Winter Solstice and the garlic's in

It's the winter solstice today and I have planted the garlic. This year I was able to use the best bulbs from last year's harvest, so this is third-generation organic garlic.

Quantity-wise it seemed like the twenty I planted last year was in fact way too many. Will the eight I am planting this year be too few?

I have planted 3 in a row in the long patch leading up to the lemon tree outside the kitchen window, and the other 5 in a row where the two courgettes were last year. I learned last year that apparently I don't go out our front door enough to plant anything out there that needs daily inspection, so garlic should do nicely. The bulbs went in around 5cm deep, pointy-end up, and last year they took 2 to 3 weeks to sprout.

I did get black aphids on the garlic about three months in to the growing cycle last year, so I need to watch out for this and spray with Neem Oil - hopefully I'll do better at stopping the bugs establishing themselves.

Lemon meringue pie season

Lemons at the beginning of this month:


View out my kitchen window this morning:


Mmmmmm....you know what I'm thinking!

Pasta sauce

Note to self for next year - it is worth taking the time to remove the skins from the tomatoes before making pasta sauce :(

I'm also thinking there should only be one courgette plant next summer. It ended up in everything I made, and I'm quite over courgettes now. Next summer I'll restrict it to one plant, and eat them all fresh.

The definition of optimism

It's June in the Southern Hemisphere - that's winter, my optimistic capsicum friend. Why are you trying to ripen your itty bitty teeny weeny harvest?