The Garden of Woz...

[PlainJane]

Wow, you have a lot of fruit to deal with. Sounds like you won’t be buying jam/jelly anytime soon. Will you dehydrate some of it?

[Whwoz]

@PlainJane, most of it has gone into bottles or been made into Jam. To be honest I did not consider dehydrating any of it so far. There are still 5 or 6 kilos of Green Gage plums plus around 5 kg of purple skinned plums to go so that may happen, need to check the dehydrator instructions for fruit leather, which the kids like.

Forgot to mention that 20 lb of purple skinned plums have been turned into plum sauce, MIL's recipe, which goes down well. Looking at doing a test run with a plum based BBQ sauce recipe as well.

On top of this 8kg of blackberries have been picked and frozen, with1.5kg going to Mum. For nearly 3 weeks about 1lb has been picked daily for our dinners and for the kids to take some to school as part of there lunches, still plenty to ripen, need to find a way to thicken some to serve as pie filling.

[bower]

Oh my, if I lived near by I'd be right over to give you a wee hand with that, Whwoz!!
You could use pectin to make a thick filling for a cold pie - basically, cook the crust, cool and then fill it with warm 'jelly' and let harden as it cools. I've been making our blackberry and currant 'jelly' recipes with full fruit pulp lately for the extra nutrient content. Just push all through the seive and mostly only seeds and stems are removed. Hearty stuff and rock solid, you could carve the stuff and come away with a clean knife.

[Whwoz]

Ok, time to update a few things now that the bulk of the preserving has been done

Plums

Green Gage: the best crop I have had on our tree, an estimated 80 kg that were in good enough condition for the kids to eat for about 1 month, a long time for this variety from previous experience with fruit from this tree. Plums are small 20 - 30 grams so if an average of 25 grams is used, about 3200 plums were picked. These went into bottles, whole or stewed or into jam. Around 35 kg dealt with at home, about 30 given to Mum, whom dealt with them the same way plus putting some in the freezer and a number of buckets were given away. Kids were eating them at home and taking 6 to school each day until the last got to ripe.

Green Gage Plums.jpg

Purple skinned plums.

Three varieties of these yielded about 80 kg also, with a lot being given away to Mum and several other friends. Balance found there way into bottles as plums or were made into 30 bottles of plum sauce. Never got around to trying to make batch of plum based BBQ sauce, but could do so using some of the plum sauce as a trial.

[Whwoz]

Zucchini:

These have gone mad this year, really enjoyed the kick start they got under plastic and once the weather settled down enough for the bees to be out an about everyday to pollinate them they really began pumping out the fruit. It did not help that I would occasionally be forced to miss checking them every day or two and wind up picking 3 to 4 lb fruit as a result. the biggest to date went 5.5lb/2.5kg.Around 50kg has been picked so far, mostly off only 2 plants, one of which divided it growing point very early on and is the equivalent of two plant itself.

Zucchini on fridge-freezer.jpg

The only way to deal with these was to grate them all up into containers weighed to weights needed for batches of fritters or zucchini bread.

Zucchinis.jpg

One days pick

[Whwoz]

Sunflowers:

These had poor germination due to the changeable weather, however those that grew did well and have put on a display. the bees hve certainly apricated them. Nearly finished flowering now, just have to wait until ready to cut, then I will collect a few seeds and send rest up to Hill End for parrot food.

thinking of doing multiple small planting next season for and extended display and supply of bee food.

Sunflowers (1).jpg

Sunflowers (2).jpg

Sunflowers (5).jpg

[PlainJane]

Funny, I left my sunflowers out after they had all gone to seed and the birds never showed interest.
Lol, no parrots around though.

[Whwoz]

Garlic: Will not be long before I start planting garlic here again, and I have not had the time to trim all of last years garlic. Going to be a big focus this year on trialing different turban garlics plus the lone Asiatic group member that is available down here. These two groups are not bulb size affected (or only minimally so) buy leaving the scapes on for an extended period. Other groups that form scapes have there bulb size reduced if scapaes are left to grow large before harvest and as we want to harvest scapes for eating, it is logical to grow them, hence an order or 10 or 12 varieties was placed. No vampires here thank you

Drying Garlic.jpg

A shot of the room where I dry our garlic. the observant will not some mesh on the roof of the room and an example bag of how I store it once trimmed

Garleek (1).jpg

last year I found a Russian/Elephant garleek bulbil starting to sprout so I put it ina position where I could keep track of it. It grew, never overly tall and produced a round about 2.5cm/1 inch across, complete with its own bulbil.

Rocambole TGS attempt:

I planted a 5 x5 semi - randomised patch of the 5 rocambole garlics available to me last year in an attempt to see if I could get seed from them. Net result is that all plants (25) produced buds, even without de-bulbilling as most people who aim to produce seed do. On or about the 15th of December I took the bulbils off the most advanced plant, the rest were not quite ready for me to do so. Then two things happened, one was our first decent spell of warm to hot weather for the summer, 3 weeks of it which happened to coincide with that series of migraine headaches that I got. by the time I could check on them, the flowers had all dried up without opening. So no seed this year. May try a Turban patch, if I can get them to flower, have much more hope of getting seed.

