Thursday 2 January 2014

Garden Share Collective January Update

January ensures Summer is bursting with Sunshine Flavours

Plump pomegranates hanging with pride


Luscious eggplant (aubergine) delightfully rich.


Yellow eggplant, different in taste, but still delicious when fried or barbecued.


Wholesome capsicums, sweet and firm.
We let some turn red but they are so tasty when green ... why wait longer.


Look at these lovely shallots.  Some have developed white bulbs 
as they have been left too long in the ground. 
They do grow harmoniously with long stemmed grass.
You can pick the shallots out easily in between grass stems.
Some things just don't need as much weeding as others when you still reap results.




Beans, green beans, butter beans and snake beans.  A harmonious summer medley.

These snake beans are growing up a bamboo tripod.  
We have been picking them for two weeks now and they will continue to produce,
 including through self seeding until well into August.

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The corn patch.  Our second plot of corn since Spring,
more seeds have been planted to ensure 
there is continual corn for the warm months. 


This is my messy herb patch.  
Lemon grass grows along with thyme, marjarom, chives, parsley, basil and oregano.
Garlic chives, baby spinach, celery, lemon thyme, 
marjoram, coriander and rogue tomatoes all grow side by side.
All within 10 metres of my kitchen, so handy, overgrown and cluttered, but still a cook's delight.


The blackberry and loganberry patch is loaded with fruit.  
We picked plenty of berries mid way through December, 
but are waiting for the next bunches to ripen.


This is a very mild chilli, 1 out of 10 on the heat scale,
 but perfect for flavour when you don't want heat.
We also grow jalapenos, cayenne peppers and serrano chillies.


Our rockmelon patch is constantly producing plump, ripe and sweet rockmelons.



 Here is my red papaya, flowering with the promise of papayas to come!


This is today's first picking.  
Eggs, snake beans, cucumber, shallot, tomatoes, corn and rockmelon.





Cabbages are still plentiful,
lightly cooked in salted water for 1 minute
and served with a satay sauce.
Finely sliced for coleslaw,
or pickled for sauerkraut.
Cabbage is a vegetable we grow 
and cook with every week of the year.



These are the highlights of my January garden,
I hope you have enjoyed viewing these delights.
Buon appetito, Merryn.

10 comments:

  1. Oh yum, so many rockmelon. Your garden is looking amazing!

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    1. Thank you I love Summer (and Autumn, Winter and Spring). The rockmelons are plentiful.

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  2. Those rockmelons look amazing! Mine have just not been able to stand the heat. I am going to do a late planting of them and see how they fair up with the rains hopefully coming. Your veggie garden is super abundant :-)

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    1. Thanks Liz! We have been lucky with rain the last two months, just enough. We have also planted more rockmelon now too and we do keep the water up to them. So sweet and tasty, they presently sell for $5 in the supermarkets.

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  3. my my the garden is looking fabulous! Love those yellow eggplants, don't think I've ever seen them before!

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    1. Lisa, thank you for stopping my to view my garden. The yellow eggplants are different, a cross between an eggplant and a zucchini, their flesh is still quite firm after cooking. I don't even know where the seeds came from, possibly they are be my father-in-laws and he creates some good cross breeding.

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  4. I'm inspired! Think I will start my own fruit and vege garden. We have a seville orange cross mandarin tree in our yard. It always produced bags and bags of the fruit. Not sure if it is good for anything other than marmalade but you are welcome to them when the tree fruits.

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  5. Thanks Deb, your seville orange cross mandarin tree is unique and I would love some (come winter) :D Our citrus trees are still quite young and we haven't picked more than 12 off a tree as yet. You would love gardening, we can grow so much here for such a long period and it is so rewarding. Let me know if you need any seeds, or cuttings for herbs, we have plenty to share :D

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  6. thanks for visiting my blog - you have such a prolific garden I am quite jealous. Aren't those pomegranetes in the first photo? I guess you have not been as badly affected by the heat as others down south?

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    1. Thank you so much Africanaussie for pointing out that I had written persimmon instead of pomegranate. It has now been changed :D I appreciate you visiting my blog as well, we can only encourage and learn from each other. Out hottest day has been 32C and usually 28 - 29C is our top heat with a gentle breeze cooling the heat down.

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