Done their dash

The tomato plants have done their duty this summer, and are now progressively being removed. However one of the Green Zebras is still going strong, it's draped itself over the lemon tree and is still getting new growth on it, so I'll leave that one in to see how long it lasts.

I'm also planning to take out one of the courgette plants (the runt), and the purple sprouting broccoli today - I don't think I'm going to get any more shoots off the latter and it's getting a bit stinky! The watermelon vine is another one that can come out now.

Sauce

1kg of tomatoes equals 250ml of tomato sauce (give or take). Now we have Roma sauce, San Marzano sauce, Green Zebra sauce, and a mixed sauce (the last two are in the photo).

100% humidity

The battle against powdery mildew has been lost - in my defence, Auckland hit 100% humidity overnight so there's not a lot I can do. Oh well, I had a pretty good run this year!

The tomatoes are also struggling in the hot, showery and excessively humid conditions. This evening I have pulled out one of the Watermouth plants after harvesting all the tomatoes on it. Once I had cleared away a lot of the dead branches and damp droopy leaves in the tomato patch it was clear that the remaining Watermouth plant was much much bigger, healthier, and producing bigger fruit than the now-deceased one.

Watermelon

Ta-da! 6.6kgs and very juicy. This one will be the total of the harvest this season, I didn't get any more flowers once this one had gotten going, and both vines I planted have now faded away in the heat.

World famous in NZ

A photo of my hand holding a freshly harvested beetroot (from the second batch of beetroot if I remember correctly) has sold through a stock photography website. No idea who to, or what for......

Weekend roundup

The heat is getting just a tad monotonous, is it not? I hosed the garden down again this morning (quite a mission as the hose is at the other end of the house), and noticed the following:

* The spring onions and the onions (which are particularly weak looking) are still suffering from the purple aphids, it doesn't seem to matter how much I water them

* Whitefly is back, this time on the underside of the tender new purple broccoli seedlings and on some of the citrus. I will try to remember to spray with Neem tonight.

* I seem to have planted the basil a bit late (although it will still get there - mmm pesto) and the eggplant very late - must try harder next year!

Here's my poor exhausted tomato plants mid way through the harvest:

Red Russian in the foreground, Green Zebra in the middle and Watermouth at the back. The San Marzanos are below:


And lastly, my courgette. I've been trying to get a photo of this for a while, but had to wait until all the leaves in the immediate vicinity were gone. You can see the vine coming out of the ground (it always surprises me just how dead it looks once it's dried and split, but evidently it still does the job), then it splits into two! Is this common? Both ends are equally sturdy and as productive as the average plant so I have two for the price of one.

Dozens of tomatoes

Definitely time to sauce, but it's far too hot to be in the kitchen this evening! I have around 4 dozen tomatoes picked and ready to be turned into pasta sauce or tomato sauce, and did a big batch of ratatouille last weekend weekend. It might have to wait until Friday - since it's a public holiday I'll be home in the morning and might be able to summon the energy to be in the kitchen.

My San Marzano aren't quite as pretty now they're ripening - they're mottled. I don't think it's in a something-wrong-with-them way......

Harvesting this week

Let the eating stage commence!

Half the garlic is now harvested, and the rest I'm going to pull up today.

Tomatoes are coming through thick and fast. I've made one small bottle of Roma tomato sauce, and will be doing one of Red Russian and another of San Marzano today, while we're busy eating the Watermouth and the Green Zebra.

I don't think the capsicums are going to be a raving success this year. We've had a couple of ripe red ones from the plant that survived from last year, but they are TINY, as are the unripe ones on the plant. I never managed to get another seedling to germinate and survive - I have a sturdy looking seedling ready to transplant now but I think it'll be too late to get anything off it.

By yesterday I had four large scallopini, so I stuffed and baked them for dinner. They were okay, problem was that the outside skin once baked is very squeaky on your teeth, so I don't think I'll try that again.

The watermelon is still growing - 3cm since last week, but it does seem to be darkening slightly and the tendrils near it are definitely darkening. If it gets too hot this weekend I think I'll have a nice watermelon snack!

Lastly, the purple sprouting broccoli was very nice, even if it is disappointing to see it turn green when you cook it.

This weekend I didn't.....

1. find out what to do with the strawberry runners (in my defence, I did go through my gardening books but none of them mentioned it, and I haven't gotten around to Googling it yet). I must say the plant that's in the ground (rather than in the planters) seems to know what to do all by itself, it's busily sending out runners that are sending up shoots at presumably the right distances apart from each other, and several of them have now rooted. I'm guessing all I need to do at some point in the not-too-distant future is to cut their umbilical cords, so to speak.

2. eat any purple sprouting broccoli. I have just now cut the sprouts around half of it, plus the centre head which was started to go brown and gooey, and will be cooking the sprouts for dinner.

I did look into the scallopini issue, and it seems it depends on exactly what variety it is as to how big you should let it get - anywhere between 2 to 4 inches. The first one is now off the vine. I'm still a little bit puzzled as to the best way to (cut and) cook it, I did find a nice sounding recipe where you slice it horizontally through the middle and fill the centre with a stuffing of carrot/onion/garlic/tomato/whatever you have, then bake it. If I can get a pair of the same size I will probably give that a go.


The tomatoes are ripening up well. We've had a couple of the Watermouth (delicious) and a couple of Russian Red (as good as last year), and today I've gathered 10 Romas (enough to make a small bottle of sauce!).

This weekend I must......

