As summer rolls along

Sunflowers at the back gate

With summer comes the veggie pests and diseases, but when I walk through my garden and grasshoppers jump out the way, dragonflies and other friendly flying creatures flit in front of me and I see the ladybugs who sit on the leaves of the plants, I know that I have a garden that is a happy place for them.

Sweet potatoes

I suppose I could use sprays so that I get all the veggies, but I am happy that not only do I get "clean" food for my family, I also provide a place that friendly bugs like to visit. You see, those sprays don't just kill the bad bugs they also wipe out the beneficial ones.  Uuh-huh!

So my modus operandi these past few seasons is to leave some plants for the bugs to enjoy. Nasturtiums were planted along with the brassicas in winter and were a good decoy for the white cabbage moth to lay her eggs on. Her little babies munched away happily and got nice and fat then disappeared.

My cauliflowers, broccolis and kale all went unaffected by them for the most of the season and only one of the few kale plants that were left at the end of the season had any trouble. Even then I left the bugs on the kale and they too eventually left for other pastures, leaving the plant to continue supplying us with leaves to eat.

Harvesting is continuing with loads of marrows still coming in - in fact today I sent out an "SOS come get a marrow" text to 4 friends so that I can unload the last of these monsters. I planted way too many of them this year and will probably only plant 5 as versus 20 (what was I thinking???) next summer.

Today's tomato harvest

The tomatoes, even though they got blight, have reached the beautiful red stage. We have brought in about 20 kgs of them so far and turned them into sauce & eaten them fresh. The Italian sauce tomatoes are so lovely when roasted with herbs and garlic then blended.

Our first batch of corn was a complete failure, but our second planting has yielded some good corn. As a friend pointed out to me, the leaves of the plants are more yellow-green than green-green which indicates a lack of nitrogen in the soil. I did not add any manure in this bed as the last batch of manure brought so many weeds with it that I could not face all that weeding again. I am going to have to investigate alternatives for adding more nitrogenous matter to the soil which will not add weeds along with the nitrogen.

While it is so good to have a break from the hard work of digging in compost, making seed pots and getting seedlings started and growing well, I cannot ignore the fact that there are 6 more weeks until I need to have a plan in place and seeds sown for my late summer early autumn vegetable gardens. So this afternoon I plan to plan! We will see if I get to that.

I have been churning over ideas in my brain for a herb garden in what we call "Zeus's sandpit." This area has been a vegetable garden, a grassed area and now is where Zeus digs and runs and is simply a mess. I recently laid out some paving stones in his running track and he simply moved his run to the right of them.

Sweet lemon cucumbers

He gets 4 long walks a week in the forest and all other things that dogs need like bones to chew, grooming, swims on hot days and lots of love and he has another small digging patch at the back gate so I am afraid that his time in the sandpit is almost up.

When I have the plan in a more concrete way I will let you know what I am planting and why. I have wanted to grow more herbs for culinary purposes and also educate myself more on medicinal herbs that I can grow and use easily. "Easily" is the keyword here as time does not allow me to go into this too deeply yet.

I suppose this is the limbo period where I find myself right now...the harvests coming in, enjoying the meals, watching plants handle the heat and pests - or not - and planning for the next season.

One of the 5 pumpkins - just enough for a year :)

What are you doing for and with your garden right now?

Dodging raindrops

After a lie in until about 8 and a breakfast of scrambled eggs I decided to do a spot of gardening. We had so much rain last night that I thought I would manage to get it all done before todays showers hit.

Doing the sweet potatoes was fine, a bit chilly, but dry...then I started to weed the garlic and the sprinkles started.

By the time I had weeded the bed and planted some peas between the now strong garlic plants, I was dripping wet and Lucky was not charmed at all that the Mother Person was keeping her outdoors. She is always my companion in the garden and it just didn't occur to her that she could go inside.

The chickens enjoyed all the weeds and grass that I had taken out.

I decided that I had been brave enough so headed indoors.

My girls had made newspaper pots and laundry soap for me so all I had to do was make Lavender soap. I will post the recipe tomorrow if it was a success.

I just had a little peep at the soap which is cooling slowly and I am glad the mauve pigment has taken. The goal is to have a marbled effect...we will wait and see tomorrow.

Why I Love Sunday {& the rest of the week}

A while back I decided that Sundays were going to be my day of rest...this really meant that I would not get into my car to go anywhere or do anything. When I got back from the UK things were a bit off balance and the week ran into my Sundays, but here I sit today knowing that there is nothing that I cannot fit into next week and I can simply do what I want. Since our church group does not meet on Sunday, but rather on Tuesday, Sunday stretches out in front of me promising me a day to enjoy at home.

Finished the first dishcloth this week, started the second.

