Become NEARLY self sufficient

.... they are slowly ripening – yay!

These will be a blackberry tart with sorbet for a weekend treat!

..of jam making this morning.

All up 20 jars of capegooseberry & lemon, and zucchini, ginger and lemon.

NOT..KEEPING..UP !!!

I was only meant to be out for a short while today, catching up with the watering and weeding, and instead found ALL this to harvest and more.

• Cape gooseberries to become jam tomorrow
• Zucchinis to also be made into a zucchini/ginger/lemon jam
• Potatoes to store away
• The coriander also had to be lifted and I will dry the seed heads
• Planted more seeds of cress and rocket

with a wheelbarrow that is past its use-by date, and a replacement tyre is going to cost three times as much as the original wheelbarrow?

If you are anything like me, you make it into a great salad bowl. DH drilled a few holes in the bottom for me. I filled it up with compost and potting mix and have planted an assortment of seeds, and voila !!!

of zucchini pickles have started off the beginning of my preserving season. I can already see that it is going to a long, long, one….;-)

I picked kilos and kilos of zucchini this morning ~ the beginning of a huge crop.

I have sliced and grated them with onions, and tomorrow morning they will become our first pickles for the season!

I was totally obsessed with keeping the frost of all my cape gooseberry plants this past winter, and every night I was out there with blankets covering them up, so that this summer I would have early fruit.

Well, early fruit I have, and now I am going nuts trying to keep up with the jam making. I have managed to make more jam in one day, from this precious little berry, that I manage to make ALL year. Usually I am nowhere near picking over the plants until April/May, so to have made so much in January is a bonus.

Absolutely no shortage of this wonderful jam this year!!

.... and one of the reasons I haven’t been on here as much.

A larger garden equals a much larger portion of my time, and as tiring as that is, it has been very satisfying to see it flourishing and producing so much.

We have the best crop of tomatoes that I have ever planted. Berries and fruit are in abundance. Have already harvested my first section of potatoes, and the next two crops will be dug up in the coming weeks.

I have prepared and frozen much of the stone fruit already in preparation for jam and chutney making.

Our first early apples are now only maybe a week away from picking, and then the dehydrator will be coming out of storage ready for drying fruit.

... with the warmer weather, things have been hectic around the property.

The Captain is trying to get as much firewood stored away for next winter as he possibly can.

The grass is growing before our very eyes. We only cut it barely a week ago, and we both need to get out there again and get it under some sort of control before it goes out of control..!

We have collected loads of manure and the garden is lapping it all up.

This week I have ramped up the planting of vegetables and seeds. More peas, beans, leeks, salad mixes, silverbeet and beetroot. I desperately want to plant some tomatoes, but will have to be patient as there still is the possibility of frosts.

Two avocado plants have seeded in the garden, and I transplanted them into pots and put them under cover. I only seem to be able to grow them in pots as they abhor the frost, but that is o.k. At least I have some lovely healthy trees that should eventually bear fruit.

All the fruit trees are in blossom, and our bees have been very busy pollinating. Fingers crossed we have a bumper crop next season.

So, the past couple of weeks have been super busy, and it probably won’t let up for quite a while yet…!

... hopefully in time for Christmas.

My family love fresh peas with Christmas lunch, so I made sure to plant my seeds this week. All being well they should be cropping mid December.