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Archive for the ‘Frugal Living’ Category

The Good Life

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , , , , on December 28, 2010| 52 Comments »

Gardening on this scale will provide your family with a really healthy gourmet diet even if both your money and your time are tightly budgeted.  It will provide a true sense of security: whatever else happens you will always eat, and eat well.  It will provide an area of creativity in a sometimes treadmill existence, and an area of serenity in a sometimes madcap world.

Linda Woodrow, The Permaculture Home Garden
(photos below are of the fruits and vegetables harvested
from our backyard garden in December)

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Christmas Corn

Posted in Food & Friends, Frugal Living on December 25, 2010| 23 Comments »

This Christmas morning, we went to the backyard and harvested some fresh corn – five cobs for our breakfasts, and four as a Christmas present for our girls.  They enjoyed them enormously and in return, gifted us with three super fresh eggs…

Hope you’re all having a wonderful Christmas Day!

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Homegrown Garlic

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , , on December 13, 2010| 30 Comments »

We tried growing garlic this year – not always an easy thing to do in Sydney, as we usually don’t get cold enough to set the bulbs.

We had planned to leave the plants in a bit longer, but the recent heavy rain necessitated some urgent harvesting before they rotted away. Once the leaves start to wilt, it’s best to keep all water off it from that time onwards.

Our garlic was planted in an old laundry tub and the resultant bulbs are pretty small – some are only a couple of centimetres (about an inch) in diameter.  But they have the most amazing aroma!  These now need to be cured (air dried in a shady spot) for two to four weeks – hopefully they’ll form hard papery skins and store well for the coming months.

A couple of the bulbs were threatening to rot, so we’ve broken them up for cooking.  We were delighted to find they’d formed proper cloves. The garlic was wonderfully pungent and strongly flavoured – definitely an incentive to try planting these again next year.  Our “crop” won’t be enough to see us through the year, so we’ll stock up again on Diana and Ian’s garlic once it’s ready.  It’s fabulous not to have to buy imported garlic!

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Gold and Purple

Posted in Frugal Living on December 2, 2010| 30 Comments »

Gold for Heidi, and purple for Debra!

The last of our sunflowers, self-sown from chicken feed…

The corn flowers have formed packets of pollen, which dusts the silks of neighbouring plants in a fine powder…

…a process necessary to ensure the cobs grow!

Zucchini flowers are the most amazing golden yellow…

..whereas cucumber flowers are lighter and most pastel-toned.

The last of the nasturtiums for this season, although there are a squillion seeds in the bed for next year…

. . . . .

There was a surprising amount of purple in our garden, including several eggplants…

…with beautiful pale violet flowers.

Our dwarf nectarine tree is promising a small crop of decent-sized fruit.

I made an attempt at macro photography, although my camera really isn’t up to it..

The last red cabbage, for now…

…but the next batch of seedlings are well on their way!

Our blueberry may still be in a pot, but it’s giving us a few berries to munch on every week.  For some reason I always thought these were a cold climate plant, but it’s doing very well here in Sydney…

The lucerne we planted for the chooks is flowering…

…as are the hydrangeas in the front yard.  This plant might be older than we are – it was already well established when we moved in twenty years ago!

Lastly, these dainty little borage flowers – also planted for the chickens.  Aren’t they sweet?

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Red

Posted in Frugal Living, tagged , , , on November 24, 2010| 35 Comments »

The last post was green, so this one is red.  After all, it’s nearly December, and Christmas is just around the corner.

Above are unusual cherry tomatoes given to us by one of our neighbours – the fruit grows into little heart shapes.  We’re going to see if we can save the seeds from these ones.

These gorgeous red beetroots have added a splash of colour to our green garden beds…

…and grown into both small and ginormous beets!

We haven’t had a hugely successful strawberry crop, but there are a few bright red berries in the pot right now…

Pete finally agreed to let me crop some of the rhubarb – it’s mostly green with a little red, but it will make a lovely dessert or sauce one day soon.  There was nearly a kilo and a half (over three pounds) in the stems below…

A few tiny carrot thinnings from our rainbow seeds…these were too small to eat, but we marveled at their colour…

We’re waiting for most of our tomatoes to ripen, but these cherries will be ready for picking in a day or so…

And lastly, the Red Norland potatoes have stormed ahead of the other varieties – whilst the Bintjes and King Edwards are still tiny new potatoes, the Reds are now full sized and very delicious!

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