Polystyrene Garden Junkie: eggplant

I ate my second homegrown eggplant today. It's a big deal because Tassie is not the best place to grow eggplant - it's often considered too cold. I bought two puny seedlings last year from the bargain bin at my local nursery (perhaps not the best way to start life either). They somehow survived two snow falls over summer, and one of them has produced 5 small eggplants. The other produced beautiful purple flowers, but no 'eggs'. I can't explain the difference.

I grilled the eggplant and ate it with Shakshuka Eggs and haloumi, which accommodated my homegrown garlic, a few of the late season tomatoes, and silverbeet. Silverbeet has become a true staple for me - it's so easy to grow in any season, easily reseeds, and can be cooked in a wide variety of recipes.

I thought I'd also post this bizarre photo of me splitting and replanting the rhubarb along the new garden beds. My aunt knitted me a 'plant' beanie, which I think seals the deal.

A few months ago I blogged about letting my vegetables go to seed just out of curiosity, and I've now got quite an interesting collection of flowering vegies in my backyard.

My leeks have been in flower for quite awhile now, with their beautiful purple and white bulbous heads. I'm thinking of planting them in the front garden as ornamentals next year, along with some artichokes.

flowering Leeks

I also had a good hack away at my purple artichoke thinking that it'd stopped producing for the season. The green artichoke had just started so I'd moved on. Apparently the purple artichoke loved the hacking back to the stem (it had grown to about 2m cubed) and immediately started producing buds again. So there's a tip! To be honest, artichokes are a real treat, but I'm pretty sick of them now. I'm letting both the purple and green artichokes go to flower now for the season, just to see their big thisley flowers and compare the different varieties.

A large purple bud opening up

You wouldn't have thought I hacked this plant back a month ago. The artichoke's revenge

My green artichoke buds opening up

This is just an observation, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the green artichokes go purple on their tips when they're opening (and I suspect just past the point of edibility), and the purple artichokes go green on their tips. If you look at the photos above of the purple and green artichokes respectively, you'll see what I mean. When the buds are younger they're pretty much all purple or all green.

I've also let one of my green cabbages (actually one of my only cabbages that survived the great snail plague of 2010) go to seed. It went from being a smooth round surface one day to having these curly flowering stalks exploding out the middle the next. I was thrilled!


the flowering cabbage with some broccoli seeds hanging overhead

and now to the plants that I get to see flower AND still eat them...

My first tomatoes are starting to blush. I loathe buying tomatoes at the shops when I have so many plants in the backyard, and so I've been hovering over these plants constantly, waiting for the first tomatoes to ripen.

Roma tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes

I also have my 'experimental' eggplants starting to grow spikey things. I say experimental, because people keep telling me that Tasmania is too cold to grow eggplants. I thought I'd try anyway.

one of the spiky things growing on the eggplant. I'm assuming it's the fruit.

more spiky things with some arty-looking water drops

one of my great successes last year were my lebanese cucumber plants, so I thought I'd relive the dream

I've never grown corn before, and I'm a bit concerned that my plants are a lot smaller than those at the community garden down the road. Could it be because I planted them too late? Or perhaps that they had to grow over and over after snail attacks? I'm not sure exactly what stage they're up to yet, or how the corn forms, but to be honest they're fulfilling quite an interesting role at the moment: garden sounds.

When I think of gardening and the senses, sight, touch, smell, and less so, taste, are all obviously engaged. However, I think the sounds of the garden can get discounted. Obviously birds have a significant place in the sound landscape, but the sounds of plants are usually only activated when wind is involved. Even with only a small breeze, corn makes an amazing sound. It's more than rustling. I only really noticed it today for the first time (I've not been gardening much lately due to work commitments), and at first I couldn't work out where it was coming from. I wasn't consciously searching for the sound, it was just something that was mulling around in my head. It pleased me that such a distinctive but soothing sound was produced by my largely ignored corn stalks.

I wrote recently about planting all these watermelon seeds. I transferred the happy-looking seedlings to the garden once they got to about 4 cm in height. From I think a total of 20 seedlings, this little one below is the only one left. Snails. Again.