Out tomato out!

Enough tomatoes already, the last few turned orange-ish so out they came.
Quite a mission actually chopping the plants into bits as well as taking the frames apart and cutting all the bits of stretchy cloth I had used to painstakingly attach the plant to the frame as it grew. Amazing what those small plants I nurtured for 5 months or so finally came to. At least 450 tomatoes at a rough guess. A good glut and the pantry is full of chutney and sauces. I'm sure we will miss them being so at hand and bounteous.

The last tomato harvest for 2012

Now that I have clear space I will be planting my fattest cloves of garlic, according to a local garden guru the sooner the better, if it starts to grow before this winter it's like having a double growing cycle and they should be extra large. The shortest day/longest day is for the Northern hemisphere he says. We shall see.

The pea seeds are all up, not bad in a week, and I must make a frame.
Enlarged the netting house around the ever expanding broccoli plants as well as giving them a side dressing of wood ash, it's s'posed to make them grow tight heads. Sounds like rugby.
Took out more loopy laterals from the aubergines, there are 30 odd that may make it to eating size, actually the smaller the nicer seems to apply with these.

There are white onion and fennel and white forget me not seedlings all reaching for the sky, new life at the beginning of winter is nice.

More harvesting

It's almost getting boring, more tomatoes and more beans, as well as red onions and large robust beetroots. Planted 10 heritage Provencal pea seeds to hopefully get a crop during autumn, we will see, though we did get quite a reasonable bunch from the last sowing during late winter/early spring last year.

Here is the trophy show off photo for this weekend then

An abundance

of everything, especially the tomatoes, they continue to ripen nicely, here's the state of the plants at the moment, almost leafless

another harvest photo, they're all starting to look the same, there was also a large sack of yellow beans. :)

The aubergine plants are now up to my chin and are setting fruit on every flower, I have been 'helping' by
touching all the flowers with my fingertips to cross pollinate them. I have no idea if it really does any good or not, but I like the theory. They do seem to get pretty aphidy so I've had to give them a spray or two of pyrethrum. I have also started removing some of the laterals as the plants will end up too large, also I wonder whether any new fruit will ripen before this summer is over. Though once the flower sets they fatten up pretty quickly, and they say it's best to harvest them when they are quite small and unripe.

The fennel bulbs are looking lovely, grown from seed

and we have one shy pumpkin hiding amongst the ferns

Feijoas are ripening, gave them a dose of citrus fertilizer, sposed to be just the ticket. Hopefully we will have nice large ones.

March already!

Late summer, a summer that never really got off the ground. Seems especially mean as the long term forecast was for a long hot summer, so much for predicting anything.

The tomato plants keep ripening the fruit but they look terrible, skeletons with orange decorations, this is after I had removed most of the ripe fruit and the bad leaves

Great harvest today, had to uproot a few strategic beetroot to make way for 6 new silverbeet seedlings, all ready for shepherd's pies in the near future. Sowed seeds of Florence fennel, white onions and white forget me nots.

Love the subtle colours of the old hydrangeas