Who says you can’t grow much in food winter? Well, I think that it is a bit of a fallacy.
Here in Melton (Heat zone 4, Cold zone 10), we are managing to harvest food each week to supplement our diet. Lots of leafy greens, citrus, and Brassica.
Because it was a wonderfully sunny winters day, Kim broke out her camera and took heaps of produce photographs for me.
Here is some pictures of a big winter harvest she gathered today to give to our daughter Megan.
Lemonade fruit
We still have a bucket load of Lemonade on the tree. We better pick them soon or they will go pithy. We also have limes in abundance. More Cerveza this weekend, me thinks!
Salad greens
These salad green are from our new wicking bed. We keep picking the outer leaves and they just keep growing. The mizuna is just starting to gain a mustard bite to it, which I quite enjoy.
Queensland Blue Pumpkin
Well of course we are giving away pumpkins. We have so many of them! Besides, Megan loves pumpkin soup.
Rainbow Chard
And don’t we have truck loads of chard. We have a few plants that are now officially 12 months old and still going strong. This stuff survived through summer. It is tenacious stuff. Ben and I love it, but Kim is not too fussed.
Sprouting Broccoli
Our sprouting broccoli is flowering early due to the warmer weather. We are still harvesting and eating it though. Even when it flowers, it is still very edible.
Colourful Kale
This is a collection of colourful kale leaves. I might have mentioned before that this is the first year that we have grown kale, and from what we discovered tonight (a surprise treat is coming), it will not be the last. In fact, Kim has asked me to plant a second crop. I better get another couple punnets of seedlings from the nursery!
The bountiful winter harvest
Quite a haul, don’t you think?
Personally, I think Kim may have been overly generous in her giving 😉 . Mind you, if you can’t give good wholesome organic food to your kids, who can you give it to? Luckily there is so much more where this lot came from. All grown with the mighty power of homemade compost and chook poo!
What sorts of veggies are you harvesting right now? I would love to hear what you have been growing via comment!
What a fantastic harvest! Im still picking an absolute abundance broccoli at the moment, along with Cauliflower, cabbage and lettuce out of my greenhouse. I have never understood people who think nothing happens in the garden in winter!
So true Emma. Unless it is snowing of course.
Hi Gavin, your harvest looks great. Nice work in the garden. I’m in the Otways near Lorne. We’re probably a bit cooler and wetter than you. I’m really pleased with our broccoli this year, we have huge heads on all the plants, although the sprouting broccoli is flowering like yours. It still tastes great. I’ve got a few carrots and beet root growing, but we are coming to the end of those for this year. Our Tuscan kale plants love the cold weather and are growing taller and taller! Other than a few lettuces that’s all we have in the garden. In the orchard lemons and limes are producing lots of fruit. The orange tree is weighed down with lovely navel oranges, but they need another month to ripen.
In the stores we still have plenty of pumpkin, potato, garlic and onion, so we can eat most meals using just what we’ve grown. It feels good and tastes great.
Keep up the good work, I enjoy your blog.
Deb
Beautiful vegetables! I used to live in Melbourne (Blackburn) but now live in Indiana USA so summer is in full swing here and I have just picked my first ripe tomato. Believe me, nothing grows in the winter in Indiana the ground freezes solid!
Cheers Heather. I bet that tomato was simply amazing! Must be frustrating not to be able to grow anything in winter. I suppose that makes spring a massive time of activity, even more so than here.
Well done Deb! Quite a food forest you have there.
Gav
Great harvest! I wish I had silverbeet, but I make do with its close relative perpetual spinach. I just find I don’t get the nice stalky bits that silverbeet has. Ah well. I’m also cropping lots of kale (Red Russian is excellent, also Tuscan), broccoli and the first of the caulis. I’ve also got self sown onions that I’m harvesting as spring onions. Fruit wise not much, just the last of the Sundowner apples and two Lady Williams apples I’m jealously guarding from potential fruit thieves. I can’t wait for my citrus trees (only two years old) to fruit – I have high hopes for the lime and valencia orange as they have set tiny fruits this year. Fingers crossed!
Thanks Bek. By the looks of your lemon tree, you will be in lemon curd for years!
Checking in Gav. Nope not too much harvesting activity in the garden but lots growing. Well done guys. Definitely adding an orange tree to my list to go in.
Cheers Lynda! All the best with your harvest.
Oh it all looks so healthy – that chard is amazing. We have had an extended wet season up in the tropics so not much other than bok choy, cherry tomatoes and lettuces.
Gavin – do pumpkins need much sun to grow? We have a side passage which runs north/south. It doesnt get a lot of sun but would love to grow something useful along the narrow garden bed running along this part of our property
We too have pumpkins to eat, spring onions to eat or harvest, turnips that are nearing harvest, a few beetroot still in the garden, the broccoli are finished although the kids walked around and each ate an entire plant or 2. They had to go for garden reno purposes but all had hit flowering anyway. Not that the kids or goats or chooks cared. 😉 We are still picking the odd cherry tomato from the greenhouse and we have a few baby carrots left too. Mostly thorugh it’s basil from the windowsill, mint, oregano, thyme and a few radishes. My peas are growing nicely, the onions and garlic coming on strong and I have a heap of potatoes self sown too that seem to be surviving what is so far a rather mild winter. It’s all happening in the garden at the moment and probab;y busier than over the summer. 🙂