Salamanca market haul

After a windy, rainy and snowy week it was wonderful to wake up to blue skies this morning - perfect for wandering through Salamanca Market.

Our haul, clockwise from top left:
- 3 more herbs for the garden: curly kale ($1.50), chervil ($1.50), mint ($3.50)
- Hartzview raspberry fortified wine ($18)
- South Country Cyder ($12)
- snow peas ($2)
- mushrooms ($8 for a kilogram)
- organic apples ($2.50/kg)
- Bruny Island Cheese Co's organic white sourdough with a dukkah topping
- coriander ($3)

First mushroom harvest

Tonight I harvested my first of my mushrooms that I planted a month ago - 9 gorgeous looking specimens! They are ready when the veil over the gills begins to tear, and you can leave them to fully open or pick them with closed caps as I did. The veil can be seen in the picture below:



The other 'ripe' mushrooms in the box (with my curious kitty Nutmeg in the background!):



All 9 mushrooms, which weighed in at 341g in total:



The next flush should be ready in about 10 days or so. Bring them on!

Mushrooms and greenhouse

They are getting bigger!





I bought a greenhouse for my herbs (less than $40 and it's huge, much bigger than I was expecting!). It will hopefully keep them nice and warm and happy in our north-facing sunroom, and also protect them from our cats, which are far too inquisitive. I've got the Italian parsley (which is doing well) and coriander (which is struggling) in there, and I've added some mint, thyme, marjoram and oregano, plus another house plant that has been a bit unwell. I've left my baby bay tree outside as it seems to be coping with the cold.

Baby mushrooms

I have little baby mushrooms starting to appear!

About 3 weeks ago I planted some mushrooms and they are now just starting to poke their caps through the casing:





Exciting!

Bits and pieces

J and I went to Bruny Island for some R&R last weekend, and stayed at a nice little holiday house called The Don in Allonah. Our booking included breakfast and we were presented with this wonderful assortment of food: bacon, fresh farm eggs, half-cooked croissants that were amazingly delicous when finished, breadmaker bread, fruit cups, muesli, tea, coffee, milo, local jams and other condiments. It was gorgeous.



We enjoyed some cheese - the green one is the vine-wrapped Oen from the Bruny Island Cheese Co., plus some raclette and a peppercorn-studded variety from the Italian Pantry. At the front are Bruny Island Cheese Co.'s spiced cherries in pinot noir. I think I'll try to have a go at pickling cherries when they are in season again.



An easy and delicious soup made from pumpkin, carrot, parsnip, leek, onion, garlic, cumin, peppercorns, chicken stock and a dash of cream:



A bay tree that I am going to plant in a pot:



My mushrooms haven't made much progress yet, but I hope to see them appearing soon, fingers crossed!

Finally, what we bought from the Hobart farmer's market today. Daikon ($1.50), gorgeous little Viking potatoes ($1.20), coriander ($3), spiced pumpkin dip ($2.20) and rocket and cashew dip ($2.50). I really wanted to get some goat meat to make a curry with, but unfortunately that stall wasn't there this week.

Kitchen garden update: mushroom kit and hopeful winter crops

A quick update on stuff that I am growing: I bought a mushroom kit this weekend.

This is what's in the box: the casing in the bag on top, and underneath that is the mushroom compost that has been innoculated with white button mushrooms.


A closer look at the compost:


The first step is to spreading the casing over the compost.


Then wet it and put it somewhere dark to grow - I've put it in a cupboard that isn't being used for anything at the moment. It needs to be watered with a mister every couple of days, and in a week or two I should start seeing some mushrooms start to grow, and they'll be ready for harvest in 2-3 weeks.

The kit cost about $20, and the website says to expect to harvest about 1.5kg of mushrooms. If so, they'll work out to cost more than store-bought mushrooms (which are about $10/kg) but it'll be great to watch them grow!

I've also planted some more things in my vegie patch: spring onions, leeks and garlic. I don't hold high hopes as the patch doesn't get direct sunlight at this time of year, but we'll see. I've also planted some Italian parsley and coriander into pots and put them in our sunroom - now I just have to remember to water them!

