Garden Update

Lots of harvesting to be done. The olive tree is one but I am not doing so as I am not keen to do any pickling : Been harvesting these ripening hot chillies. They are really hot stuff.

My beautiful protea pink ice in bloom in its pot.

Gorgeous aloe vera. Harvested for some steamed dessert with sugar.

Harvesting...harvesting...

Finally. My eggplant is a late bloomer. It is already autumn and it has put on a good number of eggplants after flowering heavily. There are a total of at least 7 eggplants growing though two of the largest had been plucked by my dog. How frustrating! Well, it's not like I am going to eat all the eggplants but the sight of having a plant loaded with growing eggplants is so wonderful. The worst thing is he did not even eat the eggplant, just simply plucked and chewed it all over the ground! I have been harvesting purple king beans, hot chilli and some chilli padis.

And this purple pak choy is looking irresistible. I took a picture of it before any caterpillars come and make holes in the leaves.

Harvested two bittermelons and loads of green chilli fire. These are the 3rd and 4th melons and there are two baby ones growing. Yay!!!!!!!!

The mother strawberry plant continually produces strawberries for me to pick...here's big two yummy ones.

Eggplant with Pork, Thai Basil & Coriander.

For lunch today, I just had one dish involving my harvested eggplant supreme...impromptu recipe! Eggplants go fantastic with pork mince and pork mince goes excellent with thai basil and coriander... Ingredients : Eggplant sliced into 1cm thickness and fried in a pan with some olive oil. Minced pork. Tea tree mushroom (washed, soaked lightly, remove stubs, retain a little water). Garlic chopped, coriander chopped, thai basil leafed, chilli cut. 1-2 tsp of Japanese miso paste. 1 tsp of oyster sauce. 1. Fry the eggplant slices in a pan of heated olive oil. Remove. 2. Fry garlic in more oil, add pork, miso paste and oyster sauce. 3. Continue frying, add mushrooms with its water. Simmer. 4. Return eggplant slices to pan to allow them to soak in sauce. 5. Add thai basil, chilli and coriander. 6. Stir fry more and remove from heat.

Tea tree mushrooms (available in Asian grocery shops) Thai basil, coriander, hot chilli harvested from garden.

The final look...taste even yummier!

Chillies, Herbs & Vege.

My original pot of rosemary recently was in a poor state. The leaves were looking really skinny compared to its daughter rosemary shrub at the patch next to the garage. Compare them at http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/11/patch-next-to-garage-fresh-faces.html . I was not sure if it was too dry or the pot has gotten too small. I had actually gave it a root trim (See http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/11/catching.html) somtime back before putting it back into the same pot, so I believed it had got too dry in the hot weather. I began watering it more often which is quite strange as rosemary prefers it dry. Deciding to dunk n drench the whole pot in charlie carp helped. It looked better since : I gave my second season thyme a good hair cut and it came back beautifully again :

Finally the three skyscraper-tall chilli padis are begining to fruit after some trouble with sickly spotted leaves :

And the sickly-looking chilli fire (see http://organic-is-better.blogspot.com/2009/12/garden-bird-rescue-heronswood-garden.html )which I bought from bunnings is also producing chillies :

And my Nellie Kelly hot chilli are fruiting its heads off :

Thai basil has also grown and is smelling glorious. Maybe this is the first success I am having. However they are seasonal as they produce flower heads very easily and I have to keep up with the deflowering :

A recent hair cut for my vietnamese mint also see them coming back beautifully. The logic 'kill the top and leave the roots' does work :

Nice bunch of crisp buk choy for lunch :

Loving these buk choys :

Windy and 43 Deg Celsius.

As the blog title says, windy and 43 deg celsius. Thank God for weather forecasts, I have done all the necessary preparations (putting up shades, watering, weeding...) before today. Besides all the light colour tablecloths, white cloths, I even borrowed hubby's white shirts! This morning I woke up not having the anxiety of a charred garden but leisurely did whatever little things I needed to do. Prayerfully, no casualty when evening arrives.

Back garden.

Front patio and front garden.

Sweet potato creepers taking over the mulching around the golden sheens.

New candidate in the garden. I decided to plant Diggers' Pioneer bean stringless (above pic) in this empty pot of mix (where my daisies used to be). A black pot over them to create a dark environment and moist potting mix saw them germinating just in four days!

Under the netting and shade, my buk choy (purple) and buk choy (regular green) are growing well. One silver beet among them as well and the bitter melon vine on the trellis.

Two more silver beets growing next to the lemon grass and under the shelther of the grevillea tree.

Once again a picture of the four peaches on my peach (pixzee). Just cannot stop snapping a picture of them. Beautiful considering it is its first season!

One eggplant supreme out in sight!!!

Nellie Kelly's hot chillies growing larger and more coming!

One bunch of tomato silvery fir ripening! Very exciting as this year, I managed to get the tomatoes to grow larger and it is really successful considering this one is potted.

I picked this first ripened and large-sized tomato two days ago in case it gets too scorched by the sun.

Also picked a large bowl of common mint yesterday morning. Time for some mint tea and omelette.