dilly dalley doolittle gardening

Pumpkin harvest

We finished harvesting our pumpkins mid-April. Technically after the frosts...which according to Peter Cundall is best avoided. The vines certainly died off after two nights of killer frosts and all the pumpkins were sitting there ...just sitting. No one seemed harmed. So we took the trailer down and scooped them up.

more and....

 

Where do you want these? And what are you going to do with them all?

They will be stored in the garage, which is nestled into our sloping block and is reasonably cool throughout summer. In the past, I've managed to have pumpkins get all the way through to the end of the next summer. I've never got through a whole year. Not that it matters, by the time summer is here, the spring crops are starting to feed everyone and we're all well and truly sick of pumpkin and other winter vegies.

He's tossing them. The big bloke is laughing and the photographer and all round nervous nelly is finger wagging and telling them to 'stop, it isn't funny, I planted those...'.

He did point out that he thought we had enough and if the teenager dropped one...well, damn hey. This one is waiting at the front door to be made into soup. Shssh. Don't tell him. He thinks he's being a still life with succulents.

 

Previous posts

Pumpkin bed - late Summer (April 2012)

Pumpkin bed - mid Summer (Jan 2012)

Before the 12 months is over (March 2009)

Pumpkin bed - update late Summer (Feb 2008)

Pumpkin bed - early summer (Dec 2007)

Pumpkin harvest (June 2007)

Check for frosts (April 2007)

Stumbling on melons (February 2007)

Processing tomatoes

In previous posts about growing tomatoes, I promised that I'd try and get around to showing you what we do with our bumper crop. As you know, I plant around 30 tomato plants. At this stage, in Canberra, the tomato season is done and done. The last of our crop was pretty much knocked over by the frost a couple of weeks ago.  These photos were taken early April, which was probably the last of our tomato processing for the 2011-2012 cycle. I received this tomato processor for my April birthday (perhaps around 2007?) and it was purchased at Butts n Brew in Kaleen. They have great supplies for anyone interested in home preserving, making beer or killing yourself slowly with butts (not recommended ... far better to stick with the organic tomatoes!).

Anyway, to show you what we do many times during the summer cropping season -

First, we put the tomatoes in a big pan and heat them to just below boiling. We grew a lot of cherry tomatoes this year (more by accident than design).

We attach the Italian tomato processor to the kitchen table with some bits of wood to protect the table because it does require that the device is clamped to the table. We then set up a large bowl below the device to collect the tomato puree.

 

The warmed and softened tomatoes are put in the top part of processor, in the big stainless steel bowl.

Tim then turns the handle which drives a big screw inside the device. This manages to separate the peels and seeds from the lovely tomato puree.

So tomato seeds and tomato peel are pushed out into a waste bowl. Note the steam rising from the black bowl holding the puree.

Here's the top of the processor, where the whole softened tomatoes sit. You can just get a glimpse of the screw (looks yellowish)

Tim uses a large spoon to push the tomatoes through the hole, as he turns the handle.

Seen below is one of the reasons we like cherry tomatoes. They fit very nicely down the hole and are easily squashed by the screw. Larger tomatoes sometimes need to be cut to encourage them to squeeze through the hole.

As the tomato is pushed through by the screw, there is a fine metal mesh that allows the puree and the juice to pass through but doesn't allow the seeds or skins to pass through.

When the tomato puree is all collected, we then put it back on the stove and boil it for some unspecified but 'just feels right' amount of time. This helps concentrate the puree. We don't bother putting any spices or flavourings in and we don't bother about boiling it down to a thick consistency. We just take off some of the excess moisture to concentrate the tomato puree into a 'passata like' consistency.

Seen in the cupboard is the last of our unfilled vacolas (8 of them). This processing we did in early April pretty much filled these bottles so that was enough for us this year. I didn't count but it was about the same as last year. If you don't already do this, and you'd like to try...it really is simple and rewarding.

