Lettuce-Leaf Basil

...with tomatoes and mozzarella. It can't get better than that! :)

The best sweet corn ever

Even though it does not look perfect. A few gaps, small, etc. but it's our own. We grew it. Just bung it in boiling water for a minute or two.
Then a dollop of butter on the cob, let it melt, tuck in. It was incredibly sweet, tender and creamy. Not that I am biased or something. But it was the best sweet corn ever. :)

Zucchini pizza

Move over artichoke hearts! Zucchini strips are the go! Just use your vegetable peeler to get long thing strips of zucchini. Throw them on to your pizza.
Half the pizza has pesto instead of tomato paste. Plus some olives. YUMMY!

Pot-bound seedlings

Something happens to plant nurseries over the Christmas-New Year holiday; its almost as though the efforts of spring and the rising heat of summer bludgeon them and their clientele into a state of apathy during January that results in rows of woebegone seedlings sitting listlessly on shelves where once beauty and vigour reigned.

Still, even these ‘pot-bound’ seedlings can be turned into vegetables, provided only that one takes a little care in breaking out the root system that has been tying itself in ever-tighter knots inside the confines of the tiny pots in which they arrived at the nursery months ago.

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Take this celery seedling in the foreground above, from instance. It had a vigorous crown, which just shouted for a chance at life. Squeezing the side-walls of the pot helps pop it out of the container. Once the roots are exposed, they must be brutally broken apart to allow them to diverge in the soil; they won’t do this if simply placed in the ground, and will soon die.

I just stick my fore-finger up through the bottom of the root-mass and pull the root ball apart, as shown above.

Then it’s simply a matter of maintaining this ‘bell-shape’ root mass when planting out the seedling in the ground. Weeks later, all celery plants are 300mm high and growing like Jack’s beanstalk!

Today's harvest

We've been picking zucchinis (who hasn't?) and cucumbers (variety - Home-made Pickles) and started with a few little cherry tomatoes. The big ones are still very green and will need a bit more time to ripen.
What are you picking at the moment?

Smoked Coorong mullet and garden salad

As the heat of an Australian summer builds, with temperatures in the high 30’s and low 40’s (107degF), even gardeners avoid the garden just after midday, tending to hang out in the kitchen making simple meals while the cook sits around wondering why she ever emigrated from Europe…

Fortunately, some compensation can be found in the profundity of the garden as various crops come booming in; salads containing fresh tomatoes, capsicums, sliced red onion, pickled olives from last year, fresh basil and rocket leaves plus sliced cheese from the Adelaide Central Market, along with olive oil and apple vinegar dressing, fall into the category of ‘meals husbands can make!’.

Cold beer for thirst, and smoked Coorong Mullet for protein, finish off this simple South Australian ‘ploughman’s lunch’.

Carrot flowers

I always let some vegetable plants go to flower/seed. Not only are they pretty, they also attract all kinds of insects and bees, and also supply us with next year's seeds.
Isn't this carrot flower pretty?