In Season

In Season in Mid Summer

by Linda on February 10, 2013

in season in February

My pickings today loaded up my kitchen bench.  Mangoes are biennial, and this is a mango year, so I’ve been making smoothies and cakes and pickles and chutney and sorbet, and giving lots away.  The spring this year was wet enough for the pomegranates to fruit well – often our springs are too dry – and the tamarillos are all ripening at once.  I’m back to growing enough tomatoes to bottle some, the snake beans and green and purple and Madagascar beans are all bearing enough for both eating green and letting mature for the bean jars, and the  chilis and capsicums have all started to ripen at once.  The tromboncino dropped fruit in the heat wave early in the new year, but the rain since has brought them all back into glut again, and the Suyo Long cucumbers are bearing well enough to become a favourite variety.  I’m making pesto from sweet basil, and I have lots of lemon, lime and Thai basil too. Feels like such luxury to have such glorious abundance. Now I just need to decide how to deal with it all!

As well as all the glut crops, we are picking the first of the figs, passionfruit, and carambolas and the last of the paw paws, and the occasional Jackfruit (which can make a glut just with one fruit).  Our peaches are finished, but stonefruit are still well in season in many places.  The geese have decided they like eating banana palms, which would be an issue except that the wild brush turkeys have been getting all the  bananas for years. If we were shorter on fruit I’d need to do something about that, but I’ve run out of good ideas to try.  I figure I’m just fattening up the brush turkeys as security in case of real famine times!

I still have a few zucchinis planted and bearing but the tromboncinos are good competition for them.  The yellow button squash make a nice change sometimes.  The next patch of  sweet corn is just about ready. We’re between pumpkins – the potkins are finished and the Japs about to come on. I’ve had better success with eggplants this year than usual.  There’s the usual carrots and beets, and as usual the greens are scarce this time of year.

My ginger and turmeric love the heat and rain this time of year.  I have both as perennial plots – I just dig some when I want it – but this time of year the plants are growing like crazy.

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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The Season of Red and Gold

by Linda on December 24, 2012

red and gold

I love this time of year, when everything I harvest is the most magnificent colour.  I ate the first of many mangoes for the season today. Mangoes  are biennial but not every second year is good.  It’s a complex mix of rain and heat at the right time that makes this kind of luck.  We still have  paw paws  though it is getting to the end of their season, but our seedling peaches are on now and only for a couple of weeks. The  grapes are hanging thick and purple (good mango years also tend to be good grape years).  Our lychees are just starting to colour, and the pomegranates are great big heavy jewel filled globes. There are also figs coming on, still green yet but one to look forward to.  My daughter’s very favourite fruit in the world is tamarillos so we’re picking a bucket full to take over for Christmas with her.  We even have some golden bananas despite the best efforts of turkeys and geese.

This is turning into a really good tomato year too.  I have yellow cherry and yellow pear, red grape and red pear, brandywine and principe borghese all bearing, and a tiny red tomato that I don’t remember planting, fruiting in trusses of lolly-sweet jewels.  The Corno de Toro and banana and supermarket flat  capsicums  and a variety of chilis and peppers at various heats are all starting to bear well.  The zucchinis and all their relatives are in glut - tromboncino  and squash and this year potkin pumpkins.  I don’t usually get pumpkin till a bit later, so I am really enjoying these early ones.  I’m getting better at cucumbers these days – just enough for raita or tzatziki as a side dish for most meals and not so many that the chooks are sick of them!

And I am very proud of my eggplants this year.  Flea beetles are one of my troublesome pests and they’re around this year, but the predators seem to be just about keeping up with them.   We have harvested the first round of sweet corn and the second is about to be ready.  There are more beans than we can eat green and the  bean jars are starting to fill with dried beans for storage.  The Rattlesnakes have been the champions up till now but the snake beans are just seriously starting to bear now.

