Good bye lilies!

 My little curry leaf tree is looking well; the rosemary and thyme are also looking happier.  This is in the side front where my monster sweet potatoes (white fleshed) and sick looking cape gooseberry are.

 My flowering prostrate rosemary is a constant lunch bar for the local bee population... who don't seem bothered about me at all.

 In my postbox bed we have globe artichokes which have resurrected themselves now the weather has cooled down.  We have also put saffron in near the top corner and put two rows of garlic in coming straight down that edge and across the bottom.  The leggy plant in the foreground is a Lemon Verbena which will if it thrives make some nice lemon tea and scent the house nicely of lemons as the breeze blows through.

We have our first (okay second but first not to get knocked off by an excited junior gardener!) lemon!  Fruit Fly is a problem here in Western Australia and so to avoid the problem and NOT spray any chemicals on our fruit we are employing exclusion bags.  This one is a jewellery bag but it will do the job until the lemon gets a bit bigger.  The nutrient deficiency has been treated (pale leaves) but it takes up to a year for the leaves to show improvement so we will keep on feeding the soil - it got a lambs heart yesterday just for good measure!   The rosemary hedge is starting to take shape.  In the mid-shot is the postbox bed with rosemary, globe artichoke, a mandarine tree and some chives. 

Passionfruit!  Well I was worried that these were NEVER going to fruit... Hubby decided to threaten them loudly with being chopped and composted.  I guess they were paying attention.  I still need to figure out which is gold and which is red... I suppose time will tell!  I am thinking maybe the first one might be the red... it is a little darker green?  That vine is in the background... it used to be over an arch but they don't build archways like they used to!
  In the fore-ground you can see the remainder of the sweet potato after bandicooting and a good cut back.  Ignore the plastic bags - they were from the lambs hearts, fry and kidneys - we were attracting the flies to our Orb spider web so they didn't bother this gardener! ;-)  I just planted a Lots-O-Lemons at the front of this bed so more fruit here we come!

 I am thinking these might be from the Gold Passionfruit?  They really took Chris' threat to heart and are producing like nothing else!  My dirty-garden hand is dwarfed by the fruit... such a pity I don't like passionfruit... but Chris and the boys will be happy!  As well as the neighbours with the amount of fruit setting!

 I ran wire through star pickets when the archway broke and apparently the passionfruit is much happier occupying this against the nice warm fence!  In the foreground you can make out lots of Sage, some ruby chard - not much as the crickets like it as much as we do.. some ornamental viburnums that we plan to eventually remove and replace with fruit trees and Sugar cane that came from a cutting at Jetto's Patch... it now has 4 stems on it and so far I have managed to keep everyone at bay - Chris wants to pull it out before it takes over and the boys want to cut stems to eat!

 This is my current work in progress - messy aren't I?  Top of the bed is asparagus then sage, then Midyum Berry, Sage, Midyum, purple sage and then right at the bottom of the shot is the new liquorice.  In the rear of the shot is the Ice-cream bean which we will bend along the wire - espalier.  There are also broad beans that Brandon planted all along the back of the bed - we are still waiting for them to show us where!  This whole bed was full of very scruffy looking Dietes Lilies.  So we are making progress!

 The passionfruit is making its way down the fence to meet the ice-cream bean.  The Dietes clumps are still on the lawn in the foreground - they were painful to remove - thanks Chris for the help!  The bed is looking a little bare right now but it will be worth it as everything settles in.  I would love to expand the bed forward but the water, power, council keep on digging up the lawn.

 So the Ice-cream bean went in  and got a new bed mate - a Pineapple Guava which will also be espaliered (maybe) along the fence.  Some of my Kale and chilli's can also be seen in this shot.

 I still have 4 more of these clumps of Dietes to dig out to make room for more Ornamental edibles...

 I managed to keep two rosella bushes alive and they are currently a mass of flower buds, flowers and more importantly seed pods.  Besides them is the last remaining Pop-pop's Super Tomato... Hopefully this one will not seccumb to wilt!  Behind it are some Diggers Mini Capsicums that have been producing nicely and in the front right is a ground apple - Yakon.  I have yet to try one of these so I am really hoping it manages to produce after an extremely slow start. 

