Potato Onions

These come under various other names but Google Images provides a good selection of views of these little gems. Our plantings have been sourced from different suppliers and vary in colour from Red to Gold and Brown. They all have one thing in common. They keep incredibly well. We were harvesting last years crop while still eating the previous year's harvest. And they are very strong flavoured.

The Garden diary tells us to plant these in July which we do religiously and have almighty success. Like all Onions they need lots of compost and lots of water otherwise the risk is a bunch of midgets.

Three months ago a patch was set aside for these and planted with Oats as a green manure crop. Today this was chopped and forked in well with a little Blood and Bone and a good few handfuls of Dolomite.

The rest was easy. Stick them in the ground, water and weed.

Autumn on the way

There is something about Autumn (and Spring for that matter) that gladdens the heart.

With Autumn it is the prospect of the cooler days that make working outside more attractive and pleasant. Today after the rain it was reasonably pleasant outside. The weeding program continued with the weeds going straight into the almost complete NZ compost. By the end of the day it was brimming and a warm coat of mulch hay was placed over the top. The central hole was drilled clear and that is it for 6 weeks.

A couple of beds were prepared for planting. In this case we have Cabbage and Broccoli which need a rich base full of good compost. Jean will slip those into the ground tomorrow. We also have a punnet of early onions to plant. There is a nice section of the garden weeded recently that will not be too rich for these.

While typing this I'm looking out over the Williams Valley which is misted up and looking lovely. No wonder it is worth getting up early. A chance to write the blog in that early morning quiet with the scenery developing as the light starts to filter into the valley.

Over the river the irrigation is turned off, the grass has already leaped out of the ground although it will be a couple of weeks before we stop hand feeding. The cows are on Lucerne and some Oats. The boss wants to replace some fencing and suggested we find some one to get stuck into it. That someone is the youngest son of a family in a nearby village. He is just starting out and very keen. He was shown the extent of the section to be replaced and didn't seem daunted by the use of non standard recycled plastic posts and has some spare time right now to get started. It was left up to the boss to negotiate rates and initiate the work. Our role will be to supervise and keep up the material supply. This will suit us well as we would like to spend more time on HHF and transition gradually away from paid work.

Hispanico (Cows milk Manchego), Harvesting Onion and Garlic

Time to try something different in the cheese making area. Came across this recipe on NECMSC. It looked pretty simple and having tried Manchego a few times in the past it went on our list of things to try. The process turned out to be very straight forward. We haven't been using the heavy duty cheese press of late but with a block of cheese this size it came in handy especially as the pressing process involved different pressures at various timings. Gauging the pressures was a bit of a guess. 5KG is easy as that is the exact weight of the metal door stop. But 10 KG was a shot in the dark i.e. the screws turned down a bit and 30 KG was the screws turned down a lot. In hindsight maybe making a couple of smaller ones might have been a better idea so that tasting them at different ages would be easier but sometimes it's just nice to have a big wheel for aesthetics.

There was a bit of stirring involved but as luck would have it a handy book and the art of reading and stirring work well. Stirring, coffee, Christmas cake and reading is a touch more difficult but can be achieved.

Some of the alliums were ready in particular the one called French Shallot which looks like a bunching onion. It keeps really well. We used the last one only two weeks ago. They are also exceedingly strong flavoured. Definitely eye watering material. This years crop did not contain the larger sized bulbs that came last year. Our assumption is that weather conditions were a little different and not ideal. It could also have been that the compost used was not up to scratch but we don't think so. Sometimes nature has a little mystery. Still the quantity was good enough and there will be plenty to use as seed stock this coming July.

 

 

The last of the garlic was pulled as well. Again the quality was not present. The odd good corm but nowhere near as good as last year. It just didn't bulb up. Normally we would have finished harvesting in November so this is more than a month late. Still there will be enough across all the varieties to keep us going. Especially now that we have started freezing some of the crop to prevent it shooting before the next years crop is ready.

 

 

We finished the day by sitting in and around a friends swimming pool having a drink and chatting about the world, books and every thing else. Something we plan to do more of in 2014.

Potato Onions and Turmeric

These onions are so impressive.

Golden variety

Red Variety

Firstly, they bare easy to grow. Stick them in the ground in July and they grow. Each stem is another onion. So from one you get 4 or 5.

Secondly, they keep forever. We are still using onions from our July 2012 planting and the July 2013 plantings are nearly ready for harvest.

Thirdly, they are very strong onions not a wimpy no crying variety.

Our Turmeric has finally sprouted shoots after sitting in the ground for weeks. We were getting worried that they may have rotted.

Two shoots up

We use a lot of Turmeric as it has many healthy properties. In the past we would use powdered Turmeric in many dishes. We started to grow it a few years ago and love the totally different flavour that fresh grated Turmeric imparts on a dish. Usually we only plant one pot but this year we have doubled our plantings as it is such a favourite.

Slowly but surely we are planting out the melons. Everything has been a bit slow to germinate this year. A combination of some old seed and the cooler nights. The chicken wire guards around the small plants in our unprotected top of the hill bed is working and the plants that had been nibbled are recovering. Cucumbers are on stream now and the first Zucchini was eaten last night.

We have a surplus of cow manure and today decided to put some in the chicken pen with the silage rather than have one side silage and one side manure. Throwing in some freshly mown grass clippings each morning has encouraged the girls to do a lot of scratching in the pen before they are let out rather than their usual behaviour of standing at one end waiting for release.

