Autumn vegetables

Slowly I seem to be getting on top of things in the veggie garden.

The last of the winter veggie beds is weeded and nearly fully planted. There are cabbages, cauliflowers, brusselsprouts, lettuces, silverbeet, komatsuna, spring onions, salad burnet, wild rocket, potato onions, garlic chives and parsley. Still to be sown - more carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, mizuna, mustard, fenugreek, etc.
The garlic that I planted 12 days ago has started to shoot. I only have a few more cloves to plant, then I'm done.
The first snow peas have germinated. Let's hope the snails, slaters and millipedes don't destroy them.
It's an exciting time in the garden. Lots of planting and sowing. And hopefully soon there will be a glut of vegetables. Life is good! :)

Things to do in Autumn

Harvesting bits and pieces. Some capsicums, a pickling cucumber that was hiding under some leaves, a little bunch of very sweet grapes.
The table grapes were flowering nicely in spring, but this did not translate into lots of fruit. Only 2 vines have bunches of grapes on them.
It's also a good day to chop some wood. We've been using the wood heater the last few days, as it has cooled down incredibly. There is still plenty of wood around the place, so we'll be busy chopping and stacking in the next few weeks.

Today's view

It is a very wet and windy day. Dark, too.On a brighter note, I finally preserved some tomatoes yesterday. And two jars of tomatillos.This season has been very weird. Spring was late to start (one month late, to be precise), and the summer was very mild (no complaints here!). We had good rains and all our water tanks are overflowing!

The tomato plants are laden with green fruit, but just not ripening up. Now with this wintery (very cold and windy) weather, I don't expect to pick much more. Yesterday, I went to pick some tomatoes and most of them had split and the millipedes, slaters, snails & slugs had moved in. What a revolting sight! I threw them over the fence and the chooks and sheep loved the food falling from the sky.

Chocolate Chip Banana Cake

Now this is a real treat!
Bought some organic almond flour at the Farmer's market on Sunday. And we happened to have some ripe bananas that needed to be used up. It was a rainy afternoon, so we couldn't do any gardening. The wood heater was doing its thing and it was cosy. The smell of the cake in the oven was fabulous!

This is another great recipe from Elana Amsterdam's "The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook". She also has a blog with great recipes - Elana's Pantry - see my blog list to the right.

Here the recipe, but I changed a few things:

3 cups blanched almond flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup grapeseed oil (I used olive oil)
1/4 cup agave nectar (I used organic honey)
3 large eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla extract (I used rum)
1 cup coarsely chopped dark chocolate (I used 85% dark, but probably only about 1/2 cup, as that was all that was left in the pantry)
1 cup (2 to 3) mashed very ripe bananas

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease cake pan with butter or oil, then dust with almond flour.

Combine almond flour, salt, baking soda and choc chips in a large bowl.

In another bowl, whisk together the oil, honey (agave nectar), eggs and vanilla extract. Then add mashed banans.

Stir wet ingredients into dry. Combine.

Scoop batter into greased cake pan.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let cake cool in pan for 1 hour.
Then eat. Try and only have 1 piece. We didn't. Try, that is. It's very more-ish!

Zucchini & Eggplant Lasagna

This is one of our favourite summer dishes, when the zucchinis and eggplants are plentiful.
I like to throw the 1cm thick slices of zucchini and eggplants on the barbie until they are nicely browned and just cooked. This gives them a beautiful flavour.
Then assemble your lasagna as you would any meat-based one. We use home-made lasagne sheets, and they make quite a difference. The eggplants give the dish quite a 'meaty' texture. Yum! :)

Tomatillo

This is only the second time I am growing tomatillos. The first time - years ago - we just did not know what to do with them - and threw them over the fence to the chooks and sheep. They loved them!
They are really easy to grow and quite stunning in the garden. From flowering, to fruit. And I am determined to make use of the fruit this year. I'll keep you updated. :)

Eating a Sweet Siberian

Watermelon!This variety does not take too long to produce fruit. 80-85 days. It does not produce gigantic fruit. So, it is ideal if you don't want a monster of a melon clogging up your fridge. Or if you don't have an army to feed.

