When to harvest vegetables

We had a lovely day yesterday. Thank you for your warm wishes for us.

This question is from slakermom: "what do you do with your extra produce? Obviously a lot can be preserved, but what about things like lettuce? There's only so much salads I can eat."

Harvesting is one of the most important parts of the entire process and you have to get it right or you'll waste food. We eat tomatoes almost every day that are freshly picked and eaten in salads or on sandwiches. When there are too many, and that is a truly joyful occasion, I'll pick the excess - usually when they're still green - and ripen them in the shade. Temperature ripens tomatoes, not sunlight. When they're ripe, I'll make relish, sauce or chutney, process it in a water bath and store it in the cupboard. I do a similar thing with cucumbers and beetroot - we eat them fresh but when we have a lot of them, they're picked, pickled and then stored in the fridge.

Cabbages are also eaten fresh in coleslaw and cooked and we probably eat one cabbage every week or two during winter. Like the tomatoes, we grow more than we eat fresh and at some point in the season, I'll make sauerkraut.

We plant vegetables for our chooks and dog too. The chooks eat cabbage, silverbeet, lettuce, broccoli, radish tops, corn, peas and anything with a bug in it. Alice has anything that we would eat from the garden made into her stew that we cook for her each week.

Vegetables like corn, beans, peas, silverbeet, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, kale, carrots are all good to freeze. To do that effectively, wait until you have enough for at least a serving for your family, pick, blanche then bag them up for the freezer. Never skip the blanching step, it makes a difference. Some days you'll only have enough excess for one or two bags for the freezer, other days you have a lot more than that. Just take it as it comes, it will only take you a few minutes to process a bag or two. Don't think it's too small an amount to worry about. You'll be happy to have it later when you can just take the frozen vegetables from the freezer and have them on the table to eat that night.

Potatoes, pumpkin and onions can all be stored in a cool dry place and will last for a few months if you find a place that is rodent-free. I know many of our American and Canadian friends can and freeze pumpkin but as far as I know, this is never done in Australia.

Don't look at the current crops as being only for that season. If you can spread the availability of produce over a wide time span, you'll be getting the best from your plantings. So with that in mind, try to plant a few extra plants so you'll be able to freeze or preserve some produce for later in the year.

Steelkitten, we do use straw to mulch our plants. It's cheap and easy to get here. When we buy ours, we buy about 12 bales and store them in the shed. We usually don't have a problem with seeds in our mulch. If you can get the chooks to sort through it, they'll eat all the seeds for you. Otherwise, you'll just have to pull out the green shoots when they grow - and if you do have chooks, they'll love to eat the grass shoots and they'll be full of Omega oils.

Maxine, Hanno will pick a lot of the kale to have in one of his seasonal pork meals. He cooks the kale with smoked pork sausage and meat. I don't eat it but he feasts on it for a few days because he makes a big pot. There will be kale left after he picks, so a couple of days later, we'll pick it all to clear the area for tomatoes. That kale will be processed in a water bath and stored in the cupboard.

Avalon, we tilled the original soil, added a lot of manure and compost and then enclosed the beds with the besser blocks. The soil is higher than the surrounding soil because we added a lot of nutrients and continue to add them between every new crop.

Linda, there'll be a post about the bush house soon.

Karyn, I forget the exact size, it's something like 2 metres x 6 metres (6'x20').

Trina, Heather has been a very healthy girl since we brought her home as a two week old chick. However, in the flock we bought with Heather, about six of them died. They were a mixture of rare breed chooks, Heather was the only Faverolles. There was a Barnevelder, some Plymouth Rocks, Sussex, Hamburgs. From what I have read, it is quite normal to have a portion of a flock died when they're relocated and we've certainly found that to be true. If they survive the relocation and settle in, usually they live for a very long time. We often have old chooks here. At the moment Cocobelle is our oldest at five years.

Evelyn, bok choy bolts in the heat. So does lettuce, broccoli, coriander (cilantro), spinach and cauliflower. Tomatoes don't set their fruit well in the heat either. Over around 30C (85F), tomatoes often stop producing flowers or setting them to fruit if they're already there.

Courtney, don't give up, love. You're doing the right thing, even though a lot of people around you don't know it ... yet. :- )