February 1st, 2009 AndrewD
What have we been harvesting recently? Lots of tomatoes, cherry and Roma in particular and the Amish soon to turn red. We have been eating them and I have been supplying some to people in Sydney and at present we still have 2kg in a basket in the kitchen. We have approx 8 kg of potatoes and we still have 6 plants (Nicola) to harvest (probably next weekend).
The cucumbers and zuchini are coming on strong and we made our first zucchini pickle of summer (and probably not the last) 
We have been getting a few cobs of corn as well and of course beetroot, radish and lettuce. All the onion has now been pulled up and we did have about 35 (more purple than brown). Definately a lot more onion next time.
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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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November 13th, 2008 Lee-Ann
well harvested our first onion today – it was practically pushing itself out of the ground so out it came. It looks good.
Our first onion
And a quick update on The Nut Boys – Wally the walnut has some leaves, Chester the chestnut seems to have one softened bud – could be a beginning, Al the almond is still not doing much except looking like a broken umbrella with all the leafless twigs. On Monday I picked all the remaining broad beans and podded and blanched and peeled and they are now in the freezer, actually am going to use some tonight, but with all the usable beans gone we can now use the patch to get some kale and spinach in plus a heap more lettuce for the summer. till next time – cheers.
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