Bright green skin and yellow-fleshed. Very juicy, very sweet!

When gardeners and cooks get together

There will be plenty of produce from the garden that ends up on the table.
All kinds of salads and side dishes, accompaniments, main dishes, herbal concoctions, laughter.The table ended up too small for all the bowls and platters, so we had to have a sideboard laden with dishes, too. Sorry, no picture of the sideboard.

Zucchini carpaccio

A wonderful recipe for this time of the year. Zucchinis are in abundance and it is nice to have a few recipes up your sleeve.

The recipe can be found here. The picture on that blog is a lot nicer than mine. But I didn't use balsamic vinegar, hence the difference in colour. I also bunged in a few torn basil leaves.
Give it a go, it's a wonderful light accompaniment to any dish, or just by itself.

Picking beans...

...is great fun, when you are prepared.
Let them climb up a structure that can also support a ladder. What is the point in having them climb up 2 - 3 metres and then you can't reach them?
This was the first year we actually harvested a few handful of beans. And the most delicious beans they were!
Unfortunately, the bean harvesting time was too short, and we are beanless again. But I'm happy we actually got to harvest a few.
Spring is always a crazy time. The chooks dig up half the beans, the snails have a go at the tiny seedlings, etc.... So every bean is a bonus, really. I'll try again next year. :)

Today's view

We have had 56mm of rain since yesterday morning!
The big house water tank is overflowing, the ground is nicely saturated, the snails are out in force, the frogs are happily ribbiting.... the Mad Gnomes are smiling madly...
It's still drizzly out there, but not as cold as it looks. Lovely.

Sowing winter vegetables

It still amazes me, how organised a gardener has to be. Here we are, in the middle of summer, and I have had to sow all my winter vegetables.
We have to get all our vegetables planted out in March*. Any later than that and the seedlings sit in the cold soil, shiver, complain and do nothing. They just don't grow.It's a risky business, though. We might still get a heat wave. And if that happens after I've planted out the tender little seedlings, well, they'll be cactus. So, I sow more than I need. Just in case.
*I am talking about our particular place. Autumn hits earlier here, than in the city. Every place is different. :)

In March, the soil is still warm and the seedlings are off to a good start. They can grow to a reasonable size, before the cold weather hits.

Now I'll better get the winter beds organised. Always a bit awkward when we haven't even started our proper summer harvest yet. Oh, the joys of gardening! :)

Edit: What have I sown?
Kale (2 varieties), brusselsprouts (2 varieties), cabbage (3 varieties, cauliflower (2 varieties), onions (4 varieties), spring onions, lettuce (5 varieties), celery, celeriac, chia, amaranth, mustard, leeks, silverbeet, spinach, broccoli, purple sprouting broccoli ...That should be about it. Direct sowing of root vegetables next month.

Blackberry smoothie

It looks funky!
But the texture is not that great, as the blackberries have tons of tiny, hard seeds, that get in the way of really enjoying this smoothie. And I really can't be bothered to strain the blackberry pulp through a sieve. Solution? I just eat the berries as they are. :)

Summer Pasta

Home-made pasta (with specks of dried chilli and ground, black pepper).

Pesto (with basil from the garden), tomatoes (cut in quarters), grated parmesan.

All tossed together, topped with more grated parmesan and some roasted cashews.Heaven in a bowl!

Purple Dragon Carrots

These are our all-time favourite carrots. After years of failure, I have finally 'mastered' the growing of carrots. All it takes is a ton of perseverance. If at first you don't succeed, sow, sow again. And again. And again.
These are tender, sweet and tasty. They are bright orange inside.
I grow carrots now (nearly) all year round. When the first batch has germinated (this can take up to 3 weeks!), I try to sow another small batch. The best and biggest carrot is often left in the ground for seed saving. The flowers are incredibly pretty and great for attracting heaps of different insects.