What are you harvesting/picking?

Lois

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We picked our first pumpkin. Beautiful inside but the rats or possums had tried to chew to the seeds. Lucky it was so big never got there. Took 2nd choice to local flower, veg show got 2nd, cherry tomatoes 1st, zuchinni 1st. Our pumpkins must be talking to yours the vines are massive.
 

DarrenP

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I have had to throw 3 out that I picked last Oct. Went rotten. Obviously there is a time limit on keeping quality.
I think there it depends on the variety how long they keep. Butternuts are one of the shortest keepers I believe.

I've still been picking zucchinis, and some cucumbers. My ruthless streak has emerged, and anything not performing is coming out, to get the beds ready for the winter crops. Pumpkins and watermelons are developing finally.
 

ClissAT

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I decided to take a punt on some late corn, hoping the rodents will have plenty else to eat & leave the cobs for me! Same would go for the crows & parrots!
Here's hoping........
Into the corn punnets I also dropped some roma tomato seeds.
I'm also taking a punt on green beans & have added a few cucumber seeds into those punnets.
All are up so I'll be planting them out all mixed up into 2 of the bathtub raised beds in a week or so.

All I have left from my spring/summer garden are a few black zucchini still producing the occasional flower & fruit, some almost finished large tomatoes & some still bearing cherry toms which I have been harvesting from most weeks all season. The large tomato plants are just ripening off the last of many fruit. Soon I'll rip them out once I've picked all that fruit.

Some oakleaf lettuce went to seed so I sprinkled the seed into all the empty container gardens where the original plants had finished flowering or died from being watered with grey water during the dry season. So I have many containers of oakleaf lettuce flourishing. With this rain & moist weather, it will be ready for first micro leaf harvest by the weekend. Unless of course this cyclone weather doesn't melt the poor miniature lettuce leaves before I can pick them.

In with one raised bed of cherry toms I planted a peanut as an experiment which has been happily sending down lots of nodules so hopefully if no rodents or possums find them, I'll have fresh peanuts for autumn. I have to check it again tomorrow because all this rain might be making the growing medium too wet even in the raised bed. Peanuts hate too much moisture.

Pawpaws are fruiting again with the rain & now half grown. But something is eating my parsley, maybe a wallaby....or... I do have a rabbit hanging around so maybe it found the parsley because its never been eaten previously. The council will bring a rabbit trap if I can definitely identify it as a rabbit (& not one of the resident hares) which of course I cant because I don't carry my camera & I only see it for fleeting moments & often at distance.

I have pumpkins coming on also but due to the wet & also maybe due to rodents chewing a hole to get the seeds, moisture gets in to rot them by the time they are half grown.
 

Lois

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I have had to throw 3 out that I picked last Oct. Went rotten. Obviously there is a time limit on keeping quality.
I still have one jap left from last year. I've got so used to seeing it on the bench I forget to use it.
 

ClissAT

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I still have one jap left from last year. I've got so used to seeing it on the bench I forget to use it.

:D :D I know that feeling well!
I store mine on the steps up to my house, 1 on each tread.
I get so used to seeing them there I forget they are food!
 

Lois

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Well gherkins in sod
My gherkins are flowering but nothing happening, yet near them the capsicum are really doing well except for something chewing round holes in them and laying lots of black eggs.
A bottles hanging in the shadehouse were a failure. In My dreams I pictured gherkins hanging down and me going in there picking them then pickling them. GRRRRRTT Did not happen that way.

1) Where/ how is the best place/ way to grow gherkins. There have been a lot of brown snakes here although I think the Guinea fowl are sending them on their way.

I think I will plant again next spring after frosts.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
2) And if anyone knows how to pickle them to taste sweet and bitey, let me know.
3) Can I use jars and lids from bought pickles?
Regards Lois Langley
 

ClissAT

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2) And if anyone knows how to pickle them to taste sweet and bitey, let me know.
3) Can I use jars and lids from bought pickles?
Regards Lois Langley

Yes to #3 Lois.
re #2 If you like sweet gherkins use the pickling juice from the bought pickles!
Just add some more of your own to make up the volume.
They get it sweet by adding a heap of sugar, no mystery to it!
 

Lois

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1st pumpkins of 2018.
20180323_101953.jpg
 

DarrenP

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Lois, I followed a recipe on Taste for making bread and butter pickles. They aren't too bitey, and reasonably sweet. And I used old jars and lids. Just make sure you sterilise everything first.
And keep the pickles in the fridge if you can, just to be on the safe side.
 

ClissAT

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Must have been too much wet at my place because I think all the little pumpkins have developed brown spots & fallen off the vine.
Usually I just put in 5 or so of my own Jap pumpkin seeds every year & end up with at least 1 pumpkin on most of the stair treads up to my house.
But this year I got a punnet of mixed pumpkin seedlings from B'ings thinking it would be nice to have something different.
No joy as yet.
 

DarrenP

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I pulled up the Queensland Blue vines yesterday, as there has been no sign of any fruit. There are a few butternut and Jap pumpkins though. Also picked a Jack Be Little yesterday.
Still harvesting cucumbers and zucchini, although the output is slowing.
 

OskarDoLittle

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The other half won't let me grow pumpkins anymore because they take up too much room! When I was "allowed" to grow them (Kent pumpkin, but I think that's the same as Jap?) I always found I had to fertilise them by hand. For some reason the insects never found them. Does anyone else have to do that?
 

DarrenP

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I've never done it, but apparently it's quite common. Some gardeners do it as a matter of course to make sure they get pumpkins.
 

Lois

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Yes that is how it is done here.
 

Pauljm

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Hi i thought I would keep this thread going to see how everyone went through the winter.. my main staples went well:
Broccoli- plenty of it and side shoots produced better than last year
Cauliflower-still got 2 plants heading now...happy with results Although slow to grow.
Tomatoes- white fly attacked my Roma plants...fruit was on there for a month or more not ripening..was going to rip them out but gave them a good dose of neem oil and potash and now theylook like they might have recovered...20 odd fruit and heaps more flowers so fingers crossed here
Snow peas-Been eating snow peas for a couple of months...only problem with these is they don’t make it to the table...in fact they are lucky to make it in to the house! (Awesome straight off the plant)
Kale-wish it tasted better! seems the easiest winter green to grow?
Spinach- did ok but wish it grew like Kale! (I’m probably doing something wrong?)
Beetroot-again did ok first attempt...
All in all happy with the results of my second winter in the garden.. had heaps of rain here in the last week week so looking forward to some sun now
 

Kasalia

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Cabbages and kale, bok choy, broccoli been my thing during winter, plenty of letuces to pick now and just started my tomatoes. Oh and 2 beds of carrots, delicious, also just picking them. Leeks been good, silver beet, small beetroot and lots and lots of snow peas, used a bike wheel on a star picket and string.
 

ClissAT

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With only grey water to water plants with, my winter spring garden is very limited.
But lettuces did well in the containers. Snow peas still going great guns, as are cherry tomatoes. The full sized tomatoes in the white shade mesh critter protection cage are just beginning to bare, so I have high hopes for them.
My citrus were hit and miss with no water for the orchard. Mandarins were a bit small and woody in parts, although the oranges did well.
Pawpaws were ok even though they had some sort of disease.
 

AndrewB

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Chinese cabbage are going crazy right now & are great for stirfry & curries. I'm going to attempt Kimchi with them soon.

Spinach, Fennel, Radish & Turnip are all providing plenty to eat.

My peas have the same problem, the only ones that made it inside have been dried as seed for next year.
 
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