It's Happening!!

I posted earlier that I had visions of wandering up the yard basket in hand, overflowing with home grown produce like I'd just been to a farmers market. Well it is happening!

I am so happy!!

Almost all meals have at least 2 or 3 veges picked that afternoon. We are enjoying broccoli, beans, snow peas, potatoes, carrots, bok choy, lettuce, radish and tomatoes. The first crop of zucchini will be ready by the end of the week.
I have a different variety of zucchini in the seed raiser along with yellow button squash, cucumber, iceberg lettuce, rockmelon and watermelon and sunflowers (for George!)
The corn is in the ground as are the next crop of radish and carrot. I am going to try my hand at late season potatoes, I need to get a wriggle on with that! The mushroom kit is supplying nice big mushies and the olive tree is flowering :-) Some of the bigger garlic will be ready in Sept / Oct... so very interested to see how it went.

Bok Choy and Tale of Princess #2

Well those bok choy are a little ripper!!
Long story on the gift of the bok choy seedlings, so settle down with a suitable beverage and bare with me :-)
Once upon a time the three princesses were going to Uncle Dickies farm for a week in the school holidays. Miss Princess #1 decided all her gowns were too precious and we needed to go to the Lifeline Market for suitable country attire. On arriving at the abovementioned market Princess #1 proceeded to shop with gay abandon. Princess #2 was disinterested at best. Princess #3 really didn't understand what it was all about, but selected some estate suitable outfits none the less.
At the time to hand over the gold coins (most of which was for Princess #1's purchases) Princess #2 produces several items for a newborn baby boy. ummmmmmmm hello??
They were for our neighbours newborn son Bobby D. (real name Robert David) but we have christened him Bobby D. She moves in mysterious ways our Princess #2 - bless her cotton socks.
In return for the clothes for Bobby D, his dad gave us 12 bok choy seedlings (is that like jack and beanstalk? - oh whole other fairy tale - sorry - back on track) - honestly guys we didn't want anything!! So I hope you enjoyed the tale, and can I tell you those bok choy grow quick and fast!

Today we picked the two biggest to have with dinner. I am trying to menu plan around the supply - but omg how much bok choy can a princess bare! I coated pork cutlets with 1/3 cup oyster sauce and olive oil and after they were cooked, I added the bok choy and 1/3 cup of soy sauce and 2 tbsp of honey to the pan. Add sweet chilli sauce to the plated finish to your taste :-)

Discoveries!!

Two discoveries over the weekend .....
Two of my potatoe bushes died -just up and died! The rest in that patch are still merrily growing away. I pulled them up and only found a few marble size potatoes. Bugger - how disappointing!
According to crop rotation, corn can go in where the potatoes were, so I started to prepare the soil for the impending corn planting (kernals are in the seed raiser as we speak!) and lo and behold there is my potato crop! I didn't look hard enough or dig deep enough, I ignorantly assumed there were none. The plants obviously thought their job was done, they are supposed to die down when it's time to harvest.

Second discovery was that two of my broccoli are actually cabbages! Must have put cabbage seeds in at the same time. They are a savoy variety, a nice deep green with crinkly leaves.
The broccoli all have nice little baby heads of broccoli in the centre, so fingers crossed the cabbage moth stay away, so far we are grub free! I did read to deter cabbage moths to put egg shells (white side up) in the garden beds and they will think there is already a moth population and they will move on.
Two valuable lessons learnt in the past couple of days - always look a bit harder for potatoes and lable your seed pots properly!!