The Organic Home Garden

We have had the most amazingly warm April this year and the impact has been seen in the garden.
You may recall the planting of my seedlings around the start of April, well these are the same plants after this warm Autumn period. The warm moist soil has nurtured my little babies and they have raced after the sunlight like crazy. The result is far more production in the garden this month than I expected.

Just Add Some GERMS

I also tried a new product this month – I added some germs to the soil. These are bacteria that are normally found in the soil and are concentrated into a granule form to add to composts and garden beds. I added several bags of organic manure and a measure of the germs with seaweed extract. Well stand back and keep your head down! The response in the soil has been amazing.

I dug a bed tonight to plant out my snow peas. Well the soil is so nice you could eat it! I exaggerate, but the structure of the soil and it’s colour are just perfect. I have dug the bed over once more and redressed the hay mulch. I have a new set of seedlings growing in the germination tray and these will go into this bed in a few weeks time.
I have more onions, cauliflower, English spinach and spring onion. These will follow up the first planting and give me a nice steady supply through the winter and into spring.

Organic Vegetables in April

The beans I planted earlier in the month – behind the capsicum – which we are still picking (more green less red, now since the sun is not as strong). These beans are flowering and a few have tiny beans forming already – I love fresh baby beans so I will be picking very soon. Just imagine them lightly steamed and served with a mixture of garlic butter or a light olive oil. …..mmmmmm.

Carrots, spring onions, beetroot, onions.

Silverbeet and lettuce and onions.

Cauliflowers, English spinach, turnips and beetroot.

My dwarf apple tree has held on to two apples – Pinkabelle is the variety – the apples are looking about normal size and one shows a hint of orange so maybe they are starting to ripen. A few leaves are dropping (well it is autumn) and I hope to be eating my own apples next month.

Mint in a pot so that it does not takeover the garden! This is old fashioned mint, I also have a spearmint variety in another pot.

The second bean crop which was planted two weeks after the first ones. Spacing out the plantings gives you a more constant supply instead of a huge bumper crop – not that I have trouble giving them away – neighbours and friends are frequent recipients of my organic surplus.

It was such a lovely morning here in Perth. The sun was shining the air was cool with a strong breeze and blue skies above. It’s Xmas day and I cannot think of much better things to do than go out in the garden and grab lunch! We are off today to the relatives for lunch and so we are obviously bringing the salads. We have been blessed with some marvellous weather and as a result the garden is the best it has been for years! So here is the roll call of veges this week!

Tomatos by the bucket load! Red, black and yellow!

Xmas week harvest

Eggplant and Zuchinni!

Zuchinni

Carrots, cucumber and lettuce!

Baby Carrots

Lebanese Cucumber

Butter Sweet Lettuce

Onions, spring onions and leek – I harvested all the onions this week and most of the garlic and they are just drying out a little before we store them for the summer!

Brown Onions

The onions are so sweet that I have been eating the little ones raw! Well they are too small for cooking so I eat them as a salad! My son-in-law Jon has been eating fried onions with Russian black tomatos this week and loves them.

PLANTINGS THIS WEEK!

I have half of the leeks left for harvest this month so I have started planting the next lot and also some white onions, cucumber and tomato for late summer salads! We also like to make tomato chutneys with the green tomatos on the last of the bushes in early autumn.

Leeks

Tomato

Oh yeah here is the first of the Capsicums!

Capsicum

BRAG BRAG BRAG!

I hate to do this but the tomatoes on the Mortgage Lifter are already gigantic so get an eye full of these two – they are as big as my fist already and there are 5 more on the bush as well!

Mortgage Lifter

2 weeks later - Ripe

PRESERVING EXCESS CROPS

As you have seen the production can sometimes be way over what you can eat. So what do you do?
Well I give away a lot to family and friends so that is the usual solution. However, I like to have some vege and fruit for those cold winter days as well. So we have a number of options – preserving in chutneys, freezing and drying.

We are actually still eating green tomato relish from last year on our salads – even after giving so many bottles away as gifts! This year I am trying to dry some veges and the first effort are some tomatos – red and green!

Preserving Fruit

We made fig leather last year and I ate the last of that recently. The difficulty is sometimes the variety of fruit is not suitable for drying – some have more water in them than others and this affects drying. Anyway I will continue to experiment and will eventually get it right!

Have a lovely Xmas season and enjoy!