The weather is a nuisance as usual. Today was very cool. Jean was wandering about with a coat on late morning.

It looks as if we may have a bad year in the orchard. The bats have been hammering various trees. Anything with paper exclusion bags doesn't stop them. And although the cotton bags provide a better barrier they still manage to do a lot of damage. We ran out of bags today when adding a few more to the three Pear trees. The heirloom cider apples are almost ready to bag and a rush order to Green Harvest will be needed tonight.

An Early Start

Very hard to get out of bed at 5.30 when the temperature outside is 6.5 C, our coldest morning yet. But there is too much to do, don't want to get behind on the things they must happen. No smelling of roses this month at least not yet. July should be the laziest month but it's not. A lot of things happen in July as these blogs will explain.

Cup of milky latte and then drive down the road to let the neighbours cows and calves into another strip of fresh grass and set up two more strips for later in the week. The bull gave me a dirty look. I'd been warned about him and growled back. But typical male, the fresh grass was more attractive than bothering me.

Cows and calves feeding on a new strip

Just as well that electric wire separates us.

Back within an hour to make and eat breakfast, toasted sour-dough toast with Avocado, melted Havarti and a smear of Dijon mustard for one of us and toasted sour-dough bread, Avocado and Kim Chi for the other.

Filled six barrels with compost and planted the Artichoke seedlings.

 

Artichoke Farm

 

 

Harvested the Horseradish, emptied the barrel (keeping the soil in bags for future compost making), refilled with fresh compost and planted Horseradish seedlings.

 

Horseradish in need of work

 

 

Harvested Turmeric, kept old soil and refilled pot ready for replanting. Lot of time washing Horseradish and Turmeric. Plugged into the MP3 player listening to some of Greening of Gavin podcasts on cheese. Handy, always something to learn from someone else. All these little bits on food or gardening get filed away mentally (I hope they stay there).Then morning tea two scones with butter over second latte. A good and productive start to the day.

 

Turmeric washed and in drying racks ready for use

 

 

Collected another 20 or so fallen limes. wrapped most of them in a sheet of newspaper and stored in a box in the Cave. Tried this technique (passed on by a friend) last year to good effect.

 

Then the main task of the day i.e. Planting Shallots, French Onions and Potato Onions. Chopped up the Woolly Pod Vetch green manure crop with hedge trimmers. Forked it over roughly, and chopped vigorously with a spade. Added a generous layer of fresh compost and forked that in - bed ready. All that raised a healthy sweat, no need to go to the gym. Laying out all the bulbs to see how they will fit trying to provide as much space as possible for each plant. Nothing worse than not providing enough space and finding everything constrained when it is only half grown. Everything buried and task complete.

 

Green Manure Crop

Chopping Complete

Forked and spaded

Fresh compost

Shallots

 

 

Headed across the river to the regular job to put out more silage. They only needed one bale and we are now into the high quality bales having worked our way through the poorer quality woody stuff. The girls will enjoy this good silage. They can smell it at a distance. If you are carrying good quality silage they will crowd around the tractor straight away pulling at the bale before the wrapping is taken off. The feeding bins are surrounded with a sea of mud making the task all that much more difficult and dangerous. Again the job only took an hour all up and so back home.

 

Silage in the mud

 

 

Ahead of schedule for the day. Spent the last hour or two of daylight weeding. The Asparagus bed all clean and tidy and also the Pineapples which were at risk of disappearing under chickweed, tidied up around the peas and Daikon Radish. A good day.

Pineapple Bed

Asparagus Bed

 

 

Now off to cook dinner. Started with some more Roquefort on Daikon Radish slices today. Another nibble to keep us going is steamed Red Cabbage wrapped around a small slice of Avocado and a sliver of tinned Mackerel. Main course was roasted Sweet Potato (again as it was so nice last night), Couscous, lightly fried Mushroom quarters in Olive oil and Fish Sauce. Mussels in fried Onion, Garlic, Ginger and Turmeric. Finish off with Yoghurt and ported prunes. The photographs are of the leftovers.

 

Mussels

Sweet Potato

Mushrooms

Couscous

 

 

Not every day is this busy or productive but this intensity of activity is not untypical. There is always so much to achieve in the garden and especially so when the routine is interrupted with wet weather.

 

 

 

 

Mulching

Regular weeding is an ongoing task with any vegetable garden and it is not one of our strengths. Always on the lookout for a time saving technique we have tried various mulching processes to reduce weed dominance. Garlic and Onions are very difficult to mulch and tedious to weed. One useful and effective technique we have been using recently is to run old Lucerne through our mulcher producing a fine chaff. This is easily sprinkled over younger seedlings to cover the soil.

Originally used mulch hay but it held too many seeds. Lucerne or straw bypasses that issue.

Our Chipper/Mulcher is over 15 years old and has proven to be a versatile and useful garden tool. Its list of achievements are:

• Chipping and mulching garden prunings
• Chipping fish heads and frames for chook food
• Mulching straw and lucent bales into fine chaff
• Mulching oyster shells and Cuttlefish frames into shell grit for chooks
• Mulching fireplace charcoal into bio char

Spoilt Lucerne

The versatile Chipper/Mulcher

Garlic Mulched with fine Chaff