Half of my family is watching the MotoGP, others are watching "Danny Champion of the World". I am here in my comfy tracksuit, with a cup of freshly brewed coffee, Casting Crowns playing in the background. Today we rolled out of bed at 8.30 and while Superman took Big White Dog for his walk I made breakfast. Then I cleaned out my linen basket and released more clutter to be sent to the charity shop. Beef stock that cooked slowly overnight needed to be decanted, sour dough started, sprouts put on to soak, lunch made and house tidied. All these things bring me joy as I can savour my homemaking without feeling the need to rush off to something.

Sour dough starter...after 6 weeks of almost no bread, I can already feel my body gearing to enjoy this.

There was a stage earlier in my life when I packed so much into my life that was not necessary. As I matured as a mom I began to realize that I do not have to do everything that is on offer for the children to be "well rounded" and I certainly did not need to learn everything I wanted to now. I started to embrace seasonal living...the season of young children where most of the day is around them, their food, sleeps, diapers and education. The most important lesson in this time: Children need love and routine, everything else can wait.

Broad beans planted this week. Last bed of 3.

The next season was when all 4 of my children were being homeschooled and my curriculum supply company took off. Life stepped up a notch as I juggled the multiple grades, resistance at seat work times, learning difficulties, at the same time as trying to meet the needs of other homeschooling parents. Major lessons learned: patience, pacing myself, routine, organization.

Turnips planted last week are saying hello!

Now I am in the season of older children, 3 teens and a 10yr old. They are all able to see themselves through their basic daily needs and while homeschooling is much more intense in the highschool years and their sport and music sometimes only finishes at 7pm there is a sense of we work hard Mon-Fri and the weekends are for down time. My eldest still has tutoring on Saturdays, but I take along my little laptop and work on my websites while I wait. From 12 noon on a Saturday we all start to wind down as the business of the week comes to an end.  

Now is the season for me to pick up interests and learn skills that do not take me out of my home, but allow me to expand on my homemaking, gardening or cooking proficiency.

And then comes Sunday. I used to call it my Sabbath, but I now believe that my Sabbath rest is daily in my Lord as we walk through this season of life together. But Sunday...aaah...Sunday.

Here are two recipes we enjoyed this week:  

Stuffed Roast Peppers:
Cut as many peppers as you need for your family - 1 pepper does 2 people. I like to cut them vertically so that they can lie like boats and not topple over whilst cooking. Lay them on a lightly oiled baking sheet.

Gently toast 2 pkts of pinenuts on a low heat. Grate about 6 small or 1 large zucchini/marrow.You could use rice instead of the pinenuts or a combination of both.

Slowly fry some red onion and garlic. Mix this into the other ingredients. I added one beaten egg but it wasn't necessary. Add alt and pepper to your taste then spoon into your peppers.

Roast then for about 20 minutes on 180 deg C. Remove from the oven and cover with any grated cheese...I used Haloumi strips as that was all I had. Allow to cook for another 10 minutes.

I served this with sirloin steaks and mushroom sauce. Was yummy!  

Spicy Mango Salad:
Cube 2 ripe mangoes. Add one finely chopped red onion, a generous bunch of fresh coriander and 1 finely deseeded red chilli.

This mango salad I served with Tandoori Chicken and roast sweet potatoes. I also made a fresh coriander and cream cheese topping for the sweet potatoes.

Inside and outside today.

My list for the garden was quite long today so we attacked it nice and early again. The biggest things were pruning the grape vine. Sadly we got no grapes this year as it was attacked by a fungus. I need to look into the treating of this vine...I was a bit negligent with it.

We also harvested some more corn, the last beans, some chillies and lots more green peppers. We have loads more corn to go...really happy about that.
The potatoes we planted in December have died back, and it was a nice, but not near what I expected, harvest. We have all sizes to enjoy over the next little while. In this bed we dug in compost and planted broad beans.

We also transplanted some sweet potato vines, banked another set of potatoes, planted out chard stated in newspaper pots and did a general tidy up.

Inside - I have been convicted for a while about heating up the oven for daily bread and am trying a new thing - I made 4 loaves of wholewheat bread, 3 of which I will slice and freeze for the week. One will be used tomorrow.

While the oven was on my daughter made butter rolls for lunch and I made Rhonda's whole orange cake. It won't last long as it is scrumptious.

I also made an upside down apple cake - that's for teatime later.

Now it's time for a lie down!

In the garden today

Today we attacked the garden with a vengeance...although I must admit to being more of a supervisor than worker. I did stake all the tomato plants, but I sat on a little chair to keep my back protected.

Then I went and took photos of some exciting developments in our newest section....butternuts hiding behind their foliage.

Look how strong the asparagus is...one more year to go, this time next year we can harvest some.

The young 'uns spent the time weeding and the chickens were grateful recipients of their work.

My eldest made 100 (yes...100) newspaper pots which we will plant up with seed tomorrow.

Lucky was allowed into the garden now that the plants are big enough to be safe from her walking through the beds.

