If you have an aversion to orange and yellow...
Avert your eyes now...for it's only just begun!
Winter…brings with it the unfurling of orange and yellow; adding very welcome splashes of colour at an otherwise mundane moment in the garden’s annual journey. With herbaceous pruning well underway, the time for marvelling at tall, spent, silvered stems is behind us. It’s a time now for enormous activity - of cutting down, of winter prep, before the great exercise of bedding in for the season ahead begins. But more on that later, as its with dazzling delight to me, that the Aloes flower at this time!
Strictly speaking…they’re not in the garden proper (although the orange Cliveas are coming, but even they too, with their dark, strappy leaves are a block planting alongside the hard standing of the drive). Both the Aloes and Cliveas are plants I find to be useful…in the right place, which is where they are. The Aloes (in this instance A.arborescens or Candelabra Aloe) with their grey/green, succulent rosettes that grow to form huge mounds are like bold punctuation marks - and placed as they are, they feel right….in keeping with this early colonised landscape. (Which is no doubt all wrong, but history is something we live with nevertheless).
(Having got to the bottom, the app is telling me my post is too long for email so to read on, you may find it better to do so in the app! Here’s the link to take you there so you can see a full display):
I am positively thrilled with the one above, which has grown from just one rosette I took from a quite mature specimen (below), that we wrangled from the creek (where it had no right to be) back in 2011. Col Fergusson, who has helped a great deal in the wider landscape here over the years…finessing (dams, drainage, fencing, rock-work…a lot of rock-work) very kindly (although he thought I was completely mad) managed to dig the intruder from its place on an unwieldy slope and manouver it by tractor into the position it now holds triumphantly at the back gate. It must be double in size now, making a radiant vision, juxtaposed against the bleached grass of the hill opposite at this time of year.
It’s from this specimen I took the rosette that now forms an equally substantial mound (top image), tucked into the fence that encloses the hedge and croquet lawn to its rear, but being on the outside of that fence, it’s free to be wild…acting as connector betwixt garden, paddock and the blue/grey eucalypts that band the creek below. Usually, the wintry grass between Aloe and Eucalypt is a vision to behold at this time of year, but unfortunately Larry got the timing of his cattle rotation and subsequent slashing of the paddock out of kilter and I’m missing the magic of the tall seed heads shimmering in the afternoon sunlight that I’ve enjoyed in years past! Ho-hum! Can’t be helped! If I have time I might backtrack to see if I can find a pic from last year so you can see what I mean.
Spin on your heel to face the opposite direction on the back drive (the one we use on a daily basis) and huge puffs of yellow flowers are lighting up an otherwise wintry Arc. Before going away I was enthralled with the red-tinged, burgeoning buds of the sprawling (yes, it has a rather untidy habit but I quite like that - I’m not a prissy kind of gal!) Roldana petasitis, Velvet Groudsel or California Geranium. By the time we were home a fortnight later…
Pow! Those buds had burst into a sea of golden yellow, daisy-like flowers. I can’t help but wonder how these tall stems might perform in a vase…but then I don’t want to spare even one from the garden! Some of you will recall when I pruned this shrub earlier in the year…as I cut off a huge number of tall, furry-leaved stems in a bid to keep its shape in proportion with its neighbours. Now is its moment to shine and how happy I am for it to brighten a winter’s day!
Tonally, the blotches of orange and yellow compliment the copper seed pods that hang like a giant erupted firework display on each of the two unmissable Persian Lilac trees here - one just outside the Pantry, where they look so handsome all winter long, marrying with the faded boards of the Barn and its rusty corrugated roof, and the other in the paddock just beyond the kitchen garden. Both specimens were fully mature when we came to Glenmore and we do love them - for their fluffy mauve flowers in the spring as well as the seedpods in the winter (although I do not love the extra weeding they create below or the caterpillars that are inclined to attack them in the summer!).
The oranges and yellows continue inside too! It’s simply nature’s way of presenting winter in our climate and how grateful I am for every orange, lemon and mandarin I pluck from the heavily laden trees! Orange and yellow are at play in our diet at this time of year too, as well as making an ever-changing still life series on the kitchen bench. They’re the colours that permeate our winter existence.
