Gratuitous picture post - part the second

So part two of the gratuitous picture post brings you the back yard of chez moi. We're lucky to have such a fabulously large yard, and the previous owners were pretty damn green-thumbed, so we've got a good beginning to work from. They were also keen vegetable growers, which has made it much, much easier for us to get started this planting season.



I've always had a bit of a dormant obsession with growing my own vegetables. We had a go once when we were kids, and managed to produce one lettuce that ran very quickly to seed, and a couple of very peculiar looking carrots, that had somehow grown out rather than down, and therefore looked rather like orange turnips. Not a crashing success.



Right, picture post, less rambling... on with the pictures, then.






The West Indian Lime planted and watered into the citrus circle. I'm hoping it will have enough room there between the lemon tree and the edge of the patio, time will tell I guess. I have vague plans to prune both the lemon trees at some point since they are a little unruly, so I suppose we can always make it more room that way if needs be.



First and foremost, I'm a crazy cat lady. No post about my yard could possibly be complete without the inclusion of one of our little darlings. This is Maddy supervising Michael in the vege patch. She quite likes to just sit there, so I think we're going to have to watch out for her when we actually plant. She doesn't use it as a bathroom or dig or anything, just sits there. But I can't see the veg liking that too much.

Michael showing the weeds who's boss. Once he got into it, they seemed to come up pretty easily, and the soil beneath them is pretty nice - as I said before, we're lucky that the previous owners were also vege growers so a lot of the hard stuff is already done for us! On top of that, the area we live in was a combination of orchards and grazing paddocks before the houses were built in the late 1970s, so its land that has been used for cropping of one kind or another for around 100 years.
This is where I'm going to put my tomatoes in, as the wall retains a lot of the heat from the full sun it gets, and we can grow them up a trellis attached to the wall which is a bit more attractive than stakes. Those two plants on the right of the bed are going, and this whole bed will be devoted to tomatoes, and possibly basil, if I can prove what I was told today that they like to be grown together. The edging around the bed was unfortunately not dug in at all, just sort of placed on the surface, which means that the grass has invaded over the winter. That nasty grass with the great big runner roots. Grr.

View from the vege patch back towards the house. You can see what is going to become the tomato bed on the left against the wall. The sticks in the top left will become some kind of ornamental grape the neighbours have kindly decided to share with us, and the monstrosity in the middle that consists of a dog kennel with some kind of shrub grown over the top will also be going. I may end up extending that bed out a little further once that happens, we'll see.

In Part Three: Progress made.

Gratuitous picture post

A trip to the nursery and the first of the slightly warmer weather yesterday led to a flurry of activity. Here's some pics of the day's labour.

First, a trip to the nursery for seed-raising mix and a new watering can. Of course, like always,
I was unable to resist the idea of more plants. We came home with the following:

West Indian Lime - we'd been after a lime to round out the citrus circle, and this one screamed 'take me home, take me home and plaaaaant me!!!!!'. Like they do.

Roma tomato seedlings. These will go into the tomato bed when I finally get all the grass out of it. They're hanging out here in the meantime.

Tom Thumb cherry tomato. I'm planning to grow this one in a pot, at least for the time being. It's already flowering, which is nice, so we'll see if anything comes of them.

These will be tomato seedlings, I hope. The last time I planted seeds they didn't sprout. When I emptied the seed tray out, I could only find two seeds. I can only deduce something et them.

Brown onions. Again, I intent to grow them in a pot. I'm not sure whether this one will be big enough in the end, but it's a good place for them to start.

Next: The gardening part.

Blood Orange and Orange Juice

There's really very little to say about this, but I just wanted to share the fabulous colour of this juice. Again, another market find, around 1kg of blood oranges to 2kg non-blood oranges (I'm pretty sure they were navels but I'm writing this after the fact so I'm not 100% sure). Enough chat, look at the pretty...

Fruit cut up and ready to be juiced. I'm so glad we found the juicer attachment for the food processor.

The slushy pulpy bits. Even they were pretty.

Around a litre of juice...

... fit nicely into my old V8 bottle.

Also, this was damn tasty juice.

Corn Relish

Corn. The Wonder Fruit. What can't it do, really. We're big fans of corn in our house, and although that radioactive yellow goo they sell in jars in the supermarket under the name of corn relish does have a special place in our hearts, I thought I'd have a go at a slightly more wholesome variety.

Once again, unfortunately, I did not grow any of the veg I used in this relish. We make a monthly trip into the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne, and this month one of the stall holders had corn for $1.20 an ear - what was I supposed to do!?