Duck eggs

Yesterday when I went out to collect the eggs I found two unusual eggs. One rather large duck egg and one without a shell. See the warmly coloured brownish egg below? It is only a membrane, no egg shell. I suspect it may be from our banner duck - Mummy duck. She is very long-lived and has successfully raised many flocks for us. I've told her story a few times on this blog. She acquired a limp a few years back. In fact, it was touch and go there for awhile and the kids wanted me to take her to the vet. I held off, hoping she would just heal, which she did, but now she limps.  She's always had a special place in my heart but I was a bit worried to see an egg without a shell. Ah, ageing. It comes to all of us. Unless of course, it is caused by the other end of the spectrum - young duck, not quite managing to make the shell before finishing the laying process. Not sure I have any answers here. I haven't found many eggs without shells in my years of duck herding. The membrane is reasonably strong.

 Check out the size of the other special egg, though! Mandarin added for context.

I was curious to see just how big it really was....130g. If you aren't convinced that duck eggs are better than hen eggs, take a look at that!

The egg without a shell is pretty big as well - 80g without a shell.

And here's the modestly sized duck egg - 75g. They are impressive my girls. I now have 6 ducks in the backyard. We used to keep 4 ducks (3 ladies and a drake) and 2 hens. When our hens passed on we let the duck flock grow to what will be a maximum for a suburban garden - 6 ducks. Our neighbours must be saints, or else the way our land falls (we are on a slightly sloping block) means that no one's bedroom is close to these noisy creatures. They are not like hens, who like to go to bed at night, these girls can be up at all hours wandering around chatting, arguing, disputing, bossing and generally partying. Ask me how I know? (I know that's meant to be a rhetorical question..hah) but I've had some trouble sleeping lately and have been up at all hours and boy do they carry on. Anyway, in the 10 years we've lived here and kept ducks, our neighbours have never complained. I am grateful, as I do love my ducks. And check out those eggs!

Tomato bed 2 - mid Feb 2012

Tomato bed 2 had the overflow tomato plants ...like 30 plants in tomato bed 1 wasn't enough?  I just can't say no when there is space and dirt, so why not plant. But it also has the eggplants and capsicums and cucumbers (which I didn't manage to photograph this year). Below are some smallish looking eggplant plants, though they really were quite productive.

Can you see the glossy black of the eggplant hiding in the photo below? Love.

Again, the overflowing tomato plants. I am unruly. They like to be free and abundant. It is the way it is.

These went in later than the tomato plants in bed 1 and this was a good thing. Later cropping, later picking was helpful with the tomato processing. Again this year we have a cupboard full of tomato passata.

Previous posts

Tomato bed 2 - update (Jan 2012)

Tomato bed 1 - mid Feb 2012

Okay. Can you tell where the bed stops and starts? Where exactly is the path.

February 19th, 2012. We do like to plant the cherry tomatoes variety, though I wish this year we had planted just a few more of the Romas or larger tomatoes. In a future post, I can show you why we like the cherries but it does make picking fiddly.

Having a jungle of tomato plants sprawling all over the bed also makes picking a fiddly job. It is thus best undertaken by the farmer responsible for the jungle. If non-planters are asked to do picking, a protest flag is always raised above the bed. Sometimes I can look the other way and not even notice that flag. Mainly because one does need help with the harvest in times of plenty.

 

 

Previous posts

Tomato bed - lots of growth, flowers, small tomatoes (Jan 2012)

Tomato bed 1 planted (November 2011)

Tomato bed - mid summer (January 2008)

Tomato bed - early summer (December 2007)

Tomato bed prep (November 2007)

Beans, beans, beans

Bean harvests from February 2012. Another in the series of catch-up posts. Brought to you by the letter A for 'absent' and B for 'beauty'.

Beans Blue Lake on the left, Dwarf beans in the middle, yellow runner beans on the right.