[Whwoz]

Funny, I left my sunflowers out after they had all gone to seed and the birds never showed interest.
Lol, no parrots around though.

@PlainJane The folks often get around 20 king parrots during nesting season with the older brother getting upto 100 King parrots a day at the same time ( he and his partner are a bit closer to the bush, with a well treed lane running past his house). Numbers rapidly drop off when the young birds have fledged and flown from the nest

[Whwoz]

Watermelon:

These plants suffered with the cold up until Christmas but have really take off since then. reading through the threads in the melon section and having a Stars and Moon fruit looking like this

Stars and Moon (3).jpg

with a dried out tendril at the fruit stalk base

Stars and Moon (4).jpg

I thought beauty, I will pick that and we will eat it for young girls birthday

Well, this is what we got

Stars and Moon (1).jpg

Definitely not ripe with not a speck of color on seeds. Have a couple of others starting to get to full size and watching tendril (picked fruit was also yellow at ground contact point) Any other pointers I should be looking for.

[Whwoz]

Cucumbers:

Two varieties growing this year, the ever reliable Crystal Apple and Sikkim. A couple of Crystal apples went in early and these have produced somewhere over 40 fruit with at least a dozen harvestable fruit still on them. I initially thought that due to the weather these would not do any good, so put in some more which have produced about 10 fruit and being in a more sheltered position had picked up downy mildew. these latter plants have been pulled and binned.

At the same time some Sikkim seed was planted, a much more vigorous grower and it is starting to get fruit of a harvestable size on it now. First two picked so far

[Whwoz]

Blackberries: Wild types abound locally which has good and bad points. Made sure of the good this year, with roughly 20kg/44lb picked. 8kg or 17.6 lb made it too the freezer for the daughters favorite jam, with 1.5 kg being passed on to Mum, the rest have been eaten fresh, about 1 lb a day for a number of weeks Yum.

[Whwoz]

Tomatoes

97L97 and Japanese Onion

These two show a lot of similarities, both being orange determinate (?may not be true determinates as fruit ripen over an extended period) Roma types, although 97L997 is much smaller than Japanese Onion. Both fruit heavily and make a wonderful orange passata/sauce. They are dry fleshy with walls up to 1 cm thick in the case of Japanese Onion and will thicken up a mixed batch of sauce well, have grown both previously and will be growing again. Should really be grown in smallish cages to allow support of limbs while keeping open for airflow as much as possible. 97L97 would be lucky to make 50cm or 20 inches, JO about 75 cm or 30 inches

97L97 and Japanese Onion.jpg

97L97.jpg

Japanese Onion.jpg

[Whwoz]

Aussie Drop

A cross made by Patrina Nuske-Small using Purple Russian and a dwarf that I am unsure of. Aiming to produce a purple paste type fruit. I received these two plants from fellow member @a sunny day. The fruit is Roma/classic paste shape inherited from the Purple Russian, but I hesitate to call them paste types, even too juicy to be rally good sauce tomatoes, but very nice to eat. Will be returning

Aussie Drop A3 (1).jpg

[Whwoz]

Orange, You Glad

Determinate (Semi- once again fruit not all ripening at the one time) around the 600mm/24 inch height. RL. Fleshy and meaty, juicy but not overly so, very nice and already thinking about growing it again next season.

Orange, You Glad (3).jpg

Orange, You Glad (6).jpg

[Whwoz]

Shere Khan,

named after the Jungle book tiger. a very dry paste of about the 120g/4oz size. Good for sauce. Determinate with spread of ripening (semi?) Striped red/yellow bicolor. Interested in seeing how it goes in a good season so factoring it in for next year.

Shere Khan (1).jpg

Shere Khan (3).jpg

above fruit cut lengthwise

Shere Khan.jpg

[Whwoz]

Prudens Purple

Should have been growing this for a number of years rather than first time this year. Well regarded by other down here and with good reason. Large juicy BLT worthy fruit capable of pushing the pound mark

Prudens purple.jpg

[Whwoz]

Banana Legs

Yellow Paste, what I have is definitely striped, so I assume this is standard. Fleshy, dry and about the 120g/4oz size on a short 600mm/24 inch plant. Indeterminate, RL. reminds me a lot of Yellow Striped Roman albeit about 50% larger. Both are very productive and worth growing in bulk for a yellow sauce/passata if your looking for something slightly different

Banana Legs (1).jpg

Banana Legs (4).jpg

[Whwoz]

Big Green: or what was supposed to be.

Dwarf project variety, should be a GWR, but definitely ripened to a firm meaty yellow that will be back. Rugose leaf under a meter. Moderately productive in an average to poor tomato season. Suspect that the seeds I received may have been crossed as was surprised how firm the fruit was for a supposed GWR when fruit was an even deep yellow when I checked the first one. If true GWR would have expected it to be soft at that colour

Big Green.jpg

[Whwoz]

Dwarf Barossa Moon and Dwarf Bendigo Moon

two very similar project varieties with Bendigo Moon being larger and maybe a shade or two darker than Barossa Moon. Both Rugosa leaf plants that are productive and benefited from being grown in cages that allowed for confinement and airflow through the plants that wound not have occurred if i had tied them up in my normal way. Juicy Saladettes

Dwarf Barossa Moon.jpg

Dwarf Bendigo Moon.jpg