddeningly other people's homes). In times like these isn't it better to look, though mind not to be blinded, but simply to look to the positives for reassurance and hope.

Oh and the tomato haul quadrupled!