From the category archives:

In Season

2 Fruit and 5 Vegetables a Day for Mid Summer

by Linda on January 12, 2012

We thought it was going to be one of those super bumper years for mangoes, like 2010, when the trees were flowering, but it’s turned into just an average good season. Mangoes  are biennial, and this is the good year, but it has been a bit wet around flowering time to be a huge year.  Still though, we have enough that mangoes have to be one of the two fruit.

The other one is a close contest. We still have  paw paws going strong, though it is getting to the end of their season. Our peaches are finished, but the local farmers market still has them coming from within my 100 mile range, from higher country up on the tablelands, along with nectarines and plums.  Our grapes had a very hard time in the wet last year, and I pruned them back really heavily to get rid of funghus diseases. The result is a smaller than usual crop.  Lychees are ripening, and the pomegranates are just about to ripen, and it’s a really good year for them.  I really love using them. They add a lovely acid sweetness and jewel colour to salads and sauces and baking. I’m picking lots of tamarillos.

But I think number two has to be bananas.  The turkeys still get most of ours, and to make matters worse the geese have decided they like eating the palms. But this is the first real seasonal peak since Yasi.

With vegetables – zucchinis and all their relatives are in glut at this time of year.  I’m specially liking growing trombochino for the first time.  Eggplants are always difficult for me – flea beetles are one of my troublesome pests –  but they are just coming into season now. I have lots of capsicums coming on, and enough chilis to be thinking about drying and pickling some. We’re eating green beans  just about every day, and the bean jars are starting to fill with shelled dry beans for storing. I’m picking the first of the snake beans now, and we like them so much better than every other kind that the Purple King and Blue Lake will probably all get left to mature now.

I think I’ve got  cucumbers right this year, for a change. Usually I’m scaring friends away with bags of them by now too, but this year I have two or three different varieties bearing at any one time, and a nice amount for eating and gifting.  We eat some kind of cucumber raita or tzatziki most meals.  My ginger and turmeric have been liking the heat and rain, so with them and the chilis, and some coriander and cumin, I have most of the ingredients for curries from scratch.  My tomatoes are doing really well this year.  I’m making pesto from the basil, and I have lots of lemon, lime and Thai basil too. The first of the sweet corn is just about ready, and I’m just digging the last of the spring planting of potatoes.

But the pick of the lot, the five, would be: tomatoes,  basil, beans,  zucchini, and cucumbers.

So this is the harvest around which I base my cooking this time of year.  I’d love to hear what’s harvesting in other places.

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Late November 2 Fruit 5 Veg

by Linda on November 28, 2011

Strawberries are still the star fruit in my garden, but the tussle for number two is hot.  There’s still a paw paw a day most days, and though the fruit fly sting most of our stone fruit, there are enough early peaches and plums on the tree to just share them with the chooks – they like the stung spot with its little grub the best. But I think number two at the moment has to go to blueberries.  My bushes are young but I’m lucky enough to live in a blueberry growing region, and the season is short.

The vegetables in season in my garden have all of a sudden changed.  The cabbage moths and grasshoppers of summer have arrived, ending the long broccoli season and making the silver beet less enticing.  I still have some kale but not for much longer. The broad beans are all finished and it is time to let the asparagus grow out.

But the zucchini  and trombochino have started to really come on in the warm weather. The first round of beans are all bearing and I have three different kinds to choose from. The annual keeping onions and garlic are all in, and I’ve just started to harvest the first of the new season potatoes, which are a real treat.  We don’t treat potatoes as a staple in our household, partly because neither of us do enough of anything really physically demanding enough to use that many carbohydrates every day, but mostly because after fresh, new season potatoes, stored ones are so uninspiring.  And I’m starting to pick tomatoes every day, just the Principe Borghese,  Roma, and yellow cherry yet but I’m watching the Brandyvine ripen by the day.

So that’s my late November 2 and 5. I’d love to hear what yours are.

