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.
I have zucchini and their close cousin tromboncino going nuts in my garden this time of year. It is compulsory in our household to have zucchini every day, I’ve given so many away that my friends are avoiding me, the chooks have gone on strike and refuse to eat any more. This is the first year I’ve grown tromboncino (Diggers seeds) and I think they have upstaged Blackjack as my…
From late winter until now, I plant climbers – beans, cucumbers, squash and tomatoes – along the fences all the way round from the eastern to the western side, and sometimes (usually a bit more lightly) on the northern side too. The tallest beans even start to climb across the netting over top of my beds, the beans hanging down like fruit. But from late summer onwards, I start planting…
You need real tomatoes – sun ripened, in season, varieties bred for taste rather than transportability and artificial ripening. For real decadence a few different varieties so you can savour each kind.
I’ve been mulling over a 2012 Challenge. I’ve enjoyed the challenges. The first one – 2010’s Muesli Bar Challenge, Then the 2011 the Breakfast Cereal Challenge – a year’s worth of weekly healthy and low GI recipes, based on fresh in season ingredients, fast and easy enough to make for breakfast, as a way to delete the big mostly empty packets of junk food marketed as “breakfast cereal” from the…
One of the best things about planting advanced seedlings is the head start you get. I think people tend to forget how long plants spend germinating and as babies. These seedlings are a month old already. If I’d planted them directly a month ago, this bed would have spent all that time hardly used, just inviting weeds.
wasn’t going to post until the new year, but my love for patterns got in the way, and it seemed a pity not to make it a clean sweep – a Breakfast Challenge recipe for every week of the year.
The longest day, the shortest night, the night of midsummer dreaming. Happy solstice everyone! Today is the longest day of the year in the southern hemisphere and the shortest in the northern hemisphere, and it’s been a traditional festival for a lot longer than 2011 years. For me, it marks the start of holidays, a few weeks with some time with family, community and friends, some time visiting, some time…
It’s such a good disguise. It looks just like a ladybeetle. If I didn’t catch it actually in flagrante eating the leaves on my squash, I would think it was a good guy.
Aren’t they cute? I found them when I was recycling potting mix from some seedlings that I didn’t need to plant out. There are two different kinds. I think the larger ones might be land mullet eggs, and the smaller ones the little skinks I find in the shadehouse and garden.