I realised after posting the Recipe Index last week, that I hadn’t yet shared the recipe for a much loved winter soup (reason being it was also in the Delicious magazine article!). As I made another batch this week, and I don’t intend for it to be the last of the season by a long shot…here it is for you now:
Pumpkin, Apple and Ginger Soup
Ingredients
1kg pumpkin chopped, skin off and deseeded, cut into cubes
5 small red apples (3 peeled, cored and roughly chopped - keep back two for serving)
2 garlic cloves peeled & crushed with a little sea salt using the back of a heavy bladed knife
1 onion peeled and diced
4cm section of ginger, peeled and grated
30g unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1.5 litres chicken stock (home made if you can!)
Parsley or coriander sprigs to serve
Method
Warm the butter in a large saucepan over low heat
Add the onion and garlic and cook gently for 5 minutes or until soft and translucent…don’t allow them to catch & burn
Add a good pinch of sea salt, a few twists of black pepper, the allspice and ginger…give a good stir (oh and inhale…I love the aroma of this combination!)
Add the chopped pumpkin and apples and give a good stir to coat, then pop the lid on for about 10 minutes, giving a stir occasionally, until the pumpkin begins to soften
Add the stock, bring to the boil, turn down to a simmer for about 20 minutes or until the pumpkin is very soft
Cool slightly then puree with a stick blender or in a food processor
To serve, slice the two remaining apples into circles - not too thin (across their cores to reveal the star-shaped seed pocket in each slice)
Melt a little extra butter in a frying pan and gently shallow fry the apple slices - turning occasionally, ‘til they’re soft, puffy and slightly caramelised
Top each bowl of soup with a slice or two of apple and a few leaves or chopped sprigs of herbs…I never seem to do the same thing twice! You could also add crème fraîche or yoghurt, but I don’t think it needs it.
What I do enjoy with it though, is a slice of sourdough or good old Belinda Jefferey’s Pumpernickel Soda Bread with a thick lick of goat’s cheese and dollop of fennel frond or parsley pistou
Note…a word on cooking with pumpkins and a little advice on ageing! It’s no secret here that over the last year I’ve developed a problem with my thumb/wrist mobility: age, gardening, cooking, typing (and a squillion other things)…all require repetitive action. I do hand exercises. I’m seeing a chiro. I try not to do stupid things and also try to find solutions to those tasks that aggravate the situation. For years I’ve been cleaving into whole pumpkins with typical voracity…but now, I put the whole thing in the oven and when it softens (though before I would declare it to be cooked) I pull it out, let it cool and then tackle it! This way doesn’t require anywhere near the same amount of pressure on the thumb/wrist/elbow connection. And a word of advice - especially to young Mums who are doing all the chores they do…with years of cooking and gardening and pegging washing etc. ahead: pay attention to thumb posture - it’s a thing!
Any minute now…the first jasmine blossom will pop! When the buds reach this stage, that season we call sprinter can’t be far away. How I love the suspense of it…as I sit here shivering (I should just light the fire shouldn’t I?). The winter honeysuckle and osmanthus are both still in high perfume…though I only notice if I happen to walk in that direction, but soon…there will be jasmine to scent the air!
Down in the kitchen garden…all that effort I put into the crop rotation during the late summer and autumn is paying off. Oh how I encourage you to grow a winter veg garden! (Climate pending of course!). Ours is such that…there is no down time, which I know I’ve mentioned before. We have two very distinct, fully productive seasons. And we’re chomping our way through much of the early sown and planted in my successional plan, whilst the second and third sowings continue to grow on.
Remember we discussed the growing of traditional versus the popular variety of sprouting Broccoli? It’s a couple of months now since I harvested the huge heads of the traditional kind. Their stumps looked ugly for a time, but as I said I would, I stuck with them, knowing that if I did, a sure crop of shoots would follow. As it is, I need to look quite hard now to find the old stumps, surrounded as they are by a constant supply of new shoots. And they are delicious.
Leeks are on! I pulled the first last weekend whilst having a major tidy / tending session. You know by now that I spend a good portion of my weekends in the kitchen garden, and missing two meant a lot of work to catch up on. Yellow leaves - whether caused by too much rain, frost or wind (there were some howlers while we were away and we’ve lost some big branches as well as a couple of trees in the creek) always need to be removed.
The peas all had to be tied and tidied after taking a sustained attack from those wretched Sulphur Crested Cockatoos. When I’m around I take the nets off to give them a breather, but I have to replace them if I’m absent. I am thrilled to report though that…the peas are coming! And there’s nothing like munching sweet little peas straight from the pod!
