Monday, May 30, 2011

Last Autumn 2011 Harvest

I can't believe it in less than 30 hours will be officially winter season here in Adelaide. Not only that we are also almost middle of the year when I felt that we just entered year 2011. On the other hand, it is interesting that the opposite hemisphere have longer day hours to enjoy and don't need to wear jacket soon. Visit Daphne's Dandelion to see varieties of harvest from different part of gardens around the world is enjoying. We harvested our first giant purple mustard grown from Harry seeds that we inter-planted with broccoli. As the giant purple mustard grow much faster than slow-growing broccoli, it gets overcrowded on the patch so we harvested some of it. We had some sweet corns, tomatoes, volunteer potatoes and different variety of capsicum to harvest last week. Interestingly, one of the sweet corns plant had kernels on the tassel and it tasted very sweet brings back childhood memory when my aunt brought back young stalk of rice for a treat.

Yellow cherry tomatoes, pencil size leeks and red capsicum fried together with rice noodles for Sunday breakfast.
Red hot chilli harvest.
Pak Choi and funny looking root vegetables.
Bitter gourd plant is still producing some male and female flowers at the moment. But with the cold weather, the fruit won't grow that much even it is well pollinated. Will this be our last bitter gourd harvest for this year? Not sure we still have ping pong ball size of bitter gourd on the plants. More and more daikon, snow peas and chili to harvest next month.
How do you prepare your radish in the kitchen?

24 comments:

Sue Garrett said...

We won't be enjoying such a harvest when we are 30 hours away from winter - very envious!

Mark Willis said...

lovely pictures of your varied harvest as usual Diana! Of course you know that I am particularly impressed by the photo of all those chillis... I presume you use lots of chillis in your cooking?

littlekarstar said...

I can't believe your harvests! They are so amazing! it's FREEZING here.

Hazel said...

Sunny day today...but cold, cold cold now...i dont have any trouble believing Winter is nearly here. And again, I do not how you do it...so many vegetables. I am not as good at keeping the planting up and we have a bit of a gap at present. Good to be able to eat from the freezer.

Unknown said...

Wow look at those peppers! And your corn looks delicious.

I grew radishes once, last season, and just couldn't decide how I liked to use them. I tried a dip and a butter and didn't much care for either!

Robin said...

My goodness....what beautiful harvests you are still having!!

It's so strange that you are entering in to winter and we are entering in to summer! I hope that you have preserved some of your harvests for the winter months.

tina said...

You always have the coolest vegetables on your blog. I too find it funny how the world is opposite. When we are getting cold you guys warm up and enjoy spring and vice versa. There is a circle to it all.

Daphne Gould said...

What gorgeous harvests. I've only grown daikon radishes once and they didn't work out all that well. So all my radishes are of the other kind. And I mostly just use them in salads. I like my salads to crunch and in the spring it is one of the few things that does. I love pickled daikon though. Well I love most things pickled.

Dirt Lover said...

Great harvest! It's so fun to see that you are harvesting the warm weather crops. Your bowl of chilies are so pretty!
~~Lori

rainfield61 said...

I have grapes in the autumn.

I have bitter gourds whole year long.

kitsapFG said...

What a lovely harvest for so late in your garden season. The sweet corn in particular was catching my eye. We had a rather light corn harvest last year due to a miserably cold summer - so I am really hungry for some fresh garden corn.

Alison said...

That corn looks great! My husband would so like to devour some of those bright red peppers. It's amazing to me that your garden is still going so strong when it is almost winter there. Kudos to you for being such a good gardener.

Shawn Ann said...

Very pretty harvest!

Stephanie said...

What a good harvest! Your plump chillies can be stored to keep you warm during winter ;-)

Charmcitybalconygarden said...

Do you pickle your daikon? Or do you eat it pretty quickly after picking them? Great harvest, and yummy looking dish as always:)

Cat-from-Sydney said...

MKG dear,
Wow! What a harvest. Wish Mama would restart her garden soon. We so love looking at those plump chilies. As for daikon, stir fry with ikan bilis and chili or grate and make that yummy Japanese breakfast pancake, the one with grated cabbage, eggs, daikon and mayonnaise....lovely! purr...meow!

kitchen flavours said...

Beautiful harvest! The only veggie that I constantly harvest are my spring onions! :)
We usually use the white radish for soup, just had that for last night's dinner. I like to celup the white radish from the soup into a small sauce of light soy sauce mixed with a squeeze of lime and slices of hot chili padi. Yummy! Your white radish is really big! How do you grow them so well? The last few seedlings that I had all died! Drooling over your gorgeous chilies!

shaz said...

your harvest is unbelievable. You have such a green thumb! I'm very envious of the sweet corn, wish I had space for it :)

RandomGardener said...

Red peppers are lovely! What kind are they? You have such a diverse harvest, it's beautiful.

Malay-Kadazan girl said...

Sue~ I wish I have more red strawberry to pick now instead of red chili like in your allotment.

Mark~ I probably used the chili mainly for sambal belacan rather then normal cooking as my kids is not into spicy flavour yet at their age.

Mrs Bok~ My veggies are crazy they don't like summer but start to produce in autumn.

Hazel~ Psstt...succession planting once a month.

Allison~ I don't usually grow much radish because I am not really fond of it before. But since we are trying to only eat home-grown vegetables, radish seems to be the best veggie to fill in the gap before we have to start taking out veggies from the freezer. So the project this month will be finding a way of using radish in different dish.

Robin~ We are preserving veggies in the freezer. Hopefully it will be enough until we start have something to harvest again.

Tina~ I can't wait to have a little break from the garden. Just waiting for the white cabbage butterfly to stop flying around the garden and leave the greens alone.

Daphne~ I tried to grow daikon last spring but it bolted. Lucky this time around it seems to grow well.

Dirt Lover~ This June will be our last warm weather crop harvest.

Rainfield61~ I wish bitter gourd can grow all year round here but that will be an amazing thing to happen.

KitsapFG~ Our spring-sowed sweet corn were a disaster. Lucky that the autumn-sowed sweet corn are giving a some harvest.

Allison~ That is a very hot pepper variety!

Shawn Ann~ Thanks.

Stephanie~ I thought of drying those chilies but it will take a long time in this cold weather. Instead we freeze them.

Charmcitybalconygarden~I would like to learn the best way to pickle them. But I have not the time to search for a good method yet. Can you teach me how?

Cat-from-Sydney~Japanese breakfast pancake is my favourite too.

Joyce~Our record at the moment, we found 12 caterpillars on one radish plant. I am not sure why it is big. Maybe a lot of manure. The very lush carrot foliage at the back is making me a bit stress. Too many foliage does not mean long root sometime for carrot. Excess fertiliser.

Shaz~Maybe you can grow sweet corn, pumpkin and climbing bean together next year. Save a lot of space and you will harvest 3 kinds of vegetables.

Randomgardener~I don't know what variety it is. It is seeds from dried chilies brought from Asian groceries. I was making a chili paste and threw out the seeds on the garden. Suddenly I got hundreds of seedlings popping out.

Wendy said...

beautiful and colorful harvests! Are you ready for winter? Do you get to rest or are you still gardening through the season? That corn looks great!

Malar said...

Wow! you have good harvest even though it's nearly winter! You really have green thumb!

Malay-Kadazan girl said...

Wendy~ We probably have some break between July and August.Or not...that is the time for onions.

Malar~summer crop are almost at the end for us.

Rita said...

Oh, you have lovely green thumb! I'm so envious your harvest... looks so colourful! :-D If only my thumb is a little greener, I'll have a greener lil' green patch I call my garden...haha!