Well Spring has finally come to Hobart, and it’s so nice to have some colour in the garden again. The California poppies & Aquilegias are starting to bloom, and my climbing roses are starting too. I also have lots of baby blueberries on my 3 bushes which is very promising! Also the raspberry flowers have started opening & is attracting hundreds of bees, and I can hear their cacophony of buzzing as soon as I open my back door. It’s a good time of year!
I took these photos a while ago but forgot to post them, that is until my Twitter friend Bianca reminded me! I sowed these broccoli plants in about March, they were in the ground by April & then I just kind of ignored them, that is until the last few weeks while they’ve been making broccolis! They have been fairly trouble-free, aside from picking off a few cabbage moth caterpillars when they were seedlings. Then it’s just a matter of waiting til they are big enough, then cut steam & enjoy! 
I took the plunge today & cut down my apple tree, all by myself!! It was surprisingly quick & I didn’t even get tired. I really wish I had a mulcher, even though I’d probably only use it once a year. Next job: dig up the nectarine & move it to near where the apple tree was. Still so much work to do but it’s getting there!
Having issues with WordPress’s iPhone app at the moment, but I thought I would at least show you some photos from the garden today. The broccolis are getting bigger, the peas are still peaing, and the broadbeand are getting taller. I did some weeding and planting in the main flowerbeds today (plants I recieved from Diggers and Woodbridge Nursery), I’ll post some photos of those when they emerge from dormancy. And that’s all for today
Me & a friend went to the Salamanca markets today, because we hadn’t been for ages. I really wanted to get some local fruit & veggies, and have a bratwurst. Here are a few pics of the market today, and also my delicious haul! Click to enlarge.
Today I thought I’d better pick the rest of the capsicums since it’s gotten pretty cold now & they’re not going to get any riper. So I picked 4 of those, and another handful of tomatoes that have ripened. They seem to be ripening slowly but surely. Also today I visited my friend Eryn & her 4 month old identical twins, Bella & Olivia. They were gorgeous, even if they did spew on me a bit!! Also I finally gave them their presents that I made them, two kitties from Amy Butler’s new book, Little Stitches for Little Ones. They are so easy to make, and I’ve given them to a few other children of friends too. Anyway that’s all
It was cold & gloomy today, and at lunchtime I felt like having something a bit fancy-shmancy as well as quick & easy. I have been harvesting some decent-sized tomatoes lately, so I really wanted to showcase them somehow. Bruschetta was the perfect solution.
I used a lovely sourdough from work for my bruschetta, but use any thick cut crusty loaf.
I made mine with tuna, diced tomatoes, grated cheese & oregano, but use anything: avocado, mushrooms, capers, olives, smoked salmon… The possibilities are endless. Grill or bake until bread is crispy & your ingredients are heated through. Dig in & enjoy!
It’s warm again today, completely still & a little cloudy & humid. I pulled out the last of the celery plants because they were going to seed & weren’t very nice. I forked in some coffee grounds (from my work) to replenish the soil, because I will probably be planting some broccoli seedlings there in 6 weeks time. I also dug up 4 onions to see what they looked like; I am really not sure when I am meant to dig them, I will have to do some research. In the flower garden, I made some little labels for my snapdragons saying what colours they are, because I want to save the seed & keep the colours separate. Snapdragons are so generous with their seed, one flower spike will give me enough seed for the next 5 years, and they don’t seem to lose much viability over time. Other then that, I’ve been checking out my January crops: capsicum, gem squash, apples & eggplant. I love gardening!!
Since I got my veggie patches, my cat Puss has loved this one corner of one of them in particular. This just happened to be the spot that I planted my corn seedlings at the start of summer. Both my cats love rolling in the sandy & dusty parts of the garden, and Puss discovered early on that the sandy soil we got delivered is perfect for this!! She was so determined to roll in this spot, that it became a bit of a survival-of-the-fittest issue for the little corn plants! I sowed the front part of the bed (foreground of photos) twice, only to have the seedlings flattened by Puss’s somewhat wide girth…. Most of them survived however and are now starting to put up their pollen & silk. Exciting times!!
For once we had a beauuutiful day today, so when I got home at 4pm it was still sunny enough to work in the garden. I started on picking all my spinach, because it was starting to get flower buds! I pulled out all the plants (8 of them) and picked off all the good leaves, and put the rest on the compost heap. I got a whole sink full (first photo) and then went with my boss’s suggestion of chopping it up, blanching it in boiling water & freezing it in portions. I got 3 good-sized portions basing them on how much I use for a batch of spinach pasta or gnocchi. Thanks for your suggestion Harry!!
The second photo is my bumper crop of carrots that I pulled today. I have sort of been ignoring them for the last few months, since they seemed to be taking forever to get big enough to eat. After I cleared the spinach patch, I was weeding around the carrots which were next to the spinach, and I noticed some of the tops sticking out of the soil… So I pulled some & they were huge!! I ended up pulling most of them out & gave my second neighbour a bunch too. Where the spinach used to be, I have sowed some mesclun lettuce mix, and some more carrots. Click the photos to enlarge.
|
