Monday 17 September 2007

Changing Seasons

We are picking the last of our tiny broccoli shoots and instead of broccoli pie, broccoli salad and broccoli fried rice soon it will be zucchini pie, zucchini fritters, zucchini fritters and zucchini chocolate cake (see Kitchen Gardeners International) for a great recipe.

We had a great winter crop from our small garden.
We are picking daikon, which turns out to be great in vegetable soups or just sliced and sprinkle with an asian soy, chinese wine , chilli and ginger dressing.
I have just found a grated daikon vegetable fritter recipe to try.

We have beetroot now so I shall cook some up and blend into the hummus recipe, probably with some toasted cumin seeds to add a little spicyness.

We grew too much mustard greens so next year just 2 or 3 plants, but the preserved mustard greens were a great tangy meal starter.
We had loads of parsley and coriander and I have frozen some for curries or casseroles. I have saved some for days when its too hot to go outside and a little green flavour is needed in a recipe.

Our most useful planting this winter past was 1/2 a packet of Silverbeet ERBETTE from select organic seeds.It has a pale green leaf, thin rib, excellent texture and flavour and can be grown all year.
I just kept picking the outside leaves , blanching them and the spinach pies just kept rolling out of the oven. I have not tired of this mildly flavoured spinach, and the cold pies are great for a quick lunch with a salad.

Our spring onions lasted us all winter and for the first time there are some left to go to seed.

We have a huge range of things we would like to grow this summer.
Okra, I love and have not grown before.
Our most successful tomatoes last year were graf zeppelin and the Italian cherry tomato varieties.

There are 40 packets of seeds sitting beside me, our food for summer.
Will we be able to water them? It is not likely we will have any rain!
I am so pleased a lot of our winter food came from the garden.

What will summer bring ?

Brett has posted his Grandmothers prize winning sponge recipe in gardeners gastronomy so if our crops fail at least we will be able to eat sponge cake with farm cream and some berries. YUMMY

2 comments:

Kate said...

I will give you some okra seedlings soon. Your garden is great and it would be good to have a few people over so you and Bob can show them around.

Pattie Baker said...

I am sad to leave zucchini behind here in the southern United States as we enter our fall, although the glorious return of the lettuces in cause for great celebration. By tapping in to your blog and enjoying the opposite-season crops yet again, I can truly have a four-season garden!