Daily Archives: January 25, 2011

My garden has been disappointing lately.  The tomato plants nearly all have yellowing leaves, wilting branches and dropped, unripe tomatoes. 

Also, the peas, broadbeans and spinach have finished before I was ready.  Jasper loved plucking and eating the peas 🙂

Some ‘crops’ have failed to grow altogether… leeks, beetroot, radishes(!) just to name a few. 

But, today:

Today Jasper and I did some harvesting!  And I’ve realised that, maybe, it’s not all gloom and doom after all :o) The beans are going well, and the zuchinni harvest has begun. But best of all I am sucessfully growing tomatoes regardless of the pitiful state of the plantsl!

In celebration of my new upbeat attitude to the garden I went out and turned/aerated the compost 🙂

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in other news:

I’ve been Jamming, Pickling, Saucing and Fermenting!

Highlights have included the creation of my own sauerkraut via fermentation.  I did this at the request of Chris and fully expected that I wouldn’t like it.  But it’s DELICIOUS… even Jasper loves it!  The best bit is that I’ve used my own cabbages – very satisfying.

The Apricot Jam is divine! I’ve also made more pickled beetroot and pickled red cabbage – which we love to eat.

The plum sauce is lovely and would go nicely with pickled pork or even drizzled on ice cream I reckon.  Best of all the wild cherry plums were foraged from a creek line at the back of a friend’s house and were 100% free and otherwise going to waste.

I’m planning on making ginger beer next, we’ve been collecting soft drink bottles for the brew (Chris has been brewing beer like mad lately which is pretty exciting too).

Well that’s got you up to date 🙂  Though one last thing;  I drew those labels onto lunch bags, cut them out and stuck them onto the jars using glue stick.  Thanks to Melissa from Tiny Happy for pointing me in that direction.

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