The vegetable garden - change of seasons

I love our garden. There are certain times of the year when being out there seems to be the only possibility. We are in that time now - when the stark coldness of a Winter's day is replaced by a more gentle warmth, and even in the late afternoon, the garden holds more of the promise of Spring than the reality of Winter.

Now the garden is a mixture of Winter's kale and Summer's tomatoes. Soon all the cabbages will be gone and it will be all salad vegetables and green beans. The days are getting warmer now but the nights are still cold. That reminds me that I have to plant up more tomatoes seeds, more lettuce, more beans, more chard, more everything.

The tomato bushes are the weakest they've ever been but they're still producing tomatoes. I wonder if that is caused by the fluctuating temperatures or a wilt disease that will be rampant as soon as the warmer weather hits. I noticed new tomato flowers yesterday afternoon as I wandered the green aisles of my outdoor supermarket. Hanno has mulched around the tomatoes and probably added more potash and blood and bone; hopefully that will see them through until I get the new plants ready for planting out.

We have a good lot of white cabbage almost ready for picking. We usually only plant out the sugarloaf cabbage because it's fast to mature but this year Hanno tried regular cabbage and it's grown really well. Obviously that's something we'll do again next year. I'm looking forward to fresh coleslaw, some fried cabbage with onions and a batch of sauerkraut that I'll get on to go as soon as we harvest. Sauerkraut is really easy to make and very nutritious, if you haven't tried your hand at it yet, I'll take plenty of photos when I do my batch and you might like to give it a go.

Yesterday I came back inside with an armful of some of the best silverbeet (chard) we've ever grown. The leaves are very study, the darkest of green and very shiny. We ate those cooked leaves last night for dinner, with steamed pumpkin and a little curried beef that had been cooked with onions, carrots, celery and garlic. Delicious! It's not a meal you'd find on any restaurant menu but that's the beauty of home cooking, there are no rules. It just has to taste good.

There are plenty of vegetables to keep us going over the coming months. There are rows of buttercrunch and iceberg lettuce, leeks, garlic, zucchinis, celery, Welsh onions, capsicums (peppers), the first of the green beans, ginger, turmeric and herbs- right now we have parsley, chives, oregano, thyme, mint, marjoram, yarrow, comfrey, pineapple sage, curry plant and bay. Soon we'll be planting potatoes and sweet potatoes. There's always something happening out there, always something to do and something to pick.

It's coming round to harvest time for our northern friends. How has your garden grown this year? If this has been your first vegetable garden, please tell us all how it went. Will you continue next year? For my southern hemisphere friends - we're all getting ready for Spring. What will be in your garden this year?

And finally, look what else I found while I wandered about yesterday afternoon. Sitting on our old couch, which is now on the back verandah waiting for Shane and Sarndra to pick it up, was this handsome old timer. He was enjoying the late afternoon sun and watching me wander around the garden, after spending the day building a retaining wall near our big shed. Like most homesteads and productive homes, there's plenty to do around here and always a comfy place to relax when day is done.