Previous posts

Pea and bean bed - mid summer (Jan 2012)

Shelling peas - summer 2011 (Dec 2011)

Pea and bean bed - early Summer 2011 (Dec 2011)

Pea and bean bed - Spring 2011 (Nov 2011)

Spring vegetables and sowing peas (Oct 2011)

Planting peas - preparing the trench (September 2011)

Bean bed - update - end of summer (February 2008)

Bean bed - early summer (December 2007)

Seed saving - beans blue lake (May 2007)

Seed saving - beans (April 2007)

Pumpkin bed - late Summer

I mentioned previously that I am a bit behind in my blogging. I'm going to spend the next couple of posts updating my blog with photos from Summer. I appreciate this could be frustrating for any locals who are actually experiencing the full blown effects of the frost from last week (hint: the creatures below hate frost!). It would seem so odd to see these images when outside looks so different. Apologies. I do like to look back at my own photo record for inspiration, memories, ideas, information...so it serves some purpose for me to update this (my blog). Summer was but a brief and wet time this past year.

 These photos were taken in February 2012.

 That pumpkin vine below was allowed to cross over the path into the adjoining bed. I must have turned my back on him for a moment and he was off.

 

Previous posts

Pumpkin bed - mid Summer (Jan 2012)

Before the 12 months is over (March 2009)

Pumpkin bed - update late Summer (Feb 2008)

Pumpkin bed - early summer (Dec 2007)

Pumpkin harvest (June 2007)

Check for frosts (April 2007)

Stumbling on melons (February 2007)

Wee stinky - Titan Arum - rise and fall

If you ever watched David Attenborough's The Private Life of Plants you would have seen footage of this amazingly large and stinky flowering plant. It only flowers for a few days and hasn't often been caught on camera. I came across this site recently in my reading and thought you might enjoy this short video.

Here's a couple of facts/sentences from the Cornell Uni site:

The basics:

The titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) is native only to Sumatra. It blooms very infrequently (only 140 times in cultivation since 1889) and then only for one or two nights before collapsing. Until it opens, there’s no noticeable odor. After that there’s little doubt where the name “Corpse Flower” comes from.

And what makes Wee stinky stink?

January harvests: where have I been?

I occasionally bump into people or receive emails from people who read my blog and after I've been quiet for awhile on the blog, they often ask am I still gardening? I think being absent from a gardening blog is kind of odd, because unlike other hobbies or pursuits, the garden didn't wait patiently while I 'got on with other things'. It kept growing and producing and needing the farmer to move it along into the next season. Or else it would go its own merry way and produce an abundance of beautiful but non-edible produce (aka weeds).

I can reassure readers who care - that I rarely abandon my garden but I do find that over the years I have had gaps in my blogging. So, while I have been quiet, the tomatoes have been growing, have been picked, have been made into passata and put in the cupboard. The apple crop has finished. The pumpkins are manic. We have received more rain than I am used to. The garden has mostly loved it. The days have grown shorter, the mornings are getting chilly, the winter beds need attention. The earth has continued its seasonal cycle. Time and gardens wait for no blogger.

A photo from January 2012.....beans and tomatoes and zucchinis.

I will be resuming normal transmission soon. I have a backlog of photos, posts and stories to tell myself and the world. I began blogging years ago, mainly for myself but also for the connections that it forms. It is a hobby though and I do have a range of other things I need to do: raise children, keep a home, work for a few dollars, maintain real live friendships and family connections. Most recently my work has been noisy and demanding. I am just about to put it back into its box and tell it to behave with more perspective. I am looking forward to being back here and focussing on nature and nurture.

Thanks for your concern and enquiries.

Tomato bed 2 - update

Because of my 8-year rotation plan, I sometimes have two beds dedicated to solanums (tomatoes, eggplant, capsicum). This is one of those years. In future years, I'll loose this bed and gain an extra pumpkin bed (where I can plant melons) or an extra root bed (where I can plant onions and garlic).

In the main tomato bed, I have, well, tomatoes. In this the second 'tomato bed' I have a few tomatoes, but mainly eggplant and capsicum and some basil.