Lovely long summer

After a few days of drizzle this weekend has been wonderful, still and sunny. The peppers are going red at a great rate of knots, the tomato has been wonderful, chutney is being made and the odd lucky friend gets a bag full. The zucchini produces one a day and beans picked daily make a bag full in the fridge in no time. Pesto from the basil plant was wonderful with the barbecued chicken breasts last night...
Life is good.
:)
Sowed onion and silver beet seeds ready for the winter growing.
The oldest compost was deemed ready for use, so it's been doled out to the most needy, namely the coriander seedlings.

A cheeky young tomato:

Lovely neighbours!

A small delegation from the garden next door arrived bearing gifts yesterday. A lovely pair of blue maumau. Freshly caught down the coast. We managed to off load a bag of tomatoes as they left!
:)

Barbequed them tonight stuffed with some lemon and rosemary sprigs. Oil, sea salt & black pepper they were yummy, and because they were done on baking paper, we lost none of the fish on the grill.



The tomatoes in the foreground are lovely, just oil etc with torn basil leaves, on baking paper and I don't turn them, that way all the moisture stays inside. They almost blacken at the bottom, then serve with more fresh torn basil. A few garlic cloves sprinkled amongst them at the start make nice treats.

Spraying with pyrethrum

Best daughter and I picked all the newest flowering pyrethrum flowers about a month ago and stored them in a paper bag . Today I mashed a small handful of the dried flowers in the morter and pestle and adde a litre of boiling water to them. Let it cool whilst stirring now and then. Filtered it into the sprayer and added about a teaspoon of dish wash liquid so that it flows onto the insects. It has worked very well so far, well worth the effort. Although I do wonder whether spraying with dishwash only would give much the same results.
Pyrethrum flowers:



I have been collecting snail shells that the thrush has been leaving all over the paths as it was nesting. There were several everyday, great natural pest control!



We harvested all the beetroots today and will be making jars of pickled chunks, yum. The capsicums are also getting ready and we'll have to bottle those as well. We have jars of sundried tomatoes already, now there will have to be a major chutney making...



I gave up trying to plait the garlic and today I sat in the garage in the shade and dealt to it as best I could. Actually it felt quite sort of native, on my knees in a primitive hut ( my 'garage') preserving the crop.
Looks good!

Waitangi weekend

Nice weekend, almost like a long one as it's a public holiday and I didn't open the shop for the usual Saturday morning trade. Lovely sleep in.
:)

The capsicums are starting to turn red and so are the wildfire chillies. We threw a whole long capsicum on the barbecue the other night as a tester and surprise surprise, it was hot, chili hot. We are sure the original one we had kept the seeds from was not hot at all. Maybe they have cross pollinated with the chili plant as they are all growing through each other. Anyway, hot is good!
These are the first red ones, quite small compared to the average, they sure look like giant chillis so I guess it's not surprising that they could revert.



And I can't resist another tomato photo, just picked another 30 or so and they are increasing daily. All from the one plant. All perfect and almost the exact same size. Best of all they are nice and tasty.



We are making some dried tomatoes now. Cut in half, scoop out the seeds and a light dash of salt upside down on trays in the oven 6-8 hours real low with the door just ajar.
I have plaited (or should I say attempted plaiting) half of the garlic crop. Looks pretty good if you don't look too close.
Here's a blog with photos showing correct plaiting, I think my poor brain can't cope with all the left right stuff...

Summer harvests!

It's been hot and sunny mostly but a couple of days of good rain was most welcome. Everything had a good growth boost from it. Took all the plums off the tree a week or two ago. As they were getting really ripe and dropping to the ground they were being pecked by birds. They ripened nicely indoors for the last few days and were really yummy!



Picked some vegetables to bring to mum's on the lovely long weekend, they looked so good I had to take a photo of course




and today I did a good tomato harvest, these are all off the one plant and there are many more to come