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

A new home.

Today was a great day... too busy for photos but a great day.

T and Chris fixed my garden arches and they are now tentatively in their new homes awaiting clearing of the previous tenants; carrots and radishes going to seed.

B and I dug the hole for our old curry leaf tree which has been living in a plastic garbage bin for about 6 years!  So today the old lady got a new home complete with layers of Rooster Booster, Organic Slow release fertiliser and 'Blood and Bone'. mixed with layers of sandy soil.  We watered her in a lot and gave her a quick tidy up.  She then got a good bucket of worm tea to perk her up and make her feel better!  Fingers crossed the old girl recovers... she has become a part of our family being planted by Nanny from Grand-pop's garden which makes this tree a special link.  This Curry leaf tree survived a move from Northampton all the way to Hedland and the heat up there for 6 and a half years and then moved to Perth in the middle of winter!!!  A tough old stick... literally lol.

I glued together my half barrel worm farm with the poly pipe glue.  Filled it up and watered it only to find I hadn't tightened the base enough and it sprinkled all over my sneakers lol!  Fixed now (hopefully) and I will check it out in the morning, if all is good I will give a few of my red wigglers a new home :-)

B and I were a little upset on inspecting the hydroponics... we found Grand-pop's Super Tom's decimated by caterpillars... holes in many of the fruit that were looking so promising.  While I have been very tolerant up to this point, rarely spraying / using anything... this meant war!  Dipel has now been deployed all over my poor suffering tomatoes.

We picked about a dozen strawberries - small ones from the hydroponics and big fat ones from the self watering pot!

In the mean time Chris blower vac'd the back patio and cleaned up all the mess from all the deliveries and projects... it is really starting to take shape out there now!

Still on my to do list is a truck load of planting; digging the bramble berries into the ground before the summer heat; potting up the grape, fig, bay leaf and mango; concreting in the pavers for the new mint beds, expanding the front garden beds and planting out some of our potted plants.

Happy Gardening!

Sarah *hugs*

So much to do, so little time!

Excuse the mess but everything arrived all at once so I am having to build things and clean things and dig things all at the same time... really not sure how this happened hehe... So yesterday I built the two arches which will go either side of a 2/3 barrel with a Grapevine in in front of the wall you can see... after I pull all the old veges out of the garden bed.

 The full barrels are being scrubbed out and then used to collect rain water for the Aquaponics which we are currently building (along with everything else!).

Chris upgraded his phone so I claimed his old one... which happens to have a panorama function on the camera... so I played with it while working on my hydroponics.  Far left is my ole curry leaf tree which will be going in the ground soon.  On the shelves are two grow beds... the top are tomatoes - Grand-pops Super Toms;  below prolific watercress... which drives my dogs wild lol.  Then 2.5meter lengths of NFT hydroponics... looking quite healthy - I have just cut back the rocket and some other plants and will be pulling them out and replacing as soon as I get two minutes.  Beyond... you can see the shelf supports which got affixed to the limestone wall after this picture (Thanks Chris!) and a multitude of pipes that need holes drilling into them!

 As you can see the rhubarb is growing really well... along with some winter grass?!?  I am rather unsure how I have come to have winter grass in the top level of my system lol.  These are less than six months old and already the stems are thicker than my thumbs!

Strawberries up the top are now quite productive!  Their flavour has also improved with the warmer weather... that green mat below is oregano!  It is so prolific that I pick some daily and it looks like it hasn't been touched!

My superstar performers are still going strong even after all the green caterpillars!  Rainbow Chard... such an all rounder... soups, salads, stir fries and steamed greens!  Once the Aquaponics is up and running I will definitely be planting a whole lot more.

 The chives don't look spectacular however they have been harvested a lot for salads... The Kale is looking quite tragic!  It has been munched on by a million caterpillars and I have a feeling it is because it is at the bottom so has less sunlight and any thing that falls from above lands here.  I am picking off caterpillars daily so fingers crossed we will see improvement soon.







 Well T cut down some barrels to give me some big pots for my trees... so I put the tops to good use today.... a worm farm!  The hardest part was getting one barrel top to go into the other!

Not a bad effort even if I do say so myself!  The top has been perfectly drilled by B to allow air into the worms... we will put it in the shady side of the house.

Ok that is about it from me tonight *hugs* Happy Gardening!
Sarah x

Hydroponics Strawberries and Rhubarb!

After cutting back the self seeding rocket I was able to get some pictures of the sumptuous 

 The Rhubarb is looking healthier than my 2 year old Rhubarb in the ground and this has been in less than 6 months!  Some of the stalks are looking good enough to eat!  The oregano is so prolific you can barely see the pipe in places!

Grand Pop's Tomatoes... well lots of the leaves have browned and gone crunchy but lots more are growing.  LOTS of fruit are coming in and so far so good... NO blossom end rot! :-D

That's it from the hydroponics side of things for today as the rest of the garden is in need of attention!

