urban vegetable patch

On a regular basis, we will be posting an A-Z of various aspects of vegetable gardening.

So to get started – we will kick off with good old A !

A is for Abundance!

Try as hard as I might to get a good “even” supply of vegetables of various varieties, you can guarantee that something is bound to fail and something else may produce prolifically, at times over prolifically and you end up with an abundance of a particular vegetable.

Hopefully it is one you really like, but what do you do with an over supply?

Here are just a few ideas;

• Give it away to friends, family or a charity – consider a food charity, soup kitchen etc

• Preserve it by bottling, pickling, drying or freezing.
  Some vegetables can be frozen as is, but most may need to be blanched before freezing. Blanching is really just a quick dip in some boiling water for a couple of minutes, depending on the vegetable, then plunge them into some ice cold water to stop the cook process. It is also a good idea to give them time to dry off before freezing them. Bottling and/or pickling and how you do it is really dependant on your taste and the type of vegetable you have in abundance. I just had a look at the Fowlers Vacola Simple Natural Preserving Kit – looks much easier than I remember… my mum used to bottle abundant fruit!

• Drying – lots of vegetables can be dried either using the sun or an electric dehydrator.
  You can also puree some vegetables and dry them as a fruit leather. I dry chili by threading them onto cotton and hanging them under the verandah, they dry really quickly in our hot Australian summers. Many herbs can also be dried by handing them in bunches in a warm, dry and “wind-free” spot.

• Jams, Relish and Chutneys
  Are a great idea as not only do you get to eat the vegetable fresh, but you have it as a different form to be enjoyed in another way, such as on toast or on your sandwiches or meats. But the real double bonus is you can give it away as gifts to people who have already said, hey, don’t give me anymore of vegetable x as I am over them at the moment. But by giving them the jam or relish, yes you are giving them more, but its a different form of the vegetable, so they are likely to jump at the chance to enjoy homemade jams or relish. Sneaky!

• Freezing them as a ready cooked meal.
  An abundance of tomatoes this year led me to do this and I still have a couple of packs of sauce left! I made the tomato sauce out of my homegrown tomatoes, basil and capsicum. Then added some onion and garlic, with some cracked pepper and a pinch of sugar, until the tomatoes were cooked. I then waited for it to cool, pureed it in the blender then poured enough for a meal into freezer bags and froze! Its been used in pasta sauce, as a casserole base and minestrone base.Herbs can also be frozen, I like to pick the herbs, put then into ice cube trays in quantities that I would use in cooking, add water to the trays and freeze. I can then pop a cube into whatever I am cooking over winter.

• Make a cake!
  Zucchini cake, pumpkin scones and pie and beetroot cake are just a few baked items that can be made with your abundance of vegetables. There must be more, so have a surf around the Internet to see what cakes can be made with different vegetables.

There are probably lots more ideas and tips on dealing with an abundance of vegetables, so feel free to share your hints or tips on what you do with your abundance!

Enough tomatoes to share

Today I brought all my extra tomatoes to work to share around (btw, there are more from where they can from). Received many emails to say they “were simply devine” and “the sweetest I have ever eaten”. I think this really made all the hard work  worth while. Hopefully, I have convert some to grow their own come next season. Happy me.

Just part of my unruly Tomatos

Tomato’s!!!!

Yes, spot the happy vegetable gardener!

Finally, the tomatoes have begun to ripen and more are on the way. This is very exciting as you can see by the photos my Tomato plantings went a bit mad!

It all started off in an orderly manner, beautifully planted and spaced. Then in the lead up to Christmas, they got a bit neglected and only received the barest of attention which consisted of the odd bit of organic fertiliser and water when necessary. In mid December we had a nice drop of rain, which has been a rare occurrence this year and everything “took off” overnight. Sedate little plants became wild unruly giants and so began the tomato jungle.

I know the purists of tomato growing will gasp in horror at the jungle… but I don’t think it has been all that bad of thing. We have had some extremely hot days of 40 degrees Celsius plus, so I think the jungle has helped protect many of the young fruit from being horribly burnt to death.

Adding to the jungle were a few tomato plants that sprang up from the soil in the patch, these were obviously seeds that had been in the ground and they decided to spring to life and add to the havoc of the jungle. Most of these were Red Fig and just like in Corine’s garden I have lost a couple to some sort of blight or rot at the bottom of the fruit, but fortunately this has not been as bad as lat year, so please don’t despair Corine, there will be better tomato growing times ahead.

Below are a few of my lovely little tomato’s, just picked from the garden, included in the photo are the varieties, Tatura Dwarf, Red Fig & Black Russian, plus a couple of other random varieties which “sprang” up.

Melbourne had a wild weather night on Friday; There was wind, rain and more rain. My mob of unruly tomatos flopped over their existing supports and nearly killed itself. It’s probably my fault for not staking it properly in the first place.

unruly red-fig tomato. Look closely on the bottom left of the bush

While stalking them securely to the existing bamboo stick, I realised some of the undergrowth are starting to grow out and up to get more sunlight. This is not good because as they grow bigger (which is what happened now), they will be heavier and lay in the soil bed for support. This is bad bad karma for spreading disease from soil to plant.

What I did was, I had a bit of a DIY moment with 2 kebab sticks and a rubber band. I tied the two sticks together in the middle (using the rubber band) and poked them in the ground to form a ‘X’ shape. I then gently lifted the branch and rested it on top of the kebab stick frame.This will lift the heavy branch above the ground now. Not sure about its performance in high wind condition; Will deal with it when it comes. For now, I am a happy girl.

Branch support to lift it up and up

I am the procrastinator queen. After moving into our current home over 1 year ago, I finally got my act together and got my backyard done. The result, as you can see below, is a usable vegetable patch of 6m x 1.3m using treated timber. The bottom was filled with local area soil and topped off with compost. Not only have I made the place look so so much better but I turn a once piece of  un-usable land into a workable vegetable patch. I am so proud of myself.

garden before the big makeover

Garden after. OMG!

Garden hawk-eye view

The plants that I am currently growing:

• Snow peas
• Soya bean (edamame)
• Rock melons
• Tomatoes – 1 red fig and 3 of unknown spices grown from a seed mix
• Spinach
• Bok Choi
• German Chamomile – currently growing in container.

I am fertilising the green vegetables weekly with a weak organic liquid fertiliser and boy are they growing like crazy! Spinach leaves are harvested weekly by picking the outer ones and leaving the center to grow.

Not sure about the Bok Choi though. They are not growing as well but I will with-hold my judgement for now; The weather has been cold in Melbourne for a couple of weeks and probably it is the heat that is the missing ingredient.

Snow Peas

Bok Choi and soya

Ha-ogen Rockmelons

Red Fig Tomato

Corn

German Chamomile