The photo above is of Michael using my mum's very nifty corn removal tool, me having silly girly hands and all. It's basically a set of metal jaws with handles, that strip the kernels off the cob. However, as you can see to the left, we had a bit of trouble getting it to take the whole kernel off, and wound up having to remove the remainder of each kernel with a knife. Oh well, now we know for next time!

Once again, the fiddliest part of this relish was all the chopping veg - aside from the corn, there was celery and two colours of capsicum to dice, plus onion. Once that was done, yet another easy peasy relish. (I should apologise but I can't locate the source of this recipe - I scrawled it on the back of an envelope off the internet, but now I can't find it. I will continue to search and update when I find it though).

1. I first boiled vinegar, salt and sugar in a large saucepan, until the sugar dissolved and the mixture was boiling.

2. In went the vegetables, and spices, and I reduced the heat and simmered the relish for around 10 minutes or so, until the veg got soft and the liquid absorbed. Again, due to my paranoia about sticking things to saucepans, I stirred it more or less constantly during this time.

3. Into my brand new spiffy jars, and voila!! The colour of this relish is incredible, and as it sits in the fridge the flavour is intensifying.

Tomato Relish

Again, a disclaimer. I did not grow these tomatoes, but they had ripe tomatoes for $1.50 a kilo at the Vic on the weekend, and being as my whole family is massive fans of the old tomato relish, I thought bugger it, why not.

So, courtesy of my good friends ABC Tasmania, here we go...

1. Chop tomatoes, apples and onion into small bits. I got quite carried away and diced them right up fine. Two kilos of tomatoes will take longer than you imagine to chop.

2. Into a big saucepan goes the tomatoes, apples, onion and garlic along with the vinegar, sugar and spices.

3. Bring it to the boil, and stir it enough to keep it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. In my case, since I'm quite well known for the variety of things I can stick to the bottom of a saucepan, I stirred it until it boiled.

4. The mixture then needs to boil for around one and a half hours, during which time I perched on my barstool in front of the stove and multitasked - periodically stirring the relish, as well as watching the league on the tellly, and peeling the onions for the pickled onions.

5. I then mixed the cornflour into a bit more vinegar and added that to the pan, leaving nothing left to do but to stir until thickened, then bottle.

This relish is ready to eat straight away, and has been a hit with the entire relish-loving family. I'm just looking forward now to when I can use my own tomatoes to make it :)

Pickled Onions

I love pickled onions. Which is weird, because I hate onions. With a passion. But just try keeping me away from pickled onions. I have, however, been disappointed with the quality of the jarred pickled onions in the supermarket of late, and when I saw pickling onions at the market the other day, I thought I'd better have a go.

So, in the interests of full disclosure, I did not actually grow these onions, but they are from the fruit and veg market at the Vic.

This jar I bought in Kmart for around $8, the obviously saw me coming since I later bought a similar sized jar I intend to make another batch in for around $2 at the local $2 shop.

Anyway, first things first, since I only had the one large jar, I figured a good place to start was with finding out how many onions would fit in the jar. I bought around 3kg of pickling onions, because they were cheap cheap cheap and, as I already might have mentioned, I love pickled onions! As it turns out, approximately 1kg or so fit in the jar.

Once the onions had been peeled and top and tailed, which was a laborious job I managed to acheive whilst supervising the tomato relish, they were left to soak in a bowl of brine overnight. I made the brine by heating water and a handful of salt until the salt had dissolved, then allowing to cool before adding the onions.

In the meantime, I prepared the pickling vinegar. Into plain white vinegar I put a tablespoon each of coriander seeds, cloves and cardamom seeds, a couple of cinnamon sticks and a few bay leaves, and brought it to the boil. The vinegar was then left to steep for about five hours, before being sieved off and stored overnight until the onions were ready to bottle.

The next day, I drained the brine off the onions, and rinsed them well, then laid them out on a paper towel to dry off. When they were dry, I put them into the sterilised jar, and discovered that I could have fit a few more in, once I had removed the peel and ends. Not to worry.

I then sieved the vinegar again to remove all the gunk that had settled to the bottom overnight, mostly clove dust as far as I could make out, then poured into the jar over the onions. I folded up a bit of greaseproof paper and stuffed it in the top of the jar to stop the onions floating, at least for the next couple of days until they have absorbed enough vinegar to stay submerged.

These will be ready to eat in around three weeks, but I'm intending to leave them a little longer than that.