Getting a little bit foodie

This week marks a milestone in the Huddart kitchen with the first conversion of backyard grown produce to storable food. The fact the produce was not actually grown in my backyard detracts only slightly as they were home-grown by lovely friends and neighbours.

First up, on Wednesday night we ate Surrey Hills beans & tomatoes with Drysdale parsley (from my backyard) in a salad:

Then, for tonight's dinner it was Drysdale tomatoes & cucumber:

During the day today there was conversion of Drysdale tomatoes & green apples to chutney:

 

Drysdale green apples to pie:

 

 

And finally, Drysdale eggs & zucchini to chocolate cake:

 

 



The only question is, why am I going to so much trouble to grow my own produce? and what will these lovely people do with their surplus next year?

Summer pruning

The high temperatures of the past few weeks, plus unwell children having to stay home from kinder/school and interrupting my gardening time (humf), have meant the new year has mostly stayed at the planning stage.

We did, however, get out into the orchard last Friday afternoon to Summer prune the fruit trees. Although Winter is a traditional time for fruit tree pruning and the time I will deal with the espaliered apples and pears, I read (imagine!) that pruning the stone fruit in Summer is recommended as the sap is flowing well and will heal the cuts more quickly thereby reducing the likelihood of disease getting in. The potential downside is that it is harder to see what you are doing with all the leaves still there but with my little trees only 6 months in the ground this was not going to be a problem. So with the guidance of my orchard/watering consultant (aka Dad/Poppa) we managed to fill the wheelbarrow with a suprising number of prunings in a suprisingly short time as we engineered/facilitated the beginnings of a vase shape for each tree.

 

Who knows whether we pruned off all of next year's fruit bearing branches but I am trying not to care because at this stage the priority has to be creating a good branch framework. Talk about a good lesson in delayed gratification!

A new year begins

We imposed on ourselves a bit of a January holiday from backyard work to make sure we enjoyed the Summer, our various visitors and the proximity of the beach. We managed this pretty successfully. A front fence was constructed in this time but being in the front, perhaps it doesn't count as backyard work! We also kept up weeding and watering...and weeding and watering...and watering....and weeding...and some more watering. Oh...need to water again...

But now the kids are back in kinder/school and the designing, digging, planning & planting begins anew. Look out!