Kitchen garden: carrots

So, back at the start of December I planted carrot seeds, along with other things. The carrots really didn't seem to go very well, with only a handful of the seeds sprouting. A couple of weeks ago I finally gave up on them and pulled them out, and this is my amazing harvest:



Yep, not very successful!

Not much is happening in my garden at the moment, I don't really have a lot of time to dedicate to it lately, and it's not good growing weather either, of course. I am thinking about establishing some more herbs in indoor pots though.

I also want to track down a bay tree and a curry plant to grow in pots. Has anyone seen any for sale at any garden centres down south?

Tomato harvest: cooking tomatoes down into a pasta sauce

I've been using the tomatoes from my garden in plenty of dishes lately, but have still ended up with a huge amount - the plants were really productive! I saved up 4kg of large and small tomatoes and cooked them down into a pasta sauce to be frozen for later use.

This is the 4kg of tomatoes, freshly washed:



I heated up a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large stock pot, added a few chopped-up cloves of garlic and cooked them until nicely fragrant and soft. I then added some chopped up spring onion and chilli and cooked them for a couple of minutes. Finally, I added the tomatoes. I didn't bother dicing or prepping the small tomatoes at all (other than removing the stems, of course!), but did chop the larger ones into quarters. I threw these in and added a couple of cups of water, a handful of fresh basil and a small amount of salt and pepper.



I let it simmer away for a few hours, softening the tomatoes and reducing the liquid. After an hour or so, I used my potato masher to break up the tomatoes a bit.



I tasted and adjusted the seasonings, adding some more salt and pepper, a dash of sugar and a small glug of Worchestershire sauce. I didn't want to over-season, but just keep it simple - when I use the sauce for future cooking I can get the seasoning right for the dish it's being used in.

Once the liquid had reduced quite a bit (by almost a third) I strained the liquid into another saucepan, and put the skins and seeds through my blender (in batches). The pureed skins and seeds went back into the liquid and I let it cook for another hour or so.



Finally, when I was happy with the consistency, I divided the mix into containers for freezing.



These will be used in future bolognaise sauces for pasta, lasagna, or whatever else I come up with!

Kitchen garden, week 7

My garden has gone crazy! I'll let the pictures tell the story.

Tomatoes, nasturtiums and 'wild' rocket are flourishing:



Pretty flowers:



My basil seems to have recovered and is growing well!

Kitchen garden, week 5

A quick photo update of week 5 in the garden (posted a week late).

The whole garden. 5 out of 6 tomatoes are doing really really well - heaps of healthy dark leaves and flowers appearing all over the place. The one tomato not doing so well is in the bottom-left, it's the Black Russian - my favourite variety :(
On the path between the garden beds and towards the tap I have a bonus crop - rocket! It's my favourite salad leaf so I was very happy to see it appearing. I've been using big bowls full of this and it just keeps on coming.



Some happy looking fruit!



The sad Black Russian. Despite it's generally stunted appearance, it's growing some lovely big fruit, but I won't get many from this plant.
You can also see my climbing beans to the left, they are going well but I need to put something up for them to climb on asap!



My basil. It's still not doing well but it's trying its hardest to grow, which is encouraging. It'll be interesting to keep an eye on its progress. I don't know what is eating it, I don't think it's snails or slugs as the cos lettuce growing next door to the basil is untouched! So I suspect another critter, but I have no idea what.



Peas! Now, I planted snow pea seedlings, but these guys keep getting quite fat instead of staying flat like the snow peas I have grown before, it's rather curious. Regardless, they are delicious and sweet.



Cos lettuce grown from seeds scattered between the tomatoes. They are more successful than I was expecting, and I need to remember that they are hiding in there to eat them!



My carrots finally decided to sprout, though not very many of them. I'm not sure why this was - perhaps planted too deep, or because they were quite old seeds.



After taking these pictures, I fertilized with Maxicrop Seaweed Plant Food Concentrate (which is what I found in the shed). I think it's a good idea to fertilise tomatoes just as they start to flower to give them a boost when all that energy is needed to grow the fruit. If any gardening experts are reading this and it isn't true, please let me know!

