Hugh's tomatoes, mostly

I guess there are a couple of good things about Hugh's garden being so incredibly windy and one of them is that no fungus could ever land here! Someone, probably me, needs to write down what does and does not like growing in windy places in our Mediterranean climate. Beans don't seem to like it at all and the poor zuccini plants are struggling to just stay put but the tomatoes are quite happy, having developed very strong trunks and limbs in order to survive their tall growth habits. Hugh is of the mind that says let them tough it out, don't pander to your plants.... and in his garden anything not able to thrive in the conditions is pulled up and thrown in the compost bin.

 

 

Well, it seems to be working because these tomatoes have each set full hands of fruit,  up to 20 per length, as you can see at left, and there is also a bunch of more than 50, in various stages of ripeness, below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Tigerellas are doing really well too... in fact all except the roma are.... and guess where the roma is now! It has made way for more basil and  capsicums! Hugh grows herbs densely between and even under the tomatoes and it is so nice to be able to go out and pick such a variety of fresh herbs for a meal. He prunes off all the lower leaves of the tomatoes to keep them away from the soil, to reduce any diseases. We are also daily picking and cooking the bigger leaves of the amaranth, adding them to soups, vegetable combo dishes and pasta.

The amaranth is now nearly head high. It is not too late to sow amaranth... please, if you are in the southern hemisphere, sow it now and enjoy eating the leaves right through late summer and autumn, and then you will be rewarded with long flowing tassels of brilliantly coloured flowers followed by seeds.

 

 

 

We put the amaranth in the middle of the salad garden so it would shade the soft thing, like lettuce and the new leaves of the rainbow chard, during the heat of the day and this works well as amaranth, like okra, loves the heat.

One of the sunflowers has found something to rest on when it is windy ... the end of the clothes line.

 

 

 

All this talk of food made me realise it was lunch time so I had a plate of left-over vegetables, plus a bit of this crocodile pate, made here in Adelaide from crocodiles farmed in the Northern Territory. It is more delicious than you can imagine and much lighter than pate made from livers.

Now I am off to the kitchen to make a banana cake with bananas from northern NSW.... but who can live without bananas? And if Hugh buys crocodile pate, it would an awful waste not to eat it!

Eat local.... mostly.