What's For Dinner? (First Tomato Harvest)

You couldn't possibly have thought I'd let you have the fourth day of our ongoing Project in Brisbane. While we've been spoiled to some beautiful gardens from an urban paradise, things around my vegetable garden aren't looking too shabby either.  While this certainly isn't everything going into tonight's dish, our first tomato harvest proudly calls for another installment of What's For Dinner?

If you've been keeping up to date with the progress of vegetables in my garden, you'll remember these tomato plants mentioned with some delicious radishes.  The raised bed these tomatoes are flourishing in used to hold a papaya tree (also self-sewn at some point years ago) that rendered this space somewhat useless.  That was, until I dug out the papaya tree (they don't do so well in this spot anyway) and made room for new plants to grow.

Just before the beginning of winter (sometime in May) I planted broccoli in this bed, and it's already come and gone.  While the broccoli was first growing, tomato plants galore began appearing and luckily I know what these little guys look like, so out came the weeds and the tomatoes remained.

It's now taken nearly four months for these plants to really develop and begin producing proficiently, but alas, our first harvest.  I know this might not look like a lot of tomatoes, but remember I'm just a self-sufficient gardener.  This load should be plenty to mix in with a salad tonight, for two.

Happy gardening!

Name That Vegetable

One of the beauties of composting is that you never know what seedlings and starts will perk up out of the soil on a daily basis.  Sometimes these volunteers are not so good for your veggie garden, like papaya or the rampant lemon grass (both better in the ground or lemon grass in a pot).  But sometimes you get surprised with wonderful veggies that addmoregreen.  Take this peculiar squash-like vegetable for example...

I added some of this greatness to the pizza I made tonight, the only issue is that I have no idea what the vegetable actually is.  When I initially let the volunteer take off, I thought the cotyledons resembled those of a cucumber...boy was I wrong!  So, I need some help on this one if anyone knows what vegetable this is...in any case it was delicious!

What's For Dinner?

Before preparing dinner every day I step out to the garden first to check what fresh veggies I can base my dish upon for the evening.  Tonight, what's for dinner? GREENS!

These greens were all planted about a month ago from seedlings and they've taken off...I can easily pick from any of the varieties daily.

Above we have Silverbeet, Asian Cabbage Tokyo Bekana (crazy name I know), Basil, and more Cabbage.

Rocket and Bok Choy in the other bed.  I've been adding Rocket to my hummus lately and it's delicious.

Tonight I'm going to add Bok Choy, Silverbeet, and Asian Cabbage Tokyo Bekana to a yummy pasta dish...hope my friends coming over enjoy it!

UPDATE

Friday 13 September, 2013

This post has now become the first in a series focused on some of my daily harvests from the garden.

Check out What's For Dinner?

The Power of Juicing

Fruits and vegetables are an integral part of your daily intake; we've heard all the rules about how many and when specifically during the day, but to me what really matters is just making sure they go in one way or another.  If you have ten minutes to spare each day for the sake of consuming something delicious, juicing could be a good way for you to spend that time.  Here's an example of what goes into my juice...

The workstation: cutting board with heaps of delicious fruits and vegetables, compost bucket for food scraps, power juicer, juice collector (I prefer a measuring cup).

A good portion of what you see comes from the gardens and fruit trees at home: chives, kale, silverbeet, starfruit, roma tomatoes.  The oranges and carrots are both organic juicing products from local health food stores.

And a delicious finished product.  I'm not a nutritionist, and don't want to pretend to be a preacher of healthy living secrets...I am, however, a very healthy vegetarian who experiences the delight of consuming fresh fruits and vegetables first hand.  You can read more about what other's have to say here.

Back To Life

After 17 weeks away from home you can only imagine the state my garden was in.  Although there was a couple renting the house for the better part of 14 weeks, and although they seem to be hobby gardeners, there was certainly plenty of work to be done.  It's now been almost 8 weeks without a serious rain here in Northern NSW and man does the soil tell the story...rock solid. Another surprise I came across were ashes from the fireplace that had been added to the raised beds.  Turns out ash can be used as a great input for compost as it adds valuable nutrients and can deter insects & weeds from accumulating.  I started by forking the beds in order to loosen the soil and prepare all the areas where I planned to @addmoregreen.

Below is a display of how we have the compost setup at home.  On the left are two small trash bins that are used on a daily basis for kitchen scraps such as orange peels and egg shells (only Guy eats eggs though).  When those bins are full we add their contents (usually quite smelly) to one of the larger bins on the right.  The triangle shaped bin takes much longer to process as the contents sit stagnant for much of the time unless you have a compost turning tool.  The tumbler on the right is our greatest piece of compost equipment.  When I go out each day with the kitchen scraps to add to the trash bins I give the tumbler a good six or seven spins which speeds up the process...nearly twice as fast as the triangle bin.

Next, I took the contents from the tumbler which were ready after our 17 weeks away from home and added them to the areas I already forked.  To this mix I added Yates Dynamic Lifter and Searles 5 In 1.  With freshly forked soil and natural fertilisers added to the beds, I stirred it all together using my garden fork again and then gave the beds a nice drink of water to settle the fertilisers in place.  Now that the soil was ready for new plants I spread out the "starts" in an arrangement that would allow each to get an optimal amount of sun while also working off each other in a permaculture sense (basil near the tomatoes, etc.).

And finally, I got my hands dirty...NO GLOVES!

I hope this post has been a great example for turning your old and worn out soil into something more useful and beautiful.  Let us know what you thought about this post in the comments section.  Take a peek at the pictures below to see exactly what I added to the garden.  Also, be sure to check back for upcoming posts as I will be posting more pictures as all of these plants progress!

Lettuce- Mignonette Mixed

Found these vines growing in two different pots when I got home.  Initially, I thought it was pumpkin but a friend added her input stating the vines are watermelon...I suppose we will have to wait and see when these plants begin to produce.

Tomatoes!

Lettuce- Mixed

Roma Tomatoes

Silverbeet- Fordhook Giant

Eggplant

Deep Roots

Growing up I always enjoyed the fresh veggies my parents grew on our deck.  Visiting home for the weekend I was again pleased to see some delicious greens in their same spot...thanks Mom and Dad for teaching me how to @addmoregreen