Just a few weeks ago I suggested we’d have eaten all but the tippy-top leaves of the first sown cavolo nero, and that taking the larger leaves from the base of their stems would allow light to penetrate to the rocket seed I’d sown between each plant in the row below. Now…we have a good supply of succulent little rocket leaves to add to our regular leaf salads, and I’m not yet quite finished with the crinkly cavolo nero leaves either. There are two more plantings of those kale in rows that are growing on well, so another couple of picks from these ones, and I’ll leave them to bolt, as I’m sure the bees could do with some extra fodder (though I’ll soon be thinking about the next rotation!).
The rows of seed I sowed in the nominal ‘root veg’ bed are all rocketing along…all except the carrots! Me? Dud seed? Who knows? But I’m thrilled with the burgeoning beetroot, extra supply of coriander, developing parsnips and row of love-in-the-mist, aka Nigella which I threw in on a whim. All these ones will be in the ground for awhile, and I’ll work around them as the next rotation draws near.
There are radishes and fennel, parsnips and jerusalem artichokes; warrigal greens, spinach, chard, radicchio and a good supply too of lettuce leaves, parsley, coriander as well as nasturtium, calendula and borage flowers to add as a final flourish to whatever we’re eating. All of these (except the artichokes) are in the kitchen garden proper.
While down the back, the rows of garlic I sowed on Anzac Day are thriving…and need little attention from me at this stage except watering…which they do need now the rain seems to have been replaced with wind which is inclined to dry things out (although it seems to have calmed down now!).
The planting that replaced the bed of San Marzano tomatoes tied all summer long to their tall, traditional stakes is hitting its stride. These beds down the back make for an interesting way for peeps to view what they might be able to grow in a smaller space, and this particular combination makes for a good example: the peas I’ve sown to the base of each rod of the pair of tunnels have germinated and are the reason for the net as I was worried the bower birds might attack. I should be able to start tying them to the rods this weekend. Peas aside, there’s a row of fennel, one of radicchio, one each of red and green oakleaf lettuce, one of cavolo nero and an earlier planted one of green and red interspersed oakleaf lettuce…this first we’re already eating while the others grow on.
Just next door, the row of rainbow chard is squeaking with health and behind it, two successionally sown rows of leeks…that will feed us once I’ve pulled all the ones in the main garden.
The crazy seed bed I sowed with my late summer kitchen gardening participants is all but spent now. It’s completed its cycle, fed us well and this weekend I intend to collect the seed its kindly yielded, after feeding the bees for months on end too (if you refer back a few posts you’ll see all the flowers from this same bed shimmering in the early winter afternoon sun).
The next version of this seed throwing cycle is now underway! Do you recall I emptied a lot of my old seedbank just before we went away? Well…it’s mostly germinated in the intervening weeks and once it’s all a bit more sturdy, I’ll take off the net. And then we can see what this seed-flinging effort produces…from what otherwise could have simply been tossed into the compost.
But the really big excitement to report? Broad bean tips! You’ve been following along here now since I built the frame with Thalia back in…March (must have been March!). Then I sowed the seed and I told you all about sowing five seeds per square and supporting the hollow stems within the frame so they wouldn’t snap in the wind (and boy has there been wind!). We’ve watched them grow up through the first rung of the structure together…and then the second…and with bated breath, I’ve been waiting for them to forge their way through the third! Well…most of them have done just that!
Pushing hard now, up against the net I’ve thrown over to protect them from the birds, midweek I took the first tips; reducing the height of each stem to just above the third rung, so that when the wind does blow, the top rung will still encase, support and hold each tall, fragile stem.
Removing the tips will encourage basal growth, thereby strengthening each plant and…more to the point…producing more stems, and therefore more flowers, more beans…and…more tips for me to plunder, because…
Oh joy of delectable joys! The tips are sublime!! If I’m being greedy (and as the gardener I think it’s allowed) I’ll eat a tip or two when I take it, standing right there in the garden, raw, and I’ll savour that fine taste that’s a precursor to the beans that will take awhile yet to form. I might do this if there really is just one pressing against the net! But on Wednesday there were a good seven…and so I added them to my evening pick and took them to the kitchen.
Whilst I know them to be delicious when dunked in batter and fried as tempura; that’s just not a method of cooking I’m inclined to do! So…instead I wilt them gently, in a little olive oil. I swish them around with a twist of black pepper and that’s it. If you have a lot, they’d make a delish little starter. As it was…I popped them on top of each of our omelettes, where they made the perfect accompaniment to that eggy dish! How I hope many more tips are coming - but they are just a taste of what lies ahead…a spring supply of glorious, vibrant broad beans!