1. ...find out exactly what to do with strawberry runners (although I'm confident this is Not It)


2. ...find a delicious way to serve the purple sprouting broccoli and actually cut the main head (which now looks like it's going to seed) and some of the shoots


3. ...find out how I'm supposed to know when scallopini are ready for eating

Watermelon may be ready to pop

Visitors to the garden have been most amused by my one watermelon, but I'll be the one laughing soon as I think it's almost ready for eating. I've just measured it and it's 32.5cm from the stem over the top down to the point where the flower was, the half-circumference-lengthwise if you will (that doesn't sound like a standard measurement but it's the easiest bit to measure!), and I may declare it ready if it doesn't grow by Monday (public holiday, hurrah!). I also think that the tendrils are browning and the underside is more yellow than it was, but this may be my brain playing tricks on me...

A kind reader has suggested that the vine may be in need of some assisted reproductive technology. Once the current buds are flowering I shall manually introduce them to each other and see if they take each other's fancy :)

Tops and bottoms

Apparently the bigger things are above the ground, the bigger they are below the ground. Sadly this means that most of the remaining bulbs in the BBQ row will therefore be tiddly. On a brighter note, it bodes well for the garlic from the organic bulbs!

On the courgette front, my two plants can't seem to find a middle ground between underdeveloped-with-blossom-rot (I didn't see this at all last year), and marrows. No powdery mildew though, although the chances of getting through an Auckland February without it are pretty small. I made a Zucchini loaf today - this uses 1 cup of grated courgette which didn't make much of a dent in the marrow.

I think I can see my first scallopini too!

I've had to remove a few tomatoes with blossom rot, but luckily only a few, and there's an orange tomato on nearly every plant now. This morning the nets went on the plants.

Harvest indecision

Garlic - this is really confusing. Some references say to harvest once the tops fall over, but others say that's too late and you should harvest when the tops start turning brown. Not much help, especially as I have some that have now fallen over but are still green! I also hope I haven't got the watering regime all wrong, I found one reference that said they need lots of water in the last month, and another that says you shouldn't water at all in the last fortnight before harvest - I've been watering every other day for the last month. The organic bulbs have only just started to fall over the last day or so, while the bulbs from the garden centre have all been lounging around on the soil pretty much all month now:


I think tomorrow I will pull up a few from the other row (which are all pretty much brown tops now) plus a comparison bulb from the green-top row in the picture above, and see what they look like.

Watermelon - still getting bigger every day. I think these should take around 75 days, and the vine was transplanted 2 November, which brings us to 16 January, ie around now. I found these extra indicators of ripeness online - the tendrils on the stem near the melon turn brown, the surface becomes dull, rough and hard, and the surface sitting on the ground turns from green to yellow. Not sure that last one applies as mine is very pale green but lighter on the underside, and has been all along. However the surface is definitely firmer now, so I guess it's getting there. As it looks like this might be the only one I get, I don't want to harvest it too early or too late!


Purple Sprouting Broccoli - I believe the theory here is to harvest the head then leave the rest of the plant - harvesting the head encourages the individual shoots up the side, hence the "sprouting" in the name. No idea when you harvest the head though - at the moment the stalk isn't as tall as what you would see when buying a cut one, but perhaps that's leaving it too late if you want the sprouting to happen. Aaargggh!


Yes, the caterpillars do appear to be well fed, don't they? At least they appear to prefer the leaves to the pretty purple bits.

And lastly, my most exciting discovery of the day:


Roma for the win! You may notice that this is on the plant that has collapsed the most, which is why all the bunches are very close to the ground. I'll be putting some netting around that one tomorrow to keep the birds away from My Precious.

Update on the tomatoes

I spent a bit of time tidying up the tomatoes this morning - I have planted them a smidge too close together, they all seem to have quite vigorous foliage, and they're starting to fall backwards onto the lemon tree despite the sturdy 1.5m metal-core stakes, so the end result is one big tangled mess!


This is of course Not Good - airflow being particularly important given Auckland's humidity - so I have retied each plant to its more-firmly-bashed-in stake and cut off a lot of leaves close to the ground (and accidentally lopped off the main stem of one of the Russian Reds - still, it looked like something had been a-nibbling on the tomatoes of that stem, probably the caterpillars I found scooting their way across the soil beneath).

Variety by variety:

Green Zebra - would be around 1.5m if they would just grow straight up! One of them is growing in a complete Y shape with the fork not far from the gound, so hopefully it can support itself throughout the upcoming ripening weeks. These are very pretty so far.



Next to the pair of Green Zebras are my Russian Reds, a repeat sowing from last year. These seem to be much sturdier than last year but I think this is because I have the laterals under control. They're barely a metre tall though, so quite squat compared to the others. You can see in the photo that something's been nibbling on the leaves.



Next in line is the Watermouth. Now that I have pruned a bit I can actually see these two plants. They are very nice, 1.5m tall, and seem to behave themselves compared to the others.



Rounding the corner are my problem children, the three Romas. These disregard every suggestion I give them as to how they should grow, preferring instead to sag to the ground and get themselves tangled up with each other and their neighbours. They had better pass the taste test when saucing time rolls around or I'll be giving them a miss next year...



Lastly are my two San Marzano. These are tall ones as well, almost 1.5m, and are fruiting in attractive bunches. I can't wait to see if they taste good!



I don't think any of them will make the mid-January harvest time. They're getting to the right size, but no sign of any of them starting to ripen up as yet. I do need to get organised with netting of some kind now though - I'm on to you this year, birds!!

Watermelon progress

The watermelon seems to be doubling in size every couple of days. Pity there's only one watermelon on the vine doing anything! Several of the flowers have a baby watermelon at their base but they don't seem to be developing at all.

Five days ago:


Today:


The vine seems to attract the mosquitoes for some reason - there's always a cloud of midges that fly up if you disturb it, and there's always several sitting on the melon itself.