"Balmoral Park" farm garden

My garden has been quite neglected this summer, partly because of the weather, lots of rain, lots of garden pests and partly because there has been a lot of other things going on. All in all I am pleasantly surprised at how much it continues to provide for us. My latest forage found; The first cucumbers of the summer  Loads of little Cherry Roma tomatoes, these have done really well and have not been affected bu the fruit fly at all. the vines look pretty ragged but the tomatoes are still lovely. There are also these larger yellow tomatoes, I'm not sure what variety they are but will grow them again as they have also done well and been quite fruit fly resistant. The second crop of zucchini are doing quite well despite the ravages of the 28 spotted ladybird. The beans have bean amazing, mostly from one self sown climbing bean and they have been reproducing heavily for months now. There are also are few bush beans that are now producing.   The Raspberries continue to ...

Peter has not been well and it has been suggested that he try a diet that does not include wheat or sugar. In many ways this is not a huge issue as we don't eat much processed food at all but the things that have been difficult have been providing a nutritional, sweet snack that doesn't contain wheat or sugar and the quick meals that include Pasta and bread. I know you can buy wheat free pasta but the stuff I have tried in the past is really not very appetising, so we would rather do without. The good news is that he can eat Spelt, Chick pea flour and coconut flour. So bread and pasta are back on the menu, as soon as i have a chance to get some made. I actually really like pasta made with spelt flour.  http://balmoralparkgarden.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/spelt-pasta.html   so think that I will make a few batches and get some in the freezer so we can still have it for a quick meal. I am baking my first whole spelt loaf a bit later on today. So far it looks fine, just hasn...

My quest to eat seasonally and from our garden has brought some huge changes in the way that we eat. No more thoughtless following of popular recipes and food trends. If its not in season we don't have it. If there is food here that needs to be eaten we don't buy in other stuff. Now don't think we are in any way deprived by this, I would say we eat better than ever, our diet is very varied, my cooking is more creative, more driven by ideas and less by recipes and neither of us has had so much as a sniffle in the past twelve months. Having said that I must admit to be just a teeny bit over mandarins, (we've been eating them since July) Now there are so many berries the leftover citrus doesn't really rate a mention. The Mulberries are in full production and just look at these strawberries. Luxury! What I was  really thinking about when I started this post was the potatoes. We have never been huge potato eaters but I would have always had potatoes in the house...

I apologise for the pun but I am very excited about my Berries this year. We try to be self sufficient in fruit and this year we are succeeding beyond our wildest dreams. In fact we still have a store of summer fruits in the freezer and in bottles. Last year we had no citrus fruit to speak of and were hanging out for the summer fruits. The Mulberries were the first to ripen and we had a magnificent crop. We seemed to be picking Mulberries for months. Berries are such a treat and impossible to buy decent quality except for strawberries in my opinion. When there is a glut of strawberries the ones in the supermarket are often quite nice. However who knows what chemicals and pesticides are on them, so best to steer clear of them I think. There was one sad old Mulberry tree here when we came, not in the yard but out near the back shed. We have pruned it a bit and I have put the ducks pond underneath it so it gets a bit of food and water from that, otherwise it is on its own. It has respo...

In my quest to grow all my own herbs and spices http://balmoralparkgarden.blogspot.com/2010/12/inventory-of-herbs-and-spices.html   I decided to try and grow our ginger. I think i was prompted to do this after paying almost $30 a kilo for some rather ordinary ginger one day. My plants came up alright and seemed to be growing quite well. Naughty Elle dug up some of the plants in the garden but I had some growing in a pot. All of sudden it has dried right off so I thought I should harvest it. I was a bit disappointed only about 300 grams, but it does look lovely. I have already put a few pieces in pots under the cold frame so hopefully I will get a head start for next year and Elle will have stopped digging. The Turmeric was even more disappointing, nothing to harvest, but I have also planted some of that in pots for next summer as well. My cold frame is chock full of things I am trying to start, maybe I will need a bigger one.

It is still such a pleasant surprise to me to wake up to grey cloudy skies and a real rainy day. In the first four years we were here we did not have one rainy day. The thing is though that I don't factor rainy days into my thinking anymore. The idea of putting off things to do on a rainy day had become obsolete. So today I had planned to spend the afternoon in the garden, after I finished off some work. As I had a big day at work yesterday and was away from dawn to dark there would be many things that needed picking, pruning, weeding or otherwise attending to. However it is cool and very damp so a gardening day is not to be although I will need to venture out and pick the tomatoes and Zucchinis as they are in full swing and  really need to be picked every day. Last year my neighbour brought over a magnificent tomato that one of his mates had grown. It was huge and delicious. I saved the seeds and grew some. It has grown true to type and is producing amazing tomatoes. I thin...

