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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In Season in Late Autumn

May 2, 2011

Citrus season has started.   We are picking the first of the mandarins, oranges and grapefruit, and we have so many lemons and limes coming on that I don’t even resent the cockatoos getting into them.  This time of year is the one time I get into making a few different preserves.  The wood fire [...]

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Happy Equinox – Celebrating the Autumn Harvest Season

March 21, 2011

Today is the Autumn Equinox.  We are passing one of  the two points in the wheel of the year when the the day and the night are of equal length.  It’s an important marker for gardeners, because from now on the days will be shorter than the nights and shortening fast as we head towards [...]

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First Pumpkin of the Season

February 12, 2011

Picked the first pumpkin of the season today. Pumpkins are wild in my garden.  These Japs plant themselves every year, rambling over fences and down banks, unruly and disobedient.  The vines are too rampant for my intensive, fortress fenced beds so the bush turkeys get most of them, wastefully pecking holes randomly.  Occasionally I try [...]

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In Season in February in Northern NSW

February 9, 2011

This is last year’s “In Season” post for February. It is interesting how different the years are.  This year I will have pomegranates in February, but the wetter year has slowed them down, both in timing and quantity.  Mangoes are bi-ennial and this is their “off” year.  Not a one this year.  And it has [...]

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In Season In January in Northern NSW

January 17, 2011

Last year at this time I was picking bucketfuls of mangoes.  This year not a one.  Mangoes tend to bear biennially at the best of times, and on top of that, this La Nina year had a very unusually wet spring that knocked around the flowers. This time last year I was just beginning  to [...]

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In Season in November

November 11, 2010

It’s a season of the first of things and the last of things in my garden, as the winter plantings finally end and the first of the spring plantings start to bear. Today I stripped out all the remaining broad beans.  I’ll get a good couple of kilos of shelled beans that we’ll have to [...]

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In Season in October in Northern NSW

October 3, 2010

One of my best childhood memories is stripping down to knickers (so we didn’t get into trouble for staining our clothes) and climbing the mulberry tree, and my kids did the same.  Mulberries are so soft that they are the classic non-marketable fruit.  I have picked a bowl for baking, but really, the only way [...]

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The First of the Season Broad Beans

September 26, 2010

I’m right at the edge of the climate range for broad beans.  I have to plant them as soon as it gets cool enough, and hope that they are ready to harvest before spring really takes hold.  They’re not my favourite green vegetable – they take too much peeling to get to the double peeled [...]

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