A Double Domestic Rainbow (or triple?)

Things are beginning to become a little brown here on the balcony garden, with a few extra shades of new-growth green. However, before the changeover there was plenty of colour both inside and out. Portulaca and Snapdragons brought rainbows to the garden.

There were also rainbows in the kitchen thanks to my incessant need to bake. Three attempts at baking rainbow cupcakes made two misses and a hit (both botched batches tasted good but didn't present well, the first was simply a spreading issue with the lack of a muffin tray, the second was a poorly performing patty pan problem which saw the mixture bubble and boilover.) The third batch came out better - and all three looked great inside.

These weren't the only colourful things I've been eating - check out the dragonfruit I treated myself to the other evening. Delicious! And such pretty, vibrant colours.

But wait, there's more! The rainbow cupcakes were made for a friend's 30th birthday. He only got the third and proper looking batch (they went down a treat amongst the guests, and everyone wanted the recipe, which can be found via the earlier link) However my lovely Dr No doesn't just get cupcakes, he was in need of a Prue-made apron, and that's just what he got. Indeed it was the first thing I made on my brand new sewing machine. I'm still getting the hang of sewing, but this turned out really well. One side had rainbow pockets on a black background (Dr No is a rainbow kinda guy) and the other side was a vintage Australiana fabric with a single wide pocket.

A double rainbow can brighten a day, but how about this triple rainbow of domestic smileness.

Harvest Monday (a.k.a. Harvest Porn for those in the Northern Hemisphere)

Not only do I keep forgetting to blog (I blame the fact my thesis came back, and yet I passed, I'm almost a Dr now!) but I keep forgetting to take picturess of all the harvessa but here are the bits I did remember. There have been more tomatoes, cucumbers and a barrage of apples (ok there were about 7 apples, but that's a barrage if ever I saw one) And this is a picture of but one ...

Tomatoes galore, though I've culled the broken down vines now (the usual wilt attacked them again) The black russian tomatoes were my absolute favourites. Here is some gratuitious tomato porn for those in the snowy, cold Northern Hemisphere. See, tomato bottom!

Three of the four of these delightful tomatoes were shared with the boyfriend in our dinner. In summer, dinner for me is usually a salad plate, and I just nibble away at it. The cucumber and tomatoes came in very handy for this task.

On Australia Day (26th of Jan, a very difficult day to reconcile in Australia's past) I used up a significant portion of the basil and garlic to make a pesto pasta salad. The cucumbers and tomatoes went in too, and it was a big hit at our picnic, along with my lemon curd and kiwi fruit pavlova.

Back to the harvest ... and there is a constrant stream of chillis.

The only miss was the corn. I got a few cobs fromt he first lot, which were delicious and shared with my parents on Christmas Eve. None of the second lot pollinated properly and this was the only cob I salvaged. Isn't it the saddest looking cob of corn you have ever seen?

I culled a significant postion of the summer plant from the balcony garden yesterday, no more cucumbers, only one tomato so harvest will be down for a while. But in their place are some broccoli seedlings and some kale, so harvests shouldn't be too far away.

For more harvest funtimes head on over the Daphne's Dandelions.

Harvest Monday (on a Tuesday)

I'm a day late on my harvest Monday post, but given the harvest in here covers a few weeks I didn't think it was a problem. Before I left for my trip I was harvesting a fair amount of produce, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchinis, corn and even an apple. For a while I was eating everything with lettuce, trying to use up the cos that all ripened at once.

I'd picked up the trick in vietnamese restaurants of eating spring rolls wrapped in mint and lettuce. I did that at home and it was delicious. Then started wrapping just about anything in lettuce and mint!

Even sausages.

Greek salads were a hit for using up the tomatoes and the cucumber. I also just ate them as is!

There were yellow zukes as well as cukes.

The apple - this was the first one - was lovely. Not quite ripe, not quite properly flavoured but darn it, it was the first apple I;ve ever grown so I thought it was great. I've eaten a few more since I got back and tastes/textures have varied wildly.