My ginger and turmeric and galangal struggle though our normally dry spring but come into their own now the thunderstorm season has started. They love the heat and rain. There are all the usual carrots and beets.

A table laden with red and gold for this season of feasts.  Happy solstice, and have a wonderful Christmas filled with love and joy and good things to eat.

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Nearly Summer In Season

by Linda on November 30, 2012

The paw paws have been prolific this year.  We’re eating one a day most days, but they’re starting to slow down from now on.  The strawberries weren’t as good this year as last year, mostly because I got too busy in winter to plant out a new bed or mulch up and compost the old one, so they were a bit neglected and they paid out on me for it.  But this year looks like being another bumper year, like 2010, for mangoes. The trees are so laden, I’m thinking about green mango recipes. Our grape vines are also laden.

I live too far north and low for good stone fruits – we get some from a thick skinned seedling peach tree, but I’ve cut out most of the stone fruit. It’s just more work than a good permaculturist can justify to keep the fruit fly off.  But we do get some at the local Farmer’s Market coming from the northern Tablelands, which is nearly in my local zone as the crow flies, just 600 metres or so higher.

Blueberries are also just about to come into season and I’m lucky enough to live in a good blueberry growing region.

As far as vegetables go, it’s already well and truly summer in my garden.  No more brassicas – broccoli, kale, cabbage – but all the curcubits – tromboncino, squash, cucumbers. We’ve had lots of asparagus over the last few months, even having to rescue it regularly from wallabies that will go to extreme lengths for asparagus. But it’s time now to let it grow out. Rocket and flat leaf parsley are the main greens.

I’ve dug all the spring planted spuds now – this is the last of them.  Then no more potatoes until the autumn harvest comes in in May. This year I seem to have beaten the tomato viruses that plagued me year before last.  Last year I went very easy on tomatoes so as to rest most of the beds from them.  And it has worked. I’ve been harvesting Principe Borghese,  Roma, Yellow cherry, yellow pear, and Brandyvine  – a big bowlful every day. Beans are all bearing well. So far it has been mostly Rattlesnakes, bearing continuously and copiously for a couple of months now. But I also now have  Blue Lake and Purple King to choose from, and snake beans very soon.

My garlic is in, not so many as last year, and beetroot, for some reason, are doing well this year.

So that’s what I’m  basing my cooking around at the moment.  I’d love to hear what is in season in your garden.

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First of the Season

October 13, 2012

The first of the season trombochino, just picked and went into a Green Green Polenta.  The first of the season cherry tomatoes, just picked and into soft boiled egg and tomato on toast for breakfast. The first of the season capsicums – these ones are Hungarian Wax.  I’ve picked the first of them green to [...]

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The Last of the Lemon Glut

August 24, 2012

The cockatoos have begun stripping the bush lemon trees.  They are very thorough and very wasteful.  In a few days they’ll all be gone. The geese like sitting under the tree in the shade and they’re a bit perplexed at all the half-eaten lemons lying around. For some reason the cockatoos don’t seem to want [...]

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In Season in Late Winter

August 1, 2012

I have been soooo busy lately, my garden and in season pages are way out of date!! An end to the crazy busy is in sight, and I’m dreaming of a time when I can get a bit more inspired and creative with my blog.  But meanwhile, just so’s the last In Season post is [...]

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In Season – Lemon Frenzy

June 11, 2012

We have a few lemon trees, but my two favourites are the Eureka because it has lemons on it all year round, and this bush lemon propagated from a seed that came up from compost. This time of year it is laden, every year.  It’s a stunning yield.  In a month or so, the cockatoos [...]

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In Season in April in Northern NSW

April 15, 2012

Time has flown! And I haven’t done an “In Season” post for months. This was first posted in April 2010, and it reminds me how the seasons turn, a familiar cycle that you can look forward to every year, every year a little bit different, every year a lot the same. Finally there are enough [...]

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2 Fruit and 5 Vegetables a Day for Mid Summer

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. [...]

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