So much is just on the cusp of changing at the moment. My strawberries are all flowering and before the end of the month I am likely to have berries. The pawpaws are full size and the first of them just starting to get some colour but realistically it will be next month before they are really good. I’m picking tamarillos. The mulberry tree is about to burst into leaf and fruit.
I’m also picking the first of the snow peas and peas, and I would be picking broccoli and cauliflowers by now if the bower birds hadn’t massacred my first plantings of them. Even the zucchini and squash (which shouldn’t be in at all) seem to have decided that the glass is half-full of spring.
And yet so much is still the same. Still the main fruit is citrus – lemons, late mandarins, navel oranges, tangelos, grapefruit the last of the limes. Avocados are still in the peak of their season with several varieties all harvesting at once. The leafy greens are loving the cool weather and haven’t got enough of a whiff of spring yet to bolt to seed, so there’s lots of lettuce, rocket, parsley and salad greens, as well as silver beet, spinach, kale, radicchio, bok choi and cabbages for cooking. The celery is gorgeous. Having it in the garden, I can pick it a stem at a time and we are eating it in salads, stews, soups, casseroles, and dipped in cottage cheese and chili jam as an after-work snack.
The root crops are also loving this weather, and also holding fire on bolting, so there are beetroot and parsnips and carrots, red onions, spring onions and leeks.
Our fledgling beds are growing too, albeit slowly. We have just planted out the second bed – the first one has been going for a few weeks now. Strawberries are fruiting, and doing much better now we’ve moved them to a potted tower rather than in the ground where the slugs were feasting on them. The perennial leeks have really settled in, and the garlic is going great guns in our old laundry tubs. At the moment, though, the only greens we’re eating from the garden are nasturtiums, but oh, we have a sea of those! 🙂
You’re doing so much better than us. We missed most of a winter garden, because we’re still busy getting veggie gardens built, having moved in only a few months ago. Up until we moved in, the place was just pasture with a few hazelnut trees and a lot of poisoning done, and now we’re in the process of getting the soil back to health and some veggie beds built. It all takes time, especially with two young kids in tow.
I’m enjoying your photos in the meanwhile – they’re an inspiration!
Slugs do love a good strawberry. But chooks love slugs even more. Give it a round or two and you will find that the slug breeding population has been decimated. Meanwhile, my best strategy for slugs is to use a watering can to wet a little patch, lay the outside leaves of lettuces and Chinese cabbages on the wet ground, leave them overnight, and then gather up the leaves, slugs and all to feed to the chooks.
But it will happen! My best tip is that you get a huge amount more yield out of a very small area, well prepared and loved, than out of spreading yourself too thin.
Thanks for the tip, Linda! You’re right, our chooks would love those..