The garden has done really well considering how late I got all the vegetables in.
The tomatoes have really come out this year – I estimate I’ve picked about 8-10kg total so far, and there must be at least another 2kg still ripening 0n the vine.
Tomato glut
Tomato glut 2
We’ve had so many over the last few weeks. It has been lovely being able to pick them fresh for lunch and dinner each day, and still we have so many left over I’ve been able to start preserving them to eat later in the year.
Some of the tomatoes
Laying the tomatoes out to dry
Drying the tomatoes
Sundried tomatoes
Not technically sun dried – I used a friend’s dehydrator – but just as delicious!
We’ve also had beans and corn, though not nearly as much as I would have liked!
Corn harvest
Corn and beans for dinner
Tomatoes and beans
The sunflowers have finished blooming and are the heads are drying out so we can collect their seeds.
Drying out sunflower heads
Sunflower seeds
The new raised bed and the new herb bed are coming along nicely.
The raised bed is finally thriving
New herb bed seedlings (and don't the chickens look great in the background!)
And I’ve got the winter harvest seedlings under way.
Winter seedlings (and an avocado that started growing in the compost, not that I'm expecting it to survive the winter in this climate!)
We have two laying chickens now – Henrietta and Adelaide – and are getting about three eggs every two days from the pair of them.
First eggs meal!
I’ve also been doing a bit of wild foraging with two very good friends. We’ve been blackberrying twice – I would never have believed how much better freshly picked blackberries taste. Blackberries are a terribly invasive weed here and the free and tasty fruit is the only redeeming feature. I used some of them to make a blackberry sauce.
Boiling up wild blackberry sauce
It was very, very good over ice cream!
Blackberry Sauce + chocolate icecream = black forest goodness
So all in all it’s been a rather delicious, though busy, few weeks. We’ve also been busy building a (hopefully reasonably soundproof) rooster box for the chickens to sleep in – Red is right on the verge of crowing, so we are rushing to get it done before he annoys the neighbours. Pictures to follow when I get my act together and remember to photograph it.
suburbanite farm 