Canning Day can't be far away...

Remember those Black Russian tomatoes we put in in September?   Brought these in this morning. They should go very well with Paul's bread and some cheese. It was bucketing rain yesterday and is warm and sunny today and everything is going a lit-tle bit insane in the garden. I predict weeding when the earth dries out a little. It's too wet to get out with the basket today, so I'm going to start looking for recipes. Especially zucchini recipes.

Coming on from September

Just made up a bunch of Rosetta Costantino's pitticelle di zucchini. Perfect! Simple and quick and delicious.

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

This morning's gleanings

... this evening's dinner.


 (The Rockets assure me there is another egg coming.)

Or I could do you one of these...

We only feed them when Grandmother is coming over. She rather likes them.

Put in some mixed lettuce seedlings and silverbeet today. The birds ripped the net-bags from the berries along the fence and scoffed the lot, little beasts - so I'll put up some of the netting sheets to confound them. The magpies and the neighbour-children are working their way through the strawberries out in the front. The last of the caulis and broccoli will come out tomorrow -  not sure what to put in. I have no seedlings ready. Bad management!

Paul's little mate

Isn't he sweet?

Picking raspberries, fingerling beans, strawberries, broccolini, broccoli, spinach, beetroot, potatoes, kale, cauliflower, and the first of the yellow pear tomatoes.

Cauliflowers

shouldn't be planted straight after or in the same little bed as peas. I just discovered. Because brassicas don't benefit from too much nitrogen - they go silly and have lots of leaves. So - lesson learned.

Also - those early tomatoes were way too early and are all spindly and pathetic. Were all spindly and pathetic. I bit the bullet (I'm getting tough like that) and pulled them up, added some wood ash from the fire to the soil, fed it with comfrey tea and we'll try again soon. The later, post-Melbourne-Cup ones are coming along nicely. I left them alone.

We're all out of peas for the moment (some novellas are hopefully coming up soon) the broad beans are ready to pick, the kale is glorious, as are the strawberries. Also, the chooks got out the other day and unearthed some lovely potatoes. Oh, they did have fun!

Sown 12 tomatoes: four each of Hungarian Heart, Purple Russian, Big Rainbow and ??. I also took some cuttings of the Green Zebra and planted those direct.

Netted some of the thorn berries, since it appears those rotten little mynahs are getting into them. We're awash with raspberries - picking them every morning.