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Early November’s 2 Fruit 5 Veg

by Linda on November 9, 2011

The easy way, they all say, is two fruit and five veg a day. It fits the Witches Kitchen definition of good food.  If you eat mostly fresh, local, in season produce, the rest isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference, to your health, the planet’s health, or your wallet’s health.

My 2 and 5 change every day, but I thought I might try to pick favourites for the week.  The things that are really at the peak of their season.

The two fruit this week are strawberries and pawpaw. Neither of them travel too well, so I’m having them as a smoothie for breakfast, as fruit salad, in porridge, and as a slice and in baking.  There’s still a few citrus around, but they’re on the way out, and there’s early stonefruit just starting – we ate the very first of the plums this week. We have lots of tamarillos pretty well year round, and bananas when I can stop the turkeys from getting them. But strawberries and pawpaws are the ones to take advantage of while they’re on.

The five veg this week are:

Broad beans – I picked the very last of them this week. It’s been a good season for them this year.

Asparagus - they only have a short season, and this is the peak of it.

Broccoli – I keep expecting the cabbage moths to arrive, but they haven’t yet, so I am still harvesting broccoli every day.  It is always a good crop, bearing heavily for a long time. But not for much longer now, so I’m making the most of it.

Zucchini - I’m picking the first of the new season’s zucchini already.  I know that within a few months I’ll be over them, but right now it’s very exciting.

Kale – It was a tussle for number 5.  Kale won because, like all the brassicas, (cabbage, caulis, broccoli, kohl rabi) it will be all over once the cabbage moths arrive – not worth the effort to protect in the home garden, expensive to buy organic, and the supermarket stuff will all be heavily sprayed.  I only have a few kale recipes up but that’s not a true picture. We eat some version of greens as themselves as a main or side dish  several times a week. Kale is great simply braised with a little butter and garlic, or olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and I add it to every stir fry, soup or frittata.  And it’s a super food, a fantastic source of antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, anti-cancer glucosinolates.

So that’s my 2 and 5 this week.  I know it will be exactly opposite in the northern hemisphere, more like my May list, but I’d love to hear whether it’s very different in other parts of the southern hemisphere.

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In Season Mid Spring in Northern NSW

September 27, 2011

Aren’t they gorgeous?  These are the strawberries in the new patch.  It really does make a huge difference to the yield to replant strawberry runners in a new patch, with fresh compost and lots of mulch.  These are the plants I potted up in midsummer, in their the first year of bearing in a new, [...]

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The Spring Equinox

September 23, 2011

A neighbour is killing a couple of their free range male ducks today, and putting on a duck stone casserole dinner.  Stone casserole is another version of Stone Soup, and when I went looking for the link I realised that it is a way we often get together – a great way to have a [...]

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In Season in Late Winter

August 8, 2011

We’re eating broccoli and snow peas at just about every meal now, and just about to start harvesting cauliflowers.  We have silver beet and kale coming out our ears  and as much cabbage of various kinds as we can eat.  This is the time of year to appreciate all the brassica family.  Not too much longer [...]

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Garden Gifting

July 17, 2011

There are lots and lots of pleasures to gardening – fresh food, creative space, exercise, frugality – but one of the very best of them has to be this.  Off to visit my sister and family for the weekend, and a box of garden greens to take.  All the things that are so in season [...]

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The First of the Season’s Broccoli

July 8, 2011

The first of the season’s broccoli.  Not quite the first – I’ve cut a couple of heads early, before they were really ready – but the first full size head.  This is Calibri variety, and it will keep bearing side shoots for a couple of months.  The early ones will be nearly as big as [...]

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In Season in Mid Winter in NSW

June 23, 2011

I’ve been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, (which is un-put-down-able) and thinking about how lucky we are in Australia.  Our soils are old and mostly not very good.  But a year round growing season is such a bounty. Not many parts of Australia get actual snow, and my garden is pretty near frost free. But [...]

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