This recipe is in my handwritten book as Wwoofer’s Zuke Bread because the original came to me from a wwoofer years ago. It’s evolved a bit since then, and I’ve turned it into a muffin to make it more suitable for lunch boxes.
The exciting crop this week though is potatoes. I plant potatoes in August and February. The autumn ones planted this time of year do much better than the August planted spring ones. Potatoes originated in the high country of the Peru Bolivia border area. They like cooler temperatures, especially cooler nights, than we get here in summer.
It’s an in-between season for fruiting annual seed planting – too late now to put in more seed of eggplants or capsicums, too early for peas or broad beans.
This is another of my favourite summer salads. This salad holds relatively well, so it’s a good one to take to a barbeque or make ahead of time. Goes really well with barbequed fish.
After floods followed by heat wave, my garden has practically no leafy greens in it. But that’s ok. Summer salads need more crunch and cool than leaf-based salads anyway. This is one of my favourite summer salads, great with anything on a barbeque.
I germinate everything in the shadehouse this time of year. Big seeds like beans and zucchini, I plant straight into individual pots. But small seeds like the leafy greens are all planted in a mixture of sand and mowed cow pats then transplanted at the two leaf stage into individual pots.
Banana season peaks in February in this part of the world (northern NSW).
I’m planting carrots, parsnips, spring onions, and beetroot, all by my standard method. The floods really knocked all my root crops around so I’m keen to get a new round in. However my main job this week is to refresh the strawberry patch.
I’m picking sweet corn in my garden at the moment, and even if you aren’t growing it, you should be able to find it in season at your local Farmers’ Market. This is my favourite breakfast at the moment.
We celebrated New Year’s Eve at a barbeque with neighbours. It’s one of the things I love about living in a functioning community – socialising within walking distance. I could go on about greenhouse footprints but really it’s enough that I can drink half a bottle of red wine and wander home in the starlight wishing happy New Year to the owlet nightjar that lives on the way!