Summer wasteland

As usually happens this time of year I ask myself why I bother to try and grow anything in the vege patch, because the dry winds and heat make it a difficult job for plants to survive. Slowly my soil has improved, but it remains somewhat hydrophobic still, meaning daily watering continues to be a necessity.

Shade makes a huge difference, but because there are lots of gaps and overlaps, some plants still manage to get fried within the couple of hours of direct sunlight they receive each day. Greenhouses just encourage pest epidemics, I'd rather have my many feathered visitors helping out thank you.

So what's made it? Well not a lot.

All the cucumbers succumbed pretty quickly, as did the snow peas, but some hardier beans are growing in their place. The baby corn refused to ripen, and what did ripen was tasteless.

The eggplant seedlings are all just hanging in there or dying. The one plant that I grew from seed over a year ago produced fruit that stopped growing at somewhere between golf ball and tennis ball size. It actually makes a handy single serve portion, but I'd prefer they grew a bit bigger given the effort that's gone in to producing them. But now, even that plant has lost its leaves and is looking like dying.

None of the pumpkins did much. I managed to pick a few tiny fruits which made single serve portions in the kitchen, but the heat and powdery mildew meant few survived. I still have a couple of vines struggling, but no fruiting going on.

Neither passionfruit shows any sign of fruiting. I've noticed the occasional flower, but no fruit. I might try some potash...

Tomato plants grown from seed are doing well so far. They are all in the shade and well protected. My older tomato plants are all finished, so there's a bit of a gap. Never mind, I cooked and bottled most of the excess of a couple of months ago, so I've not been without so far.

The asparagus has been good this year, and I've managed to eke out a steady crop until now. Once their growth accelerates with the heat you just can't catch them in time before they unfurl their little ferny foliage.

I had another go at Okra. Again, the results were shabby. All the seeds sprouted, but then shrivelled up and died at the 2-4 leaf stage. I've bought some more seed of a different variety so might have another go. You've got to be an optimist to be a gardener...

The kumara is doing well though. I regularly snip the trailing new growth as it makes a good spinach alternative in stir fries. Gotta use what you've got, especially when the perpetual spinach my house sitters put in just shrivelled up and died.

Talking about using what you've got, I've discovered a new superfood. It's called papaya. Not only can you eat it when it's golden and ripe, but it's also perfectly edible when unripe as well.

I was first introduced to green papaya salad at the Rapid Creek Market in Darwin when I lived there. Rapid Creek Market is the closest thing to an authentic Asian market outside Asia. Seriously, rock up there at 7am on a Sunday morning and you'd be excused for thinking you'd been teleported to Thailand. I wonder if anyone grows durian up the top-end? Anyway, Som Tam is a classic Thai salad from the Isaan region of Thailand, and it's crunchy, spicy and delicious. It uses grated raw green papaya, chilli, lime juice, garlic, tomatoes, dried prawns and peanuts to make a simultaneously refreshing and perspiration inducing experience. I love Asian cuisine.

I got a little sick and tired of making green papaya salad with the many green fruits from my trees that drop before they ripen. It's fiddly, and requires quite a few ingredients on hand in the pantry. And sometimes I don't feel like salad. So I started using it in different ways. Like roasting it.

It turns out that green papaya behaves somewhat like potato, in that it's a starch that softens with cooking and will take on the flavours of things added to it. I often add it with other veg like pumpkin and eggplant in a roast, and recently I made spicy papaya wedges. Yes, it was freaking delicious.

Now papaya grows like a weed in my garden. Until recently I had four female trees all fruiting, but one has fallen over due to the trunk rotting out and will be in the compost bin pretty soon. I'm jusr waiting for the final fruits to either ripen or drop. I also have 2 male trees, whose flowers I use to manually pollinate the lady flowers, just in case nature doesn't do its job.

A month or so ago I threw some chia seed into a box of home made compost to grow some chia plants and harvest my own chia seeds. Instead I ended up with a huge amount of papaya plants germinated from the compost! I figure I might as well plant a few more trees, and pull out any that end up being male, because it's such a versatile fruit for the kitchen, and it grows here so easily. I mean why fight nature right?

As mentioned, I also have many ripening papayas. So far I've made papaya ice-cream, dried papaya, and frozen yoghurt. Not yet tiring of this amazing fruit.

In other fruit news, the dragonfruit is fruiting. The main big red plant had at least a dozen flower spikes though some of them dropped before flowering, and the white put out a solitary flower, which, because there is nothing for it to cross-pollinate with, then dropped its fruit before it developed. I'm not that fussed, as the white dragonfruit doesn't have much taste compared to the red. Sometimes its OK to grow something just for the aesthetics...

