Jan 26th - traditionally our tomato canning day

And we're ahead of ourselves, because we did all the prep yesterday. It's lovely and cool today, and the sky is very grey -

but the vegetable garden is pretty.

This little patchwill be cleared out today and fed and rested for heritage garlic to go in in a couple of weeks.

Oh! Look what came out of it - all those heritage carrots I'd forgotten about

- orange, white and red. I've been feeding the tops to the chooks, and the bottoms had grown on anyway. Must remember next week to sow some of the seeds in the bee-feeding area near the apple trees, as well - I can keep the greens and seedheads for cooking, as well as for the chooks.

Change of seasons

Jonathon dropped by yesterday and agreed that now is a good time to start prepping part of the kitchen garden for a change of seasons. So I'm going to clear another couple of beds out, condition them a bit and then mulch them with straw from the chicken coop to see them through the predicted heatwaves. After that, when the weather has turned, they can take cauliflower, broccoli and maybe some late parsnip.

The too-early tomatoes are coming on well, though not as well as they would have if I'd held off a few weeks. Early ones are coming in now, though - all heritage, and very pretty.

Must remember next year to wait till November - and to prop, tie and prune more effectively. Also, once this lot are finished, must use all the compost on the tomato bed, and mulch and let lie. 

Today is also strawberry day - got to remove the netting, weed, and replace the netting, but properly this time. Also prep that bed for the heritage carrot seeds I'm expecting today - though they can't go in till the heat has passed. 

Also, write.

Note to self: the eastern side of the kitchen garden is getting all the morning sun at the moment - the western side is very damp and only gets sun from 11:00 onwards

Garlic

Managed to save some of Jonathon's garlic - no thanks to Bruce and Paul! -

and I've ordered a whole array of heritage varieties from Diggers as well. It's still too early to plant (heatwave predicted next week, though it's been cool enough the last couple of days for jumpers) but I'm prepping one of the beds in advance - digging well, adding what's needed - organic, of course - and making labels.

While at Diggers, of course, I ordered a whole bunch of other stuff, especially heritage varieties of carrots. Ralph Long says I can plant carrots now, so I'm going to get a lot more in - they are delicious, especially the purple dragons. Also going to plant a couple in pots for seed-saving purposes. Now that I've thoroughly tested the kitchen garden (well - since we arrived in June, anyway) I'm going to try to be a little more orderly in what goes where. But only a little - I rather like the mixed up look, and I think it deters bugs and stuff.

We'll see how that goes.

Apples and oranges

and paris market carrots and purple dragon carrots and cylindrica baby beets and gourmet delight bush beans and zucchini and mixed heritage radishes and there are jaune flamee tomatoes as well in there somewhere and - oh yes - eggs. And a long green chili. No pattypan squash today, but there will be strawberries later, I think because I'm hoping to re-do the netting a little bit later (if the rain holds off). At the moment, the netting is so cumbersome that I need to send a neighbour-child in under it - and then pay him in strawberries, which is fair but unphotographed.

The oranges surprise me - they've been hanging around since winter, and the tree is flush with new growth, but these are still as sweet as anything (though hard to pick without climbing.)  The apples from the hen's run are gorgeous - but we didn't net them. We will next year. The others from the ballerinas are not quite ripe - we only netted half a dozen of those just to see if they're worth the trouble.

A possum pulled the netted nectarines down. Clearly we need to think this through.

Made up a couple of dozen pitticelle and *gasp* froze them - but we've already tried it with latkes, and we know that if you blast them (frozen) at 240 degrees fan-forced for ten-fifteen minutes, they crisp up very, very well.

The next lot will go into the dehydrator for soup mix.  :)

The radish situation is getting a little out of hand...

but it's nothing we can't cope with.

I cleaned out some of the kitchen-garden beds today and put in some chioggio and cylindrical beets, some massey peas, some silverbeet, and some paris market and purple dragon carrots. I need much less kale, as it turns out - and the cabbage is probably more trouble than it's worth when all's said and done.

The broad beans are an absolute knockout peeled, blanched in salted water, skinned and put in a jar with oil and garlic cloves for a couple of days

Good morning!

Monday is (amongst other things) Water The Roses and Strawberries Day. As the summer comes on, I'll do that in the mornings, but while the tradies are working out there, leave it till after they've gone.

This is what the working part of the garden looks like right now. We have spinach, chard, kale, lettuce, beetroot, peas, early climbing beans, cabbage, cauliflower, potatoes (Jonathons - self-sown: I know it's too early!!! ) broccoli, broccolini, radishes, chillis, sweet chillis, garlic, (Jonathon put it in for us during the settlement phase and it's just about ready for harvest) carrots, pak choy, and the fruit trees - three apples, a prolific orange, a lemon that Jonathon's mother-in-law brought in Forbes. Oh, and the strawberries. And four kinds of thornless berries along the fence and two olive trees. And a nectarine.

And the chickens of course.

Except for Jonathon's work (the layout, the fruit and berries, the garlic, the soil, the compost - god, but we're lucky!) all this is in the very early stages - at the moment we're taking in oranges and leafy greens and that's all. (And the herbs from the herb pots - photos of herbs later.)

Bowral Weather

CURRENT CONDITIONS IN BOWRAL, NSW
Current Temp:13.6°C	Humidity: 84%	Pressure:1021.8hPa
Feels like: 12°C	Wind Speed: 18kp/h (Gusts: 30kp/h)
Dew Point: 10.9°C	Wind Direction: N/A

Current Observations @ 9/09/2013 8:00:00 AM

FORECASTS
Monday, September 09	10°C - 22°C		Fog then sunny
Tuesday, September 10	14°C - 21°C		Windy
Wednesday, September 11	7°C - 15°C		Mostly sunny
Thursday, September 12	5°C - 14°C		Mostly sunny