I have had a run of entertaining over the last few days. A friend came over for lunch on Friday and then we had houseguests for the weekend. I've always enjoyed cooking for friends and family but the enjoyment is significantly magnified when I am cooking and serving almost all of our own produce. Friday lunch was a zucchini quiche, made with the little rond de Nice zucchinis that I sliced and fried with their flowers attached before adding them to the quiche, of course I used our own fresh eggs. The finished product, pretty and delicious, served with a potato salad, homemade mayonnaise and tomatoes. Saturday morning we went to the Orange Farmers Market and derived considerable pleasure from the things we no longer need to buy, fruit, preserves, bread and vegetables. It was interesting to see that there are now two stalls selling organic garlic, maybe I will have to think about if  growing this on a large scale is still a good idea, perhaps I was too slow! We really only needed t...

I have to admit I am not a very scientific gardener. I tend to absorb huge amounts of information, then apply things a bit randomly while building on what works. I like the idea of companion planting and I have some charts somewhere but what I really like is when I can actually see the companion relationship working. I read once that the Native American people used to plant beans, pumpkins and corn together. The corn provided some support for the pumpkin and beans and they all shaded and sheltered each other. In our  very hot and usually dry summers I thought this was an idea that might actually work. In the heat of the summer our vegetables quite often "cook" on the vines. I planted climbing  beans on the trellis on two sides, rows of corn in between and pumpkins in the corner. It has become a veritable jungle. A happy and productive jungle. The corn is over two metres tall and loaded with yummy cobs, the beans have grown up the sides and over the top of the trellis, shading...

One of my New Years Resolutions is to have a dinner party once a month. A real dinner party, clean the silver, get out the serviettes, light the candles sort of dinner. We have all these things that we rarely use so i plan to use them and make a regular social occasion.  The plan is to invite about four people over. A dinner party for six. Having made the resolution I was then humming and haaing about it, so finally on Wednesday rang some neighbours and issued the invitation for Saturday night, last  night. On the menu was almost entirely food we have produced ourselves. Entree Fried Zucchini flowers served with a garlic aoili, sage leaves and Fried Haloumi ( only the haloumi not from our place)  Main Course Roast turkey, stuffed with bacon, peach chutney and sage served with gravy, roast new potatoes, parsnips and Zucchini and steamed beans (just the bacon not from our place) Dessert A sort of Eton Mess, in a long glass I layered a light creamy custard with Mul...

We have had quite a lot of interest in our poultry lately and have a waiting list for chickens. Instead of selling them I have been trading them. One of my work clients from Orange wanted three chickens for her children so we swapped them for a bag of  chicken starter  food. the deal is that if they turn our to be roosters they can bring them back and swap them for a pullet. Have not heard from them so hopefully they are all pullets. We have actually had a greater proportion of pullets than roosters in the last few batches. There is one little rooster, only about eight weeks old and crowing already, looks and sounds very funny. Our neighbours wanted six chickens as well and they took them last week. They are farmers so I said they could swap me some mulch hay or some wheat. Patrick turned up on Saturday with his ute loaded with three big round bales of hay and two bags of feed wheat. A pretty fair trade I think. We usually buy mulch hay for the garden and this will go a long w...

One of the attractions of this place was that it had some old established fruit trees. Two Oranges, two mandarins, a lemon, two pears, a fig, a mulberry and a passionfruit vine. The basis of our orchard. I have planted additional trees and vines to try and see if we can be self sufficient in fruit for a whole year. At the moment I feel this is within our reach. We have been eating mulberries from the three trees for about six weeks now, there are two very small new trees and one older trees that has been quite neglected. All of them provided loads of berries for eating fresh and preserving. I have put a lot in the freezer and made a small amount of jam. The Mulberries have been supplemented by strawberries, a few raspberries, some passssionfruit and rhubarb. If you look really hard you can still find a few mulberries on the trees although the little turkeys discovered they could fly up into the tree that is outside the yard and cleaned most of those up. Just as they are finishing the...