Then there was the amazing harvest from my birth dad's garden - delicious carrots, onions, beans and more. I barely had time to cook it all before I left but it was greatly appreciated.

Next Harvest Monday I promise more pics of the tomatoes, in particular the huge black russian which adorned my salad plate. Because I know that is all the northern hemisphere people want, just some lovely, juicy, ripe tomatoes ... well here's a peek ...

If you are after more harvest posts head on over to Daphne's Dandelions for the harvest Monday round up.

How to Help a(an) Hibiscus Blossom

I promised hibiscus pictures a while back, and here they all are. Although this is usually a crisp white flower, for some reason it's gone dusty pink on the balcony garden. Seriosuly, that's not just the camera making them that colour. It is even more noticable on the one flower currently blooming on it. It's only ever had one bloom before (other than when I bought it) so to see not one, but 3 at one time was amazing.

For the record hibiscus plants are not really fans of living in a pot, because they have very deep roots. Make sure the pot is deeper than it is wide, and keep it relatively well watered. The plants can deal with a fair amount of heat, even slightly direct sun, but this one was suffering with my super strong Summer Westerly sun so it was moved a bit further back into semi shade. Lots of food and water and voila, you get at least some flowers.

There is so much more flowering, fruiting and feeding me in this garden, stay tuned for more posts on these lovelies.

But, in the meantime, if you want to read about lego cakes, Brisvegas and substituting alcohol with fairy bread head on over to my other blog.

Silence is Golden

Silence is golden. As golden as a nectarine's insides? Actually probably not, because silence at the moment is kind of painful given I have an ear infection in both ears and the only thing I can really hear is ringing. Things went a bit silent here in blogland again too - that's because I was off on my long-awaited driving holiday with my cousin. I'm going to post a few floral highlights here of our journey from Brisbane to Melbourne with the help of Betty Reg (our gender-confused Ford Fiesta) but most of the recap will be on my other blog, A Teetoal 2012, which highlights my year without alcohol. You will be able to enjoy reading about the good bits:

Katoomba's 1970s charm
The Jenolan Caves
Some great, little town accomodations (and hallucinations/reality of the nicest hotel owner ever)
Fish and Chips on a Beach
The Portrait Gallery of Canberra
Seeing friends while on the Road
Minigolf as a panacea

and the less good bits:

The fog that ate Katoomba and the Three Sisters
Male backpackers and the urge to be less than gentlemanly
Sinus/Ear/Chest infections that start on the first day of your trip and only get worse!

Indeed it is this last 'not good bit' that pretty much marred the whole trip and might keep me from promptly posting everything about the adventure. It is also why things are still a bit silent for me, the whole world is muffled! I'm very used to ear infections, having suffered them all my life, but this one is a doozy. Suffice to say I have learned the hard way that it is probably better to go to a dr while away, no matter what the hassle, than to wait a week until you get home and realise the ear infection has gone from annoying and singularly located, to severe and in both ears!

On this Balcony Garden blog I've also got plenty of posts planned as the garden has been just lovely in summer. Apples have been eaten, tomatoes have ripened and although the corn has not gone as planned it looks super pretty. It responded well to Mr M's balcony sitting. So stay tuned.

Pandora's Box

We used to think there were pretty predictable combinations of skin/flesh color in tomatoes, and that with a few exceptions the epidermis color (yellow vs clear) was simply a subtle tinting of the window through which one viewed flesh color.  Over the last couple of years, and this year especially, we’ve found a number of surprises when we sliced into a new variety or breeding line.  When you open Pandora’s Box – be prepared for something unexpected …. and delightful. 

Aft skin peel

An obvious exception to the conventional skin color/flesh color rules are the new tomato lines with anthocyanin accumulation in the fruit - Aft (see the blog on this site “Breeding the Blue Tomato).  In the presence of light the anthocyanin pigment accumulates in and just below the fruit epidermis.  This trait has now been introgressed into a number of genetic backgrounds with red, pink, purple, brown, and bicolor fleshed types.  I haven’t seen an Aft GWR fruit yet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, or that it won’t pop out in someone’s breeding line in 2012.  It’s on our priority list.  Thanks again to Professor Jim Meyers and his grad students at OSU for developing the background Aft/atv germplasm.  They have just released a new Aft variety “Indigo Rose” that you might want to check out, it’s available from several seed sellers.