 In this bed we have a Tangelo at the back since the boys tried them at Jetto's Patch and decided they were a MUST have!  I am not going to argue with boys wanting to grow and eat fruit! To the left there is another Passionfruit - because we thought the others may have been Nelly Kelly - thankfully I found a label the other day and they are simply "Red" and "Gold"... so we may end up with passionfruit for the whole neighbourhood!  To the right of the Tangelo is the Kumera which I hope to encourage to grow up the wire support.  In front of those are two dwarf pomegranates that are slowly finding their feet after transplant.  In front of those are Kale and Globe Artichokes... and dwarfed at the front is a tiny Goji berry plant which hasn't done a whole lot - we will see! I might need to get Chris to threaten to pull it out.

 At the very end of the bed I popped in some garlic and leeks at the front of the bed and more Mini Capsicums and chillis.  Oh and another Yakon.  To the rear of the bed are some ornamentals that have a reprieve until I can replace and some lemongrass to supply my neighbour as rentals don't allow grow-your-own!  Anyway thats part of the front at the moment. The blueberries and mulberries are plodding along and  we will add more as we go I am sure.

Oh and when I am not looking after my garden I look after a friends twins and meander through her garden... I found one of this years baby bobtails sunning itself by the vegetable bed.  Good bye slugs and snails!

Awesome Onion!

So I was making quiches (along with jams and preserves) and needed onions so headed out the back.

Found some strawberries *groan*  we just got through processing 4 big boxes from the strawberry farm lol so not very enthusiastic sorry!  Pulled a few onions and cleaned off the skins into the garden bed and grabbed a few leaves for the quiche, spinach, rainbow chard and oregano.

 The bigger onion felt quite heavy so I couldn't help myself and stuck it on the scales... 284g!  Not a bad effort :-)

That's it from me... Happy Gardening *hugs*

Sarah

Strawberry Fever!

Well the boys and I went strawberry picking!

 A fabulous day and at only $10 per big black box a cheap family day out.  So this is what we started with:

 That is 2 trays less the ones that we ate 25.4kg.

 So we set to work... ok I set to work... Jams, preserves, cordials, dried and frozen.  We then went and got two more trays since we are stocking up the store cupboard.

 B helped make a jelly tart (dairy free version of a cheesecake-ish)  Digestive biscuits and dairy free margarine base chilled then sliced strawberries then strawberry jelly (jello)... no artificial colours of course!  Set in the fridge and disappeared really fast.  Yesterday I broke out the puff pastry and egg slicer (best way to slice strawberries ever!) thats it... that is all the ingredients for the pretty flower / star pastries ;-)

This morning I moved all the strawberry jars into the laundry - going into a cupboard in here as my kitchen is *small*. 

 Jam's on the left... the Ball Pectin worked the best.  CSR Jam Sugar did not set even though I followed the directions so it will go into cakes and on ice-cream.  Jamsetta gave mixed results too... so definitely sticking to Ball Pectin next time!  On the right - Preserved strawberries... really yummy and can be turned into Jelly (Jell-o) easy peasy.

 Left - middle jars are Strawberries with Balsamic Vinegar and Black Pepper.  Sounds funky but is delicious.  Right - 3 jars of dried strawberry "chips".  Ended up using the oven on 50C - 75C fan forced.  Much quicker than the drier and leaves them with more flavour.

 In the corner is dried rosemary from the garden... have lots more to dry lol.  I will use this in savoury scones.  The Preserved Strawberries here have a dash of Cognac in them for something different.  Two of the smaller jars are the Juice left over from this batch that I sieved and turned into American style "Jelly".

The rest of the left over "juice"/syrup from the strawberry conserve got sieved put in a bottle as cordial.  The boys definitely wont be lacking vitamin C!

So since we outgrew the half a shelf in the kitchen we decided to consolidate and move all our preserving efforts... Strawberry - everything; Salt Lemon Pickle; Nectarine Jam; Peach Jam; Spiced Nectarine Jam; Black Marmalade (brown sugar!); Lemon Marmalade; Honey Nectarine Cordial and a few other bits and pieces.  

So you might be wondering why this is on our Vege-patch page.  Well the whole point of our vege-patch is to provide for our family good fresh food.  We have a kitchen garden and preserving our harvest where ever it is harvested from is part of this.

Happy Gardening

*hugs*  Sarah