Raspberries!

Back in October, I planted some raspberries; not really expecting them to do much. But they have gone very well over this summer (we really have been blessed with next-to-perfect berry growing conditions!), and I have been picking berries!

Raspberries are my absolute favourite berry. They are just the right combination of sweet and tart and they taste good on their own or with almost anything else! For example, today I made delicious white chocolate and raspberry muffins, which were magnificent (and extremely dangerous!!!)

Because I didn't tie the raspberry canes, they droop down over the path, which is a bit naughty, but it does mean that the berries are hidden from birds. Next year though, when the new canes come up, I'll make sure I tie them. They have their own bed (my dad's advice, as raspberries like to send out suckers), and I'm just going to let them take over. :)

The mid-summer jungle (and harvest!)

The timing of Christmas is not the best in Australia, because the peak growing (and harvesting) time in the garden takes place when we're all busy having Christmas and New Year's and summer holidays!

So I've been doing all that, but thankfully it's also been a really good summer. We went away recently for a week and a half, which would normally spell disaster for the garden, but the weather has been wet and mild and everything is thriving! 

I'm back to work now too, which means I have to work out how to balance everything (cue the 'Sometimes Gardener' routine!), but for now, I've been pretty happy with the pickings over the last week or so:

30 cobs of delicious sweet corn.

Leeks, zucchinis, eggplants and cucumbers.

...as well as some very good-sized (and delicious!) tomatoes.

I also got some good-sized and yummy table grapes from one of my vines (the rest are still to come),

And a couple of early jalapenos:

Though I learned a valuable lesson when I heaped a chopped chilli onto my taco. They're considerably hotter than the ones I normally eat out of a jar! 

I've also continued to pick an enormous amount of blackberries; around 10 kilos to date! We've eaten them from the vine, frozen them, given them away and made jam, and we still have heaps to pick! A good year for blackberries!

Blackberries!!!

As I've mentioned before, I love to grow berries. Canberra has the perfect climate to do it, with its distinct seasonal changes. This year has been almost perfect: a very cold winter (though I don't actually like that part!) and a warm, wet spring/summer.

As I mentioned in the other post, I've already had a good blueberry and boysenberry harvest (with a few stragglers to come), and I'm excited to see some raspberries (my favourite berry!) blossoming on my new plants, but this summer belongs to the blackberry!

If you're close to my age (41), or perhaps older, you might remember being able to pick blackberries from their brambles in parks, alongside roads or down little country lanes. Of course that was before the authorities realised that they were in fact an invasive weed, and started spraying them. Pretty soon the only place you could get berries was in punnets.

Of course they still have the potential to be an invasive weed, but by golly they're delicious! So I was very happy when my parents gave me a cutting of a thornless variety to plant. I learned my lesson with the boysenberry (or should I say I am still learning it!), and only plant my bramble berries in garden beds that they are allowed to take over (they are ruthless - sending up suckers from beneath the ground as well as runners above!). My blackberry shares a garden bed with two pear trees, but so far they are getting along. I've had a good harvest every year, but this year is amazing! I gave it a pretty savage pruning in late winter, and it's gone crazy! This was one part of the plant at Christmas time:

So far this week, I've picked almost 600 grams of ripe blackberries, and I don't seem to have made a dent! Luckily, berries are easy to freeze and can be used in so many different ways. I also have a lot of volunteers to help me get through them! Anyone that turns up at my house in the next couple of weeks may be offered blackberries!

Some of the plant sticks up over the fence, so I thought it would be nice to share my berries with the neighbourhood.

As we live on a laneway, I just put up a little sign, and they help themselves.

Hopefully it brings back some memories for them, of summer days spent with purple fingers and the delicious taste of blackberries on the tongue!

The Christmas Harvest

If you're anything like me, you're pretty busy in the week leading up to Christmas, and not a great deal gets done in the garden. This year, as I didn't have to work until Christmas Eve, I did a lot of Christmas baking for gift and for our visitors on Boxing Day. I made my 'famous' shortbread, made with my late Grandmother's recipe, and highly anticipated by some members of the family; Christmas cookies, sugared peanuts (that turned out really well and were gobbled up by my spouse well before Christmas!); and Oliver and I made chocolates. I also made a yummy trifle as I do every year.

I find though, that once Christmas is done, I'm super keen to get my jobs done while I have some time off from work. So in the last four days I've been pretty busy. I did some indoor cleaning and organising, but also did a few things outside, including harvesting my first crop of apricots, which I'm confident will ripen nicely off the tree. The one I tasted was delicious, so much so that I took the ladder into the garden to make sure I picked the really high ones. I'm amazed at how big the apricot tree has grown since I planted it last year. It's easily twice the size of the apple trees in the same garden.

I also picked my first zucchini (yum!),

a bucket of potatoes (which I cooked straight away and forgot to photograph!) and in the next week or so will probably be picking several kilos of blackberries. I'll go out and take a photo of the bush tomorrow, it's amazing!

I also did a bit (OK, a lot) of weeding, tied up more tomato branches and cut off some more of the un-flowering leaves (I'm sure there's a proper name for them!). 

Grow your own breakfast

This morning, I really wanted a leek omelette. If you've never had one, I recommend you try it. I found this recipe a while back, but don't tend to use the salt, pepper or nutmeg. Just the leek is enough.

Even better is when you grow the leeks yourself.  The leeks I planted in October are just big enough for me to pick.

 So I pulled out two of those, and together with a couple of my eggs, I put together a little omelette and satisfied my craving.

Great way to start the day!

Vertical gardening

Despite having a big block, we're still always looking for more places to plant things. And I'm always trying to find ways to use the bits of stuff that Anthony collects for 'just in case we need it'.

So there were a bunch of old gutters lying around (don't get me started on why we have old gutters lying around!), and we thought it might be a good idea to experiment with some different garden arrangements.

Anthony screwed three of the pieces of guttering to the fence above my raspberry garden, on an angle one above the other so that they will (hopefully) drain OK. We then filled them up with potting mix, and planted a bunch of things, including strawberries, parsley, oregano, a chilli plant and some lemon grass.

If nothing else, it will be a good experiment. If it works, it will be a good way to do herbs (leaving me with more room for my vegies!). I do like the idea of using the unused space, and using materials that would otherwise be chucked out.

See all the yummy blackberries in the background? Can't wait until they're ripe!

I'll keep you posted about how they go.

A berry good harvest!

Super busy this weekend, but I did manage to pick some berries. A good punnet and a half of blueberries:

And the same of boysenberries:

I do so love boysenberries, but geez they're painful! If you've never grown them, they grow on branches covered in tiny little thorns that love to attach themselves to you even when you're just passing by.

We put our boysenberries in a few years ago, and then a few years later tried to take them out, but they send out underground sucker, so once they're in, they're almost impossible to remove. So I've given up and just let them grow in the little bed beside my driveway. Because they do taste very good!!!