Marry Christmas

I just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!!

Hooray Veggies!

I bet my mother never thought that I would be saying that haha! But today I actually managed to, I want to say harvest but I'll rather say pick cause it was so little really, but the best amount of veggies that I have picked so far!

 At first I thought that snails were eating my tomatoes but its actually the heat that makes them crack like this. I dont care they still taste good. My one tomato bush is doing very well so I think I will get a fair amount of tomatoes soon. I cant wait.

4 Marrows, 5 tomatoes and a cucumber not to bad considering how my poor garden has been suffering in the heat. (Not to mention the dog!!) cant wait for the rest.

I cant wait for next year to plant my pumpkins, butternut and water mellons. I am going to put them in raised beds so I will post pictures of the progress of those when I get started. :)

I hope everyone had a good weekend.

Pickled Cucumbers

Since this is my first real How-To please go easy on me and I will try my best to explain it well. So today I decided to pickle my cucumbers. I thought that since I am not going to have a mountain of cucumbers I will pickle what I have now while the cucumbers are still in season and pretty cheap so that during winter I have cucumbers. Now the recipe is one my family has always used, but its not really a family recipe, many many years ago my father found it in a book, but don't ask me which book.

Pickled Cucumbers:

• 3L water
• 1L white vinegar
• 3/4 cups course salt
• pickling spice 
• cucumbers
• onions (Optional)
• 4-6 (500-750ml) jars

First thing you need to do is the most important. you need to fill a large pot with water and sterilize your jars in rolling boiling water for 3-5min. Lids as well

While your jars are boiling. In another pot add the 3L water, vinegar,  salt and pickling spice. (This pickling spice I bought in a box already mixed, but its a mixture of :Pepper corns, mustard seeds, dill seeds, coriander seeds, bay leaves and crushed chilli) bring this mixture to a boil. The pickling spice will colour the water a slight yellow that's when the brine is ready.

 

You can cut up the cucumber how ever you wish, you can even peel it if you want to, I just slices mine in rounds and left the peel on. If you like pickled onions you can also slice up some onions and add it to your jars.

 

Once everything is ready place the cucumbers and onion inside the jars and top with the brine till almost full. and that's it. You have to leave it at least a month before its good to eat  but its at its best after 3 months. This will make about 4-6 jars if there is any brine left simple pour it into an empty jar and store when you have something more you want to pickle simply re-boil and pickle.

I only had enough cucumbers for 3 jars so I have quiet a bit of brine left over (Should have halved the recipe) but now its there for the next lot of cucumbers.

 

Herbs, glorious herbs!

So herbs is what I started out with and they are doing pretty well, their growth was stunted in the beginning because I had bad soil, potting mix isn't for planting herbs they need sandy soil so that their little roots can grab hold and grow. The four herbs that are doing the best inside are my Marjoram, Basil, Thyme and Chives which is really lucky because they are some of the ones I use the most. My chives I keep in the fridge in a zip lock bag to use fresh but the others I freeze in water in ice blocks so that I can just pop it in the food as I cook. the basil especially because you cant keep it in the fridge and drying it out is to hard since there is so much water inside the leaf. I have thrown out quiet a few leaves learning this.

I have bought some more top soil to mix into the soil I have for my herbs so that they can do better.

First Harvest

Finally the moment I never thought would arrive! I have picked my first three cucumbers and Tomato! Their not perfect but thats the sign that they are from the garden. Tonight I will make a salad and these will be included! I cant make a whole salad with them but I can add to one and make it divine.

And I also picked some of my beans, these were the Star 300 beans and they really didnt yield very much. Im not sure if it was the weather, the soil or just bad luck but I have bought the Green feast beans to try so I hope they do well. The Star 3000 I must say they grew fast and can take a beating but I only had 3 bushes and only got maybe 20 beans per bush. So you either have to have like 100 bushes or try a new variety.The Greenfeast is said to have a very high yield rate so I will see.

I am still waiting for my Zucchinis to get a bit bigger before I can pick those and have it roasted with some onions, pumpkin carrots and chicken. Hmmmmm I cant wait.

Also if you haven't already seen, I have added two more pages to my blog; tips and fertilizers. So go have a look at those if you have a minute to spare.

I know that its probably best to get your growing tips from an expert gardener whose been gardening longer than 8 months. But sometimes its nice to get some tips from a novice whose getting down and dirty doing it and messing up from time to time.

Hope everyone has a good week. This week I have to pile the sand up on my potatoes, deweed (I seem to do this so often its like weeds rain down with the rain drops!) and also give my plants some sea grow.

Update 8 December 2013

So another quick update on some of my plants outside:

 So the garlic chives are starting to flower, these are great because they seed themselves year after year and each year they come up they are thicker and more tasty. This year I am going to save some of the seeds, so that if anything happens to these I can grow them again. They have grown well in a full sun place that gets more than 10 hours of direct hot sun. I don't water them they only get water when it rains and I dont often give them fertilizer either and they are thriving. I think some plants need to be treated like weeds.

At the top, my thirst back of carrots have finally sprouted up yay. Then my second batch of carrots are doing extremely well, with tiny carrots on the way. These carrots are about the size of a pencil now. I needs to give them some sea grow to help them grow big and fat

 These three plants are all tomato plants, a cherry tomato plant, red roma and yellow roma all are resilient to the viticulium wilt that killed everything else. I didnt know this that was just dumb luck that they were resilient.

 This is my best tomato plant that has survived. There are three others but they are about half the size of this bush.

 Some of the first tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, these bushes are a giant heirloom variety but the tomatoes are only about the size of a tennis ball. But thats due to the bad state the bushes were in for a long time. :(

 My Zucchini bush, I had no idea that the bushes got quite so big. And also there is Fred, my basset that is determined to eat everything that I plant. But hes been pretty good lately

And Finally one of the Zucchinis that are growing. I'll get to pick and get them soon. I cant wait

New seeds, couldnt help myself

Lavender Haven was having a sale on their summer seeds so I bought a few more. I got leeks, spring onions, pumpkin, watermelon, onions, butternut, gem squash, beetroot, zucchinis, peas and green beans (A different variety than what I have)

Since our summer started off very hot and dry my plants suffered from it. Not to mention that most of my tomatoes were killed off by Verticulium Wilt which is a bacteria that cant be killed by a fungicide and most likely came with the plants when I bought them. (So annoyed but cant blame the nursery you dont notice until the plant is a bit bigger) But after calculating the days till harvest of my cucumbers and tomatoes I have decided to plant again and pray that I beat the frost. I had dreams of filling up jars and jars for canning but I dont know if that will happen this year. Keep your fingers crossed.

Back to the seeds, so I bought all those seeds I'm not sure where I will plant all of them because my garden space is limited so I am going to have to buy containers. But those are vegetables that we use and eat often and I really would love to try and grow them. Not to save money but for the sheer better taste of home grown vegetables. And Its a hobby, how long do you have to garden before you can say its a hobby? Well I think its a hobby. Im not sure which seeds I will try to grow now or if I should wait until next year? But I am going to try and grow a plant or two indoors in winter So I'll see how that goes. The plants that I plant in the containers I will move indoors when the frost starts and I think that it will do well in there, at least I hope so

Hope everyone is having a good weekend