The mango tree looks magnificent. There will be fruit, in another 5 years....

I completely forgot about the water chestnuts last year. They've multiplied and are currently growing well in the small pond next to my green rainwater tank. Must remember to harvest them in June. The watercress and kangkung are also happy in there, along with a resident frog or two.

I've been working on the pond and waterfall, trying to make it waterproof and also mortaring the stone surrounds to hide the tyres. Getting it to a waterproof state was quite an effort, involving lots of silicone and a number of efforts at getting the water to not run off in the wrong direction. I did get a little help moving the rocks, but mostly I did it myself. Yes, NOT what I should be doing just before a ski trip. I know.....

I purchased some goldfish to eat the mosquito larvae breeding in the pond. Then some predator went and ate them. One day there were six fish, next morning there were none! I need to give them some good hidey holes before I get any more me thinks.

Here's a little video of the pond and waterfall before I fixed the latest leak....

The chooks, by the way, are just gloriously healthy. They are fat and happy, very sociable, and laying well, despite the heat. I've been giving them a bit of extra meat meal in their feed and they just look absolutely luscious at the moment. I've never owned such happy healthy chooks before. They are still confined to the upper pen, which has heaps of shade and easy access to the water tank, so I'm not planning on moving them down into the other run any time soon. Besides, I haven't fox proofed it yet.

So, that's about it. Next: Japan....

Feature plant: Papaya

I'm continuously surprised to discover so many people have never eaten papaya, or pawpaw. Some people don't like it, thinking it tastes a bit like sweet soap. And I'd have to agree that it's not an immediately pleasing taste, but it's one of my favourite fruits.

The papaya originates from Central and South America and there are a few different varieties. Most of the commercially available papayas are long and cylindrical, but there are rounder shorter ones, as well as a really interesting variety I recently found growing on Dieng Plateau in Java Indonesia. It's a local specialty there.

Papaya can be eaten unripe - the most famous recipe being Som Tam, or green papaya salad, which is a favourite of mine. Nice and spicy! You can also add green papaya to a roast or stew and it will tenderise the meat due to the papain in it (an enzyme which breaks down protein).

Mostly papaya is eaten when it's ripe and golden yellow, usually with a splash of lime juice over it to bring out the sweetness.

It also makes a pretty yummy fruit smoothy!

The papaya plant is really easy to grow and easily germinated from seed collected from a store bought fruit. It's a tall single stemmed plant, which produces leaves which can be lightly steamed and eaten. They can be quite bitter, so only use very young leaves. They produce fruit straight off the main trunk, but only if they aren't males!

The papaya plant can be male, female or bisexual. Usually the ones sold in garden centres are bisexual, meaning the fertilisation happens within each flower, but I frequently save my papaya seeds from bought fruit and sow them, meaning I sometimes end up with papayas of either sex.

You only need one male to fertilise about 7 females, but they are quite pretty in their own right. Lots of clusters of white flowers, with a gentle perfume.

The females flower and then produce fruit at the flower's base if fertilised. The bisexuals self mate so they tend to start fruiting quicker.

So grab the seeds out of your next papaya and sow them and see what you get.

They like a bit of water and nutrients, but they don't like wet feet or they'll rot. They're a lovely addition to a garden that doesn't get frosts (though those Dieng papayas are at high altitude so there may be hope for you cold climate gardeners after all)

August in the garden

It has been quite a few years since I've spent my July and August (and September for that matter!) at home at Chez Drummonds. Usually I'm off in my NZ winter playground being a ski goddess. As much as I miss being on the snow and my Wanaka friends, I'm also enjoying reaping the garden harvest back home, and saving a few pennies for my pending retirement.

my vege patch

Best news of all is that I have managed to sell my property in Cairns. I was really worried it would take ages to sell, but we put it on the market at a good time, with a realistic price, and someone snapped it up. So come mid September I'll have reduced the debt a tad and can keep reducing it for the next 10 months. I'm pretty sure retirement is now doable, but it's still a big plunge to give up one's career at 50 to become a bum...

Back in the garden everything is thriving. It may be winter most places else in Australia, but our winters are mild, more like an English summer, complete with that pleasant wet stuff that falls from the sky. The daytime temperatures are a balmy 18-22 degrees Celcius, with glorious blue skies, and the veges love it. Though last week we had a warm spell where the temperatures got up to 29 degrees and the lettuce just wilted!! Ah yes, one can get lured into a false sense of security far too easily.

