December 6th, 2008 AndrewD
Well this weekend we decidedd to harvest the garlic. We dug up one and to our surprice it looked and smelled like garlic, so as Sat was a warm dry day, I thought that was as good as any day to harvest the garlic. So taking my garden fork to the vege bed I extracted them all.
And what a haul, 42 garlic bulbs and a few more in the rose bed which will be harvested in a few weeks. Definately planting more next year as I want to keep 10 bulbs for planting out next year.
Garlic first picked
Onve we had it all collected we brushed them down and gave them a bit of a hair cut (we cut off most of the roots). Now comes the curing as garlic needs to hang in a dry airy place out of direct sunlight. It will sty there a few weeks before being stored in a nice cool, dark place.
Garlic curing
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December 6th, 2008 AndrewD
Well the house is relatively quiet as Lynsey has gone on holiday, my mum has taken her on a cruise for two weeks, she does not get back until the 20th Dec, the day after my birthday. Anyway she left Friday and they visit Melbourne (Vic) and Davenport (Tas) before sailing up the South Island of New Zealand, and finally ending up in Aukland before they fly back to Sydney on the 20th.
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December 6th, 2008 AndrewD
It has been a few weeks so this is a bit of a catch up, have harvested radishes (French Breakfast – Diggers) probably planted too many as the only place I know to use it is in salads. So from now on only 4 of these at any one time. But they are quick and ready to harvest in under a month. Also we have harvested our first Beetroot (Mini Gormet – Diggers). These taste sooo sweet. I am ashamed to have said that the only other beetroot I had ever had was Golden Circle. So with the few that we had we also looked for a pickling recipe.
The recipe we ended up using came from the ABC cookbook “A Year in a Bottle”
1kg beetroot
1-2 cups sugar
4 cups white vinegar
1 teaspoon grd cinnamon
1 teaspoon grd allspice
10 cloves
12 black pepercorns
1 teaspoon
Cook beetroot in boiling water unitil tender, peel and slice and pack into sterilised jars.
Combine remaining ingredients in a large saucepan. Bring to the boil, remove from heat. Cover and allow to stand for 20 minutes to allow vinegar to cool a little and flavours to infuse. Strain and pour over beetroot (make sure they are covered). Seal and store in a cool, dry dark place for upto 1 year.
We have had our first jar of pickled beetroot and it was fantastic – highly recommend it. So I have now planted bulk beetroot so we will have plenty to pickle. Hopefull enough to last until next summer.
We are now harvesting the onions we planted 6 months ago, they are not all ready, so we are just harvesting as required. There are a few smaller ones that will stay in the ground for a few weeks. There won’t be enough onions to last the year, knowing how much to plant of anything is a learning curve. We will have approx 20-30 onions in the end. Next onion planting will at least be double the amount.
Some of the first Beetroot
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