My older son banked the potatoes...

...and also planted out the sweet potato tubers in the oddly shaped bed at the front door. We tried strawberries here for summer but the chickens kept getting in. So we repotted the strawberries and let them dig and sand bath here for the last few weeks. But now its time for growing things and the girls are going on a little farm holiday while we go away this next week.



I am so thankful for my children...tomorrow we have some more work, but then on Sunday we can go away knowing that all is well and done for the week.

Then we went inside to process this harvest...

Chillies were strung up to dry, tomatoes frozen whole for sauce, strawberries frozen for smoothies, marrows grated and frozen, corn eaten (what else!!!!), radishes in the salad at dinner.

Another Ramsey Meal

I am still enjoying my recipe book and today my daughter made us his sweet potato frittata with a salsa and the healthy seed loaf.

We had just enough eggs for the frittata and used our coriander and spring onions.



I also added some cubed avo to the meal and it was a delicious lunch.

I love the bright orange of the sweet potato which is fried with some shallots in olive oil. Then 4 beaten eggs are poured over and then slowly cooked. We had to pop it under the grill to cook the top. We made 2 skillets with this as 1 doesn't fill my family's hungry bellies.



A wedge of frittata, topped with salsa and fresh bread and avo on the side. Yum!

The need for a TO-DO list

Either as a running list during the week or by taking a couple of minutes on Saturday I like to make a to do list before Sunday hits. Sunday is our big garden day and the kids and I always like to know how much work we have to do.



I allow them to put their initials next to the jobs to "book" the job, but they can't take all the easy jobs, they have to think about their younger siblings so that the workload is shared.

Today my elder son and Superman replaced all the fences that we used to stop Big White Dog from killing the lawn. BWD had learnt to now jump those fences and in the process had knocked over many.



This triangular bed houses our chillies, rhubarb (which has just been cut) and sweet potatoes. It is unfortunately in shade for most of the day in winter but we should get a decent crop in early summer.



Our asparagus is doing well and we have just repotted the oldest plants for their 3rd and final time. We will have to have decided on a spot for them by September. We have some ideas in mind but we cannot move on them right now.

We are still spending lots of garden time sweeping up the leaves which make such a mess in the garden, but I try to stay optimistic and remember what my mom said that they are good compost material...

It gives a person such a sense of achievement to walk around a cleaned tidy garden in the evening after all the work is done. I think that is one of the big motivations for getting through the to do list each week.

Expectations and other random thoughts.

I have been woman down since Sunday with a nasty head cold. It has forced me to be in bed for the better part of the last two days. Drifting in an out of sleep, in between copious reading of books to the kids I have been thinking about some things.

Broad Beans

This year I had things so well planned and my expectations were waaaay up there w.r.t. how much yield I was going to get from my 5 basic vegetables I planted - corn, pumpkin, beans, tomatoes and potatoes. Well, our potatoes were eaten in the first 2 months, our corn has been a complete dissappointment, our beans did well but we didn't plant enough and our pumpkin plants were attacked by milddew, but we still got 4 stunners. Our tomatoes were hit with the December heat and red spider mite.

First Lemon of the season

There is the old adage about not counting your eggs before they hatch, and I am afraid I did just that. I could see my freezer filled to the bring with frozen beans, pumpkin and corn and a nice dark cool cupboard full of potatoes. But this was not to be.

Eggs 5 - 6 a day

For a few reasons, I have decided! Expectations...I will never be able to sustain our family on basics like potatoes purely due to space constraints. Not planting enough....I should have planted double the beans. Not planting earlier enough...mildew (and mites) seems to be a bigger problem later in summer. Not recording planting and harvesting dates....my corn could have been picked earlier but the cobs that I took off through estimating were either undeveloped or had already turned starchy. I did start off with recording how much of what and when it was planted but the busyness of my days caught up with me and I didn't continue.

Turnips needing to be thinned

Superman calls me the "eternal optimist" because while these thoughts are introspective I have throughoughly enjoyed my garden season this spring and summer and as the weather turns to welcome autumn I know that I have learnt a few more things that I haven't known before.

Sweet Potatoes

So onward I go...

Early in the morning....

With summer in full swing we have to work in the garden early in the morning to avoid the heat. At 6 a.m. the garden has its fresh look and it is my favorite time to peep under leaves to see what is growing. This morning I found...

Chillies...



Sweet potatoes having recovered from a brutal overhaul by the chickens....



Our Ghost-Rider pumpkin which we planted in the compost heap in November...



We then dug out one batch of potatoes which should do us for 2 weeks and planted cabbage in their place. The radishes that we planted last week are up.



Broccoli and cauliflower went into the other free bed.



I pulled the last carrots (will have to plant more soon!), picked the prolific beans and all these cucumbers....



By 9 am we were done, but there was still weeding to be done, the sun was too hot, so we called it a day.