Red pigment beneath epidermis

There are other examples of the accumulation of a contrasting pigment just beneath the epidermis.  In a large fruited cherry line now breeding true for this trait (suggesting it is likely recessive), there is a thin layer of bright red pigmentation just beneath the yellow epidermis.  The result is a dark orange fruit that when sliced shows the red layer overlying yellow flesh.  It’s an interesting look in a very tasty line now with multiple F4 sisters, with and without the green stripe (gs) trait.

This phenomenon is even more striking on a new F1 plant (from a three way cross) we found this year.  This odd looking tomato has a relatively drab dark yellowish brown appearance on the outside, caused by another underlying layer of pigment which in this case, shields a brilliant light green flesh.  We are anxiously awaiting the F2 generation next year.  The working name for this striped beauty is Pandora’s Box, but there’s a lot of work ahead to stabilize this unique phenotype …. more on this later.

Pandora's Box

inside Pandora's Box

This year we grew Millard Murdoch’s Captain Lucky, a stable line with purple skin and GWR bicolor flesh, and several plants of Bill Jeffer’s segregating F3 “Wild Thyme” which also had interesting combinations of skin color and flesh color (mostly bicolor types).  These were both a little late for this season and this latitude – but even late in the season these both tasted pretty darned good.  We are crossing plants of both to some earlier breeding lines.

Wild Thyme F3

We’ve long had a fondness for bicolor/tricolor types, and now have several breeding lines with striking bi/tri color combinations and veins of color (mostly red) sometimes bleeding out to just below the epidermis, and significantly affecting coloration of the fruit surface.  In our lines this tendency is combined with gs and/or fruit stripe (Fs) making the fruit color combinations quite amazing.  Brad Gate’s Berkeley Tie Dye and Beauty Queen were inspirations for this effort, and for our breeding work generally. 

Striped bicolor

My friend Carolyn Male reminded me that the opening of the mythical Pandora’s Box unleashed evil surprises into the world.  In the case of these breeding lines, and this phenomenon generally in tomatoes, we like the “box full of surprises” metaphor, but with the surprises being a source of delight that continues to undermine the red and round, firm but tasteless super-market tomato model, and giving rise to an exciting opportunity for artisan tomato breeders, growers and sellers.  Happy New Year.

A January 15 update:  thanks to the real-time feedback made possible by the web - Julien posts as a comment, a photo of a GWR Aft tomato.  It looks like the photo link ties to Tom Wagner's blogspot, so I am assuming it is a segregent from one of his Aft lines.  I apologize I cannot give proper attribution to the photo.

Other Balcony Blooms

My last post extolled the virtues of the hardy portulaca - a colourful, forever-flowering little number. But what else is blooming in the garden these days? I keep missing Garden Blogger's Blooms Day each 15th, so I figured I'd just give you all a rundown of some of the blooms on the balcony over the last few months. There are three categories - general flowers, fruit flowers and veggie flowers (ok half the veggies are fruits but I'll keep them seperate.)

Fruits include the lime tree which flowers constantly, but has no fully-formed fruit yet.

And the lemon, apples, nectarine and currants all produced interesting blossoms this year.

What about veggies? Cucumbers, tomatoes, pumpkins and zucchinis all flower, though only three of the four bear any fruit (pumpkins were a loss this year)

Other Flowers?

My hardy red geranium which has been around for years in its tiny pot keeps on trucking

There are also many different coloured snapdragons

Marigolds are both beautiful and useful in the pest-remover category.

The new, lovely, fuschia

So there seems to be a lot blooming in the garden. Even the hibiscus is getting into the swing of things - I'll post a pic once it finally opens its petals.