Another Year...Almost!

 

Time fly's bye and keeping up with this blog seems to be a distant memory.

I am slighty better at posting on instagam and you can find me there as @diaryofakitchengarden if you would like to follow along.

 

Last year was a very productive time with the garden and a large amount of preserving. This year I have not planted anywhere as much, as I have a lot of preserved food still unused from last year.

 

The past few weeks we have had a huge out of control bushfire ravaging our beautiful Grampians National Park. I have lived with a view of the Grampians all my life and worked in Halls Gap for 18 years. In the past 20 years fires in the Grampians have increased, killing wildlife, along with rare and endagered plants and insects. 

May this year will mark my 45th year of living in my home and garden. I built the house, moving in in 1980. The entire garden has been planted by me and as I am growing older so are my fruit trees and other plants. The garden is becoming too large for me to keep up with and the next few years will be spent downsizing to a more managable size. I still have a recipe book to write so maybe it's time to begin. 

Happy New Year to all who come across my writings. I plan on spending 2025 considering the impact of climate change on my small space on the earth and what I can do to lessen my impact on our precious earth. 

Severe Weather Warnings

Yesterday Vic Emergency issued a severe weather warning alert for most parts of Victoria. Late yesterday after the press conference I emptied my sandbags from last years floods as the hessian had rotted form holding the wet sand and filled new plastic mesh bags. The shed and the courtyard are sandbagged anticipating flooding. Fingers crossed that that won't happen.

 

Currently we have steady rain which I am hoping won't become the severe thunderstorms that were predicted. We will just have to wait and see.

 

The garden is slowly producing, I picked my first Tommy Toe tomatoes yesterday and if the rain abates for a while I will gatherer a few more for my dinner tonight.

 

This is the first year that I am growing Hungarian Hot Wax Peppers, they seem to produce well as the plants are quite small and I have picked several this afternoon. I have a few green chilies on a plant from last year and a couple of jalapenos so I have picked those as well. Tomorrow I shall pickle them.

 

The garden has been slow this year although we have had several hot days so far it has been quite mild most days and with the rain watering has not been the full on job it normally is this time of the year.

 

The potatoes have almost grown more than half way up the fence so I am still wondering if there is much growing under the soil. They are currently flowering and I am being patient and waiting for them to die back before I investigate the situation. Seed sewing for winter veg is in the plans for this month so there is always something to do.

 

I am very aware of the 'Hungry Gap' so lets see if this year I can plan my plantings better.

 

The rain is now beginning to team down so I hope it slows down a bit.

 

Time to watch the evening news and see how the rest of the state is faring.     

 

      

 

 

Warm Already

 

I am not a great fan of hot weather and as its now officially summer I will have to accept that the days will be getting warmer. Today is expected to be in the mid 30's.

The Rainbow Lorikeet's are already beginning to eat the green pears so I have begun to bag them.

 I bought these bags from The Diggers Club a few years ago. 

The apples are setting fruit. Normally I net the entire tree but it is not a great success as there are 3 different apples grafted onto the one tree and they all ripen at different times. This year I will try to bag some of the fruit.

I have planted my old vegetable garden in potatoes. Nicola, Dutch Creams and Desiree.

I am not certain how successful the planting will be as they are growing at an astounding rate, the stems are over 2 foot high and I am wondering if there are potatoes under the soil as so much energy has gone into foliage growth,

Two of the garden beds are almost finished planting. I transplanted some basil seedlings last night.

One of the other beds has berry suckers so they will need to be dealt with. But I am slowly getting somewhere with it. It has been a big job to put the garden back into place after having it dug up last year.

 

If the potato harvest is a success I will need to find some new ideas of how to use them.

A Long Time Between Drinks

Well I won't count how many years it’s been since I posted here last but it has been ' a long time between drinks'

The garden has grown along with its many challenges. My last summer’s growing season saw most of my vegetable garden dug in to heaps of dirt and trenches trying to kill a severe root invasion by my Hicks Fancy mulberry tree that had searched out the most watered part of the garden.

During that time I rented a garden bed at the community garden that has relocated just over the road from me.

I have been doing a huge amount of water bath preserving and learning the new to me skill of pressure canning. As with most things, I share my culinary adventures with my son Coen and as usual I am not great at writing recipes or instructions.

To rectify this I am planning to write a book in the future for Coen and I feel that it's time to begin to write it all down here. 

So stay tuned and let’s see if I can stay committed to resurrecting this blog after so many years of absence.  