I picked the very last tomatoes at the weekend which must surely make for some kind of record! I’ve left them hanging in their net bags in the sun (but it would seem I am not allowed to add any more images to this post, so you’ll just have to imagine them!). They actually seem to be ripening too, which I’m surprised at.
Although a fortnight late, I fully intend to sow my tomato seeds into punnets this weekend so please do that too if you haven’t already and you intend to grow toms from seed this year. For me, this is proof there isn’t a day in the year here, where tomatoes do not feature in some way. Whilst they may not always be on our plates, they are part of my daily planning or care, one way or another!
As I’ve clearly exceeded my limit of this post (a message popped up ages ago and perhaps it will start flashing at me next!), I’ll draw to a close. Hopefully I’ve caught you up on the progress of the season in the kitchen garden, and there can be less of this news at the next post. But I know some of you are using my progress as a benchmark for your own growing…so I don’t want to let you down!
As to the travel report…hmmm…it’s coming, as an extension. When I began writing on this platform earlier in the year, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Having been encouraged to do so, like everyone else you’ll find on substack, at the end of the day we hope it might add a little to the coffers to cover the time it takes (and for me, given the book is out of print and so that income stream is no longer, I need to find other ways to supplement that gaping hole!). I am so thrilled that so many of you have continued to follow along since I began! Thank you. But also, to my amazement, some peeps have indeed chosen to support my efforts and become paid subscribers. As I’m at a bit of a loss as to how to give them something extra for their commitment, I’m going to try out a post or two to see how that actually works (I think I have some extra buttons to select!). There may be a few posts for paid subscribers in sequence…the gallivanting posts! Oh but really I want you all to have access! Perhaps if you’re tempted, you might try the one month version to gain access…some have, rather than committing to a year’s subscription…and you can always let it lapse if you think it not worthwhile! Anyway…we shall see how it pans out, but if you want to try:
!!
How I wish I could add one more image…but it won’t allow me! I’ll pop the tomatoes in their net bags, ripening in the sun onto instagram at the weekend! And I’ll end with an update on all the produce as always.
I wish you all a happy week ahead and good tomato sowing…if you’re planning to do so! Catch you at the next post.
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Navel oranges, mandarins, Lisbon lemons, rhubarb; tomatoes (going), Jerusalem artichoke, parsnip. Leaves of all kinds - spinach, kale - cavolo nero (Red Russian is still growing on), leeks (new) lettuce, radicchio, rocket, red elk mustard leaf, warrigal greens. Cauliflower, broccoli, fennel bulbs, radish. I should pull the first Savoy Cabbage…but I probably won’t as it still looks too beautiful! Fennel fronds, parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, coriander, nasturtium and calendula petals, borage flowers.
Going / gone: Meyer lemons, tomatoes, sweet potatoes (had hoped for a better haul!), Cima di rapa (my fault for not sowing a successional row!)
Seed saving: Cima di rapa (from the seed flinging effort in February…it’s ripe now and I’ll pop some of it straight back into the ground)
Sowing: tomatoes! Quick…before it’s too late!
Planting: if I can get my hands on some lettuce seedlings, I’d like to replace the ones we’ve eaten…
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: hasn’t been a priority in my jet-lagged state of mind but I’ll go on a hunt this weekend…there are possibilities out there!
Perfumes and aromas: orange…the navel oranges exude the perfume of sunshine, whilst the intoxicating scent of both osmanthus and winter-flowering honeysuckle are spilling from one particular sheltered corner at the old stables: same as a few weeks ago! Oh and the Daphne in a courtyard pot is flowering and divine!
Pruning and other: Thalia has done a lot of weeding, and begun to work on my very long list of herbaceous pruning (we’ve completed all those jobs before together and so she knows how I like to tackle each plant by now), as well as beginning to add those forest fines as a mulch to the tree circles she was so diligently weeding last month. I’m itching to pick up my secateurs and let loose!
You CAN taste the oranges!!!! Wish I could find the emojis on this platform...this deserves a laughing one! X
Brilliant post and yep, I love yellow and orange, the fruit bowl is full of it with yellowed limes, lemons, mandarins and oranges, and outside our Lisbon Lemon is drooping with fruit, I think I will have to start giving some away to the neighbours, I don’t need any more preserved lemons or lemon curd ice cream, yum…