I still haven't planted out my strawberries or flowers... and they are looking rather worse for wear. Shame.


For previous kitchen garden posts, click here.

My kitchen garden: update, week 3

Time for an update of the garden. It's three weeks since planting both sides.

The left-hand side is pictured below, and growing well. The tomatoes are really healthy, green and thick. A couple have started flowering already.
The nasturtium seeds took quite a while to sprout, but are now well on their way. I think they are going to look really nice edging the garden.
The beans also took a while, but are growing away heartily! I'll need to put up some sort of support/trellis for them soon.

I'll spread some more mulch around now that everything has sprouted.

The carrots seem to be a bit of a failure, unfortunately. The sprouts also took ages to appear, and seem to disappear as quickly. They're probably getting eaten by the snails. If things aren't looking up by the first week of January, I'll replant that section with something else.



The right-hand side of the garden is also generally doing well. The tomatoes are thriving and the snow peas are growing well. Some of my herb/lettuce seeds are sprouting. Incidentally, there's heaps of rocket appearing around the outside of both garden beds: bonus!



The basil isn't very happy, I was worried that might happen. It's yellowish and being eaten by some pest.



I've got some black russian seedlings given to me by a workmate, who grew them to see if the seeds were viable (yep!). I'll transfer these into large pots or the garden soon.



My rosemary and sage plants are below, I've had these for a while and use them regularly in cooking.


Finally, some other pots that I'll plant out between Christmas and New Year. They were a bargain: 10 strawberry seedlings for $10, and 5 'potted colour' for the same price!



Merry Christmas!

My kitchen garden

The house that we just moved into doesn't have a garden at all, which is a big change from my previous house, which had a lovely, huge (and very high-maintenance) cottage garden. I'll miss that garden!

However, a happy discovery when we moved in was that there is a vegie patch. When we inspected the house it was a thick, dense tangle of weeds and we had no idea that this was hidden underneath.

I've started planting some vegies and herbs - I really enjoy growing my own produce, albeit at a more limited scale than I'd like. One day I'll have a big vegie patch of my very own, but this will do for now :)

This picture (click to enlarge) shows what I planted in half of the vegie patch a week ago. There are four tomato seedlings that my parents gave me as a housewarming present (thanks!), including the Black Russian heirloom variety, which is a favourite of mine.
The dark green is where I planted climbing bean seeds, and I'll add a trellis or some sort of support once they get bigger.
The dark orange strips are where I planted carrot seeds.
Light orange is where I planted nasturtium seeds, as an attractive border and to use in salads.

I planted up the other side of the garden last night. This side has a cherry and grape tomato on the left.
Below the 'teepee' of stakes are snow pea seedlings. I started tying some plastic tubing onto the stakes for the seedlings to use as support, and as they grow I'll add more support higher up the stakes. I might actually change the stake arrangement as last time I used a teepee shape, my peas grew far too tangled and thick at the top.
Basil seedlings are planted front-left - I don't have a lot of luck with basil, but we'll see how they go. And in the bare spots in between are somewhat dense patches of seeds of thyme, parsley, and a few salad leaf varieties. If they're successful, I'll thin them out or relocate them.

Not pictured are some peat pots that I have also seeded, if they grow I'll plant them in the back of this garden or into large pots.

The challenges of this vegie patch:

• The quality of the soil. It looks ok-ish, but it's hard to tell. I mixed some manure fertiliser through the left side of the garden, and both sides have lucerne mulch. I'll probably fertilise the garden when the tomatoes start flowering.
  
• Snails and slugs! Thousands of them! I can't believe how many there are. I've spread snail bait and it seems to be working, and I'll just have to keep that up and cross my fingers for the sprouting seeds.
  
• The next door neighbour's cat: it appears this patch has been a convenient bathroom for him. He's so far favoured the right hand side, so I've put the mini fence up to try and keep him off it, as well as leaving the dirt patch at the back accessible so could use that instead. I haven't seen him use or walk on the lucerne at all yet - maybe that is enough of a deterrent?
  

I'll keep this blog updated with the progress of my garden!