Unless it rains I still water every day, but with all three rain water tanks full and overflowing I can be as superfluous as I like. I've started adding clay to the compost heap, with the hope that this will lead to better water retention in my soil as I add the rotted down compost to it. It's a continuous battle here with our crappy sandy water repellant soil, but at this time of year, with mild temperatures and lots of rainfall, you can convince yourself you can grow anything.

well maybe not durian!!

The lettuce is beginning to go to seed, especially as the weather warms up. I've been madly harvesting heaps of greens and bringing them in to work, because there is sooooo much lettuce. I'll collect seed again this year, but I think I'll be a bit more cautious about spreading it far and wide like I did last year - though I have enjoyed the lush greenery even if I'm not eating it all. Everyone at work has been surprised at how yummy my lettuce is - yep, that supermarket stuff is just crap!

now this is what happens when you toss a few lettuce seeds around willy nilly

I've been on what I call a "beans and greens" diet recently - eating almost exclusively from my patch, supplemented with chick peas, cannelini beans or tempeh, plus a few sultanas, pepitas and sunflower seeds. I'm pretty sure my intake of green leafy veg and fibre is well above average and with all this stuff about healthy gut bacteria on the news recently, I think I might be ahead of the game. No kale shakes for me thankyou, I prefer my kale lightly wilted mixed in with some rice, beans and home made thai red curry sauce. Mmmm, nom nom..

Mojito supplier

The last few weeks I've been waging war with the citrus curly leaf miner, using an organic white oil spray every 5-6 days on the new growth to try and prevent the little critters from ruining yet another year's chance of setting fruit. The lime has started flowering, and the grapefruit has put on a huge new flush of growth and I can see tiny flower buds forming. If I do get fruit, the next hurdle will be protecting from fruit fly - quite a problem here in Geraldton. The lemon, which I had to cut back really severely when I got back in June, is putting on a new flush of growth, so hopefully a few more weeks of spraying with white oil will work.

flushed with green

The tomato plants have begun fruiting. The cherry tomato plant that Pauline planted has grown so tall it's over the trellis! I've also started transplanting some seedlings for successive harvests. If I time my planting right, I can get fruit right through summer.

cherry tomatoes reaching for the sky

The cucumber vines mostly died - the greedy green caterpillars got to them, and maybe the cold July nights didn't help either. But I've planted some more seeds and they aren't far off beginning their twining journey up the daggy support structure. I'm thinking of planting some beans on the other side to twine up the support and hide its ugliness with greenery - stay tuned.

coriander bolting, new cucumber and bok choy

Talking about beans, aren't they just magical? A little flower one day can be a fully formed and ready to eat bean within less than a week. I love picking five or six beans straight from the garden to go in my dinner that night. This is the pure joy of gardening!

magic beans

Jack's pumpkin plants haven't fared well. Out of the three he planted from seed, two have succumbed and I've replaced them with self seeded ones from the compost. One, however, is powering along, and there are little flowers beginning to form. This plant will be known as Jack's pumpkin from now on. I do hope it continues to thrive.

Jack's pumpkin going strong

The self seeded papaya has begun to flower, and it's a girl. There's a boy in the tub next door so nature should be able to do all the work, but I'm giving it a little helping hand, as I've been doing with the papaya along the side garden, and hand pollinating. Maybe the other self seeded papaya will be bisexual, just to even up the score a bit. If it's a boy it'll have to be sacrificed...

It's a girl!

I've started sowing seeds for the spring/summer garden, including eggplant, okra and beetroot, in seed trays in the grey water garden. The tomatoes did well sprouting this way - it's the best way I've found to keep them moist enough - and the water chestnuts I replanted have begun to shoot too. Soon they'll be ready to be submerged over the summer, and since they've actually shooted now, I can think about eating the water chestnuts I've saved from the last harvest that are sitting in a ziplock bag in my refrigerator.

the grey water garden reticulates my seedlings, water chestnuts sprouting in tubs up the top tier

I've still lots of chillies, the capsicum plants continue to provide me with a steady supply, and the eggplants are flowering again and may even fruit for their third year. This will be a bonus, but I'm sprouting some new plants from seed anyway.

The mango has decided to flower this year. That's awesome, because I've never managed to keep a mango tree alive long enough to get to flowering stage. No doubt putting it in the front yard where I can molly coddle it, vs up the back being neglected, is the reason this one has survived. Can I even dare to hope for fruit???

The recent warm weather and dry spell (though we had rain again this week) has brought the wildflowers out, and the flowering shrubs. Even the succulents are flowering. It's a glorious time in the garden, before the temperature dial starts to crank up and all that green turns to brown.

I'm enjoying it while I can...