Windy

It is hard to believe that it is almost three and a half years since I posted anything here...time fly's bye. I have been doing lots of gardening and cooking in those years, but not posting anything here. My climate here on the edge of the Wimmera is becoming far more severe. It is the end of spring and we have already had days in the high 30's, yesterday was 37.8c and very windy. Although the garden does it tough on days like yesterday, the risk of fire is on everyone's mind.
This is what greeted me this morning, the grapes have been blown off the pergola from yesterdays fierce wind. I am a bit late planting my summer garden this year, but I do have a few plants in and will plant out the empty beds over the weekend. I hope to be more inspired to post more often here over the coming months.  

Spiced Cumquat Chutney

The Cumquat tree is laden with fruit so I thought that for a change I would make a citrus chutney.

Spiced Cumquat Chutney

Ingredients

2 cups cumquat's, halved and deseeded

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup orange or mandarin juice

1/4 cup finely chopped shallots

1 tbsp grated fresh ginger

2 star anise

3 cloves

8 cardamom pods

1/4 cinnamon stick

1 tbls orange blossom water

Method

Place all chutney ingredients in a saucepan, bring to boil, then turn heat down and simmer for 20 minutes. Add the orange blossom water and bottle while hot.

Seven New Citrus Trees

It has been a cold and wet winter here this year. Although the rain has been welcome, it has not been any incentive to venture outside into the garden. So as one can expect due to a previous lack of enthusiasm there is a lot of work to be done outside at the moment.
With so many deciduous trees in my garden it is very bare looking over the winter months. In an effort to 'green up' my fence lines I have been planting citrus trees. Five oranges in the front garden two years ago are now becoming established and I am hoping for some extra fruit this year. My back fence is very bare but there is little room due to well established fruit trees to plant anything that will become bushy. So I decided to espalier citrus along the fence. I am aware that they will compete for root space and nutrition with the other trees but one can only try and see what happens.
So today I planted out seven new citrus trees. One Lemonade, two Emperor Mandarins that have been in pots in the Courtyard for around ten years. One Tahitian Lime, a Summer fruiting Orange. a Seedless Japanese Mandarin and a Ruby Grapefruit. That takes the number of citrus that I have planted out in the garden to 20!

Dry!

It is just so dry here at the present time that I don't feel at all inspired to walk around the garden with my camera in hand. I have been watering the garden since September last year and with no sign of any Autumn rain I am left to wonder how much longer I am going to have this daily ritual. We now have watering restrictions forced on us as our water supply is below 50% capacity. Normally this time of the year I would be planting new seedlings, but at the moment I don't feel at all inspired.
There is produce still in the garden, I have apples, pears, crab apples and a few tangelos beginning to ripen. Twelve years of previous drought is not far from my mind.........I hope that it rains soon!     

Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain!

Lovely soaking rain fell over the weekend, everything feels fresh and lush. Although this may not be unusual for certain areas, here in the Wimmera it has been a very poor season. We have been facing drought conditions and record breaking high temperatures. Farmers have had to face crop failures due to lack of rain. There will be no need to water over the coming days, but it has made me contemplate how the introduction of water restrictions would impact on my own garden. Since the end of a previous 12 year drought in 2010 I have made a lot of changes to my garden and put in a lot more fruit and citrus trees. As they are not yet fully established, they take a reasonable amount of water. Quickly forgotten were all the buckets that I carried trying to keep it all alive over the severe restriction that were in place at the time. Now I look around and wonder if I would have the energy for that now. I still use the grey water from my washing machine on 5 orange trees that I have planted down the side of the house in an old rose garden. But my new green machine uses so little water I am afraid that I would not be able to keep anything else going with the water. It is not yet doom and gloom but in the back of my mind I feel that I should maybe stop planting out so many new gardens.

The garden is very productive at the moment we have potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants. capsicums, grapes and satsuma plums to eat. We are sharing the grapes with the birds but the pergola is laden and there is enough for everyone.   

Years End

It is hot again here today. I am not even going to bother looking up what the forecast temperature is, I just know that it is hot and I am over it!
Most of my time seems to be taken up with watering. I should not complain, as at least I am on town water and as yet there are no restrictions on using it. I live in the street that has the water stand pipe. Every day for weeks I see the water carter there up to 6 times a day collecting drinking water to take to people who live outside of town and rely on tank water collected from run off from their roof. An indication on how little rain we have had this year.   
This is the season of thunderstorms and although they can bring much needed rain. They also start most of the bush fires that we have here in Southern Australia. My local Grampians Region has seen many significant fires these past years and the loss of homes on Christmas Day in the Otways fires is heart rendering.   
Happy New Year to everyone and may you stay cool and safe.