Harvests amongst the Term-time Tumbleweeds

You can tell when term time begins here because the tumble weeds come back into vogue on this blog. Teaching seven tutorials in two different subjects at two different universities, with additional head tutor responsibilities, coupled with research assistant work, thesis corrections, three ear aches this year already and a new penchant for sewing meant this blog has been a little neglected of late. That's not to say I didn't think of it, I simply had little energy and time to write anything of use.

And I even missed gaining my 100th follower (hi there 100th follower!!!) Not that there have been many posts to follow. But to make up for it here are a few harvests of late, from the balcony garden:

Ok, so that's the only kind of harvest pic I have and it is not even from my own garden but from my cousin's country patch! Oooopssss. I've been eating lettuce by the bucketload, and using herbs, but do you think I could remember to photograph them on their own? Oooops. Though they do crop up in some later photos. However, here are some delicious market finds, tomatoes, delicious, gourmet, and good for the tummy.

Strawberries, $10 for 15 punnets, only two fuzzy ones in the lot!

Some food made from garden harvests and the above-mentioned market finds, from salads, to jam, to smoothies and apple and fig crumble cupcakes. If you look hard enough you can see some lettuce from the garden, and some basil on the pasta sauce. They're from my harvest! Yay.

Take some strawberries, goodness knows there are plenty left over in 15 punnets ... and some frozen yoghurt cubes, frozen mango and banana, milk, water, vanilla extract and you get smoothie heaven.

I even have some before and after shots, tomatoes before drying ...

Tomatoes after drying (and after most of them went in the pasta which was pictured earlier.) Note that I used the garlic and basil from the garden to add flavour to these while they dried.

And a curren(ish) picture of the Autumn balcony garden.

Hope that makes up for my prolonged absence. Time to start doing the question answering posts next, taking pictures of the harvest, and showing you my really inept sewing efforts.

In other fruit news

The balcony garden isn't just a haven of pampered fruit trees - there are a couple of smaller additions to the sweet goodies. Red currents and strawberries are the other candidates for delicious fruit salad additions. The red current was mostly eaten by snails this year, but a few goodies still got through.

I'm planning on passing the strawberries on to a friend, they're not happy in the pots and would thrive if given proper space and care. No pics of them either, given they haven't fruited in ages!

Tomatoes are also a fruit - but that's a whole other post!

Harvest Monday

I am so so so close to getting the first full draft of the thesis done, but yet so far from the end goal. In the meantime here is what I have been harvesting of late ...

There have been cucumbers, plenty of cucumbers, enough that I have to eat them every day to keep up, but here is just one. I am going to post soon about the world's funniest cucumber which is shaped like a piggies tail but for now it is normal cucumbers.

The seeds were a little big, maybe I left it on there too long, but it is hard to keep up with them. Tasty in a salad.

That was my lunch, these little red lovelies went in something else,

my breakfast!

I have been going through a phase of eating fruit salad in the morning, usually blueberries and rockmelon with whatever else is affordable at the markets. It was lovely to be able to supplement it with my own home grown strawberries.

In the garden harvest there were eggplants and beans, both of which made it into curries.

I am planning on trying salt and pepper eggplant with some of the rest. I have been harvesting chillis to give to friends, basil leaves for lasagnes and silverbeet as needed. Even in this strange weather it seems to be putting out some good food. With more eggplants, the crazy corn possibly beginning to come good and the figs turning colours it might be an interesting harvest next week. For more harvests from around the world pop on over to Daphne's Dandelions.

Harvest Monday: Red for Hallmark Day

Another Harvest Monday rolls around way too quickly. And in keeping with my least favourite day of the year - Hallmark Day - the produce was lovey dovey red. More berries this week and more chillis than I knew what to do with. At the moment they are in the freezer waiting to jump into a nice hot chilli con carne when the weather seems appropriate.

All that red was all right, I suppose but the the piece de resistance this week had to be the fig. My first fig. Mr Fig twig was generous enough to give me an early sample and he didn't disappoint. Into a sandwich it went, with proscuitto and lettuce. Totally delicious.

This coming week there will be another eggplant harvest and maybe even a cucumber. I only planted them a little under a month ago but they are already fruiting!!!

How was your harvest this week? For more yummy stuff from the ground see Daphne's Dandelions harvest monday round up.

A Berry Little Harvest Monday

Bit of a smaller harvest this week, with only a few staples left in the sun scorched garden. Beautiful berries of the strawberry kind went into my breakfast this morning. There were both wild versions of this little red wonder and some Hokowase strawberries. Usually I just snack on them as I garden but this time there were enough to go in my breakfast fruit salad.

Silverbeet is continual, even though I cut it to the ground just a month ago! It goes in many dishes and adds extra nutrients.

Eggplants, well I showed you them the other day and here they are harvested. These went into a wonderful little pasta dish.

Speaking of pasta, the last of the pumpkins I harvested a while ago was used up in a delicious pesto pasta dish.

And that is pretty much it for the moment. If you want to see other harvests pop on over to Daphne's Dandelions. I looks forward to harvesting chillies this week and int he future some figs and some more eggplants. The corn, the new corn that is, is a fair way off but I will post about that little experiment soon.

And on slightly different matters, if you can solve my friend's mutant tomato dilemma I posted about yesterday please, please, please add your advice. :)

Harvest Monday Extravaganza

I finally found my camera cord and uploaded the goodies so here is a parade of recent harvests and this week's harvest. It even has some golden globes! These harvests date back to just before Christmas, even so this little balcony garden has produced a lot.

Here was the pre-Christmas harvest and it saw the last of the snow peas. I actually picked a lot more tomatoes than that, several punnets worth, all from 2 little tumbler bushes. They died once I got back from Adelaide, as happens each year from some disease, but not before producing one large crop. I will certainly keep growing these.

And the New Years harvest which was massive (a.k.a. bye bye tomatoes) Most of this went into various salad dishes for a little new years eve shindig I had at my place. It was 42 degrees that day, so salads were all we needed. I was just glad that the garden survived my 10 days away, but with the wonderful garden sitter I have it was no wonder it was bursting with goodies when I returned.

And the most recent harvest which included 3 pumpkins, who were too infested with white fly to reach complete maturation. If only I could find more seedlings I could do a second crop :( I also thought I planted leeks, to my utter surprise turns out they were white onions!.

If you would like to see more harvests from around the world head on over to Daphne's Dandelions. A lot of these plants got ripped out of the garden yesterday in a big white fly control clean up, so harvests may be a little lean for the next few weeks, but we will see.