Spring 2012 is here

Madly planting tomato seeds now and looking forward to the coming months of gorging out on tomatoes.
I've been picking some of the past winter harvest.
Lots of lettuce.
Kilos of snow peas.
Winter green staple, Silver beet.
Beetroot (today).
Good green eating all around for the winter.

The kale was given away at a community swap along with the mustard greens.

The first of the tomato seedlings.

Winter Solstice

It's just happened here.
So we are on the way to longer days.
There are a few things growing in the yard, namely weeds in the main patch. The weeds will be taken care of soon.

And also a few pretty yumalicious edible greens. (Maybe not the Kale)

Baby lettuce, mustard greens and a few beetroot.

Baby silver beet, endives behind them and pak choy hiding behind them.

The kale which is not very popular here. I had some seeds and threw them in and they germinated well.

A firm favourite here every year.

Snow peas.

And surprisingly, I still have a few small capsicums growing on my plants.

look out for a couple of busy bodies in the picture.

(pic wont behave)

Another lovely day here and a lot of work got done again.
I really should have taken the before shot of the patch out the front but I was focused on weeding it in good time. This is where some artichokes, rhubarb, African basil, sage, nasturtiums, bamboo, hops and some barley alive passion fruit  are growing. I think that is all.

The weeds were out of control. About eleven  twenty litre buckets and three hours later there was some semblance of a veggie patch.

If you look closely you can see blue snail pellets. Shock , horror...yes I do use stuff like that when I have to.
Now may be a good time to mention that in the last two to three weeks I have personally crushed about 2-300 hundred snails.
It seems I have had an infestation of sorts and I really need to eliminate them as much as possible. Since I cannot use snail pellets in the back yard due to our animals I have to seek them out and squash them.
Clearing out the front patch today I squashed another fifty or sixty of them.
The only animal that is smart enough to not eat the pellets is the cat. Cat is also an excellent mouser.
The dog (story for another day) and the chickens are gutses and will eat a lot of things they should not.

Early in the morning my wonderful wife used up the remainder of spinach from last weekend.
Some spinach and ricotta rolls with home made flaky pastry were prepared.
They made a great lunch.

Here they are before they were cooked.

Cooked and nearly ready to eat.

The main patch has two cauliflowers, carrots, leeks, lettuce and silver beet left in it.

The garlic is still going ok. I hope to harvest a few bulbs in the next couple of months.

And the two types of parsley that are always growing next to the oregano and mint are still providing us with this much loved herb.

Finally..after all that green is a picture of a chilli plant that has been alive over winter. As you can see there are  still a few fruit on it. Not sure of it's name but there is a medium heat to the fruit.