Happy Gardening *hugs*

Sarah

Rocketing Rocket!

Well on the 29th of July I planted a heap of seeds including Rocket... and today they are UP!?!  Lets hope that the Broccoli - Italian Sprouting; Mesclun; Turnip - Early Purple; Cabbage - Sugar Loaf; Cauliflower All Year and Leeks, Lyon Prizetaker aren't far behind!

Yesterday I planted Harlequin Carrots, Diggers Heirloom Carrot mix, Diggers 3 colour purple carrots, Baby Pak Carrots, Black Sapotes, Tomato Tigerella, Ginger, Turmeric, Chioggia Beetroot and Baby Beets.  Yesterday my first Stevia seed germinated so fingers crossed it survives AND my new Grape has burst into life with a tiny leaf!  By golly I think spring might be early!  My Mulberry has sprung also!

Today I transplanted and separated the strawberries into planters.  I found some very ripe Cape Gooseberries under the bush so squeezed out the seeds and popped them into a seed tray.  I am trying out some Cucumber seeds that are way out of date - Diggers Sweet and Striped and Lebanese Mini Munchers.  I over planted both of these as I doubt they will come up as they are over 3 years out of date.  Many of what I am planting are out of date but I figure if I don't plant them there is zero chance of germination... we might get one or two.  Finally before coming in I sowed some Gourmet Basil mix since the basil in the hydroponics is looking most unwell with the cold weather we have been having.

While we were at Jetto's Patch the boys tried some Tangelos and well they are now our FAVOURITE and they are EPIC.  So who am I to argue?  Hopefully I can get Mr T to dig a clump of Dietes out this weekend and we can pop this beauty against the fence.  This will take us to a Sub Lime, Imperial Mandarine, Dwarf Lemon and Tangelo in the citrus family in our garden.  Now we just have to get them all to hold fruit!

 As you can see the Flame Grape has sprung to life so I potted it up quick smart!

In the front bed are the Ruby Lou's that B planted... the bed behind are my Delawares... they just don't have the same oomph! I should have had Mr Green Thumbs plant both of them lol.

 The planters at the front have strawberries in which will hopefully up our production. The beds behind you can see my small Delawares finally poking their heads skyward and the bed of fingers crossed - out of date seeds.  Tatsoi, Mustard Mizuna, Mustard Giant Red, Pak Choy, Lettuce Yellow Leaf, Kale Tuscan Black and Red Spring Onions.  If any of them come up I will be happy, if not I will plant the bed out with more Beetroot and radish seeds.

 In the cups topped by bottles are my tigerella seeds, I am so excited to get these planted.  Reading my Diggers book they pack a punch in the taste steaks and one plant can produce 20kg of fruit!  So lets hope with our early start we can get some decent tomatoes and maybe even have enough to make Tomato Kasundi!

The Dwarf Pomegranate has put on new growth so I think it might be happy living under my kitchen window.

 I moved a shelving unit to the hydroponics corner to lift the Tomatoes skyward to hopefully help with their growth and fruit set (yes we might have to wait for warmer weather for fruit set but I can dream!).  The watercress got hammered by two boys and two dogs and it's still filling the box!  I don't think it will suffer having shade from the above shelf as Watercress likes creek and stream beds that are generally shaded by overhanging trees.  If it isn't happy I am sure it will tell me by walking lol.  If you have grown Watercress you know what I mean!!

As you can see growth is still happening in the hydroponics two of the rockets have gone to seed, the basil is looking the worse for wear!  The oregano, parsley and thyme are going great.  The self seeded cos lettuce and rainbow chard are complete superstars too.  We are harvesting daily not that you would know!  The strawberries are full of fruit and the rhubarb is none to sure what it is doing so I will keep you posted!  The very best thing about the hydroponics is working out the back and looking down to the corner only to spy boys and dogs standing pulling leaves off plants and filling their mouths!  You cannot get any fresher than that!  I cannot wait to expand to the rest of the fence.  Now I have seen how successful this is I am looking forward to implementing an aquaponics set up on the other 12 meters.  It will only have 4 levels however that will give us around 250 planting holes!  This will cover us for all our stir fry greens, rainbow chard and salad greens with room for growing!

Pop's Super Toms (Tomatoes) are flowering profusely.  They are not growing tall at the moment but they are very sturdy!

Even through the cooler weather we have been harvesting.  Lunchtime yesterday Radishes to go with salad and Lemongrass for a cup of tea!

Any my purple beans have decided it is NOT winter!  They are giving me beans?!?  Who am I to argue!

 In our quest for long carrots we are trying foam boxes.  We will see what happens.

Ok that's my update for today.. thanks for stopping by!

*hugs*

Sarah