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The Season of 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.

Posted in In Season

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7 Comments

  1. Elaine coolowl

    Wonderful, Linda 🙂 Thank you for your blogs, they are really interesting and useful – and colourful! The Tromboncino plants are powering away, harvested some hand-pollinated fruit. The un-pollinated ones go brown and rot so maybe that’s the major problem we’ve had with Zucchini. Anyway I prefer the Troms, they climb and space is at a premium.

    My best wishes to you and your family for the festive season 🙂

  2. englyn

    Happy solstice, Christmas and new year! Thankyou for your lovely inspiring blog. I’m cooking the Mango lunchbox cake for the severalth time, this time in a mini loaf tin for gifts.

  3. Jessie - Rabid Little Hippy

    Wow! What an incredible harvest! I am entirely envious! So far we’ve harvested a single red currant and some radishes. My spuds aren’t yet showing any signs of dying down although I am sure I could harvest some baby ones should I make the effort. Otherwise we have capsicums in flower and tomatoes that have responded terrifically to the blood and bone I applied 2 days ago. Our mulberry tree, just planted this spring is bearing a tremendous amount of fruit for what is not much more than a stick with leaves. I reckon there might be a single small jar of jam’s worth! 😉
    I look forward to your future blog posts this year, both for your gardens generous harvests and your wonderful recipes.

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