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We have harvested the Austrian Hull-less Seed Pumpkins, freeing up more garden space for autumn planting. Most of the pumpkins are stored in the back room, awaiting our further attention, but we cut one open immediately to try the seeds. They are plump and delicious. We soaked them overnight in brine, then dried them in the oven to make them nice and crispy. What a tasty snack!

Austrian hull-less seed pumpkins

Pumpkin seeds ready for the oven

Neither Kevin or I had ever encountered this kind of pumpkin before we found it in a heritage seed catalogue in the spring. They have proved easy to grow, and we think they are beautiful looking pumpkins. The flesh is not very tasty. Beyond adding a bit of it to soups or stews, I can’t imagine that we’ll want to eat it very much. Kevin tried feeding some to the cows, who were unimpressed! Perhaps it would be popular with chickens or pigs. Because the seeds have no hulls, special care needs to be taken to prevent excessive moisture and rotting during germination. Once started, the vines are rampant, and the plump hull-less seeds are delicious. We would like to grow these pumpkins again next year.

The tomato harvest continues. At last we have the the joyful abundance of far more tomatoes than we can eat. Today it is my mission to bottle some of them. I plan to make a puree, reduce it, add some citric acid to ensure safe preservation, and bottle it in quart jars using the “overflow method.” This will be my first attempt ever at making preserves, so I’ll be sure to report on the results — favourable or otherwise!

Can you ever have too many?

As we harvest the summer vegetables, we are working on preparing the newly emptied potato and pumpkin beds for autumn planting. This involves breaking up remaining clods of clay, spreading lime and gypsum to condition the soil, adding cow manure, and mulching with loads of dry kikuyu grass. I am already starting seeds for many of our autumn crops: beets, swiss chard (silver beet), red cabbage, mustard lettuce, fenugreek, collards (Dalmatian cabbage), two kinds of kale, salsify, turnips, leeks, shungiku (chrysanthemum greens), peas (flour peas, sugar snaps, and shelling peas), carrots and radishes. We have direct-seeded the radish and carrot seed. The rest have been started inside and will be transplanted into the garden.

Despite earlier troubles with blight, our tomatoes have survived and we are finally enjoying their tasty fruit. “Russian Red”, “Money Maker” and “Yellow Currant” have shown the best blight resistance of the varieties we planted, and are now healthy and laden with fruit. “Orange Cherry” has fared less well. Also disappointing was “Tommy Toe” — a variety I selected in part because the seed catalogue claimed it had good resistance to early and late blight. It certainly hasn’t proven very blight-resistant for us! We’ll be keeping all this in mind when we choose what tomato varieties to plant next year.

We have now harvested our first jalapeno chili, and most of our “Buttercup” winter squash. I have wiped the dirt off the squashes and put them on a rack in the back room for storage. I’ve shelled the first of the borlotti beans and mung beans. Those will be put away in jars once they are thoroughly dry.

Buttercup squash

Purple “Maori” Potatoes

Tomorrow, it will be time to dig more potatoes, most of which will be dried off and stored away in paper sacks. Our kind neighbours from down the road gave us three kinds of heirloom seed potatoes, all of which are obviously well adapted for this area. They’ve done really well, even though we didn’t have the ground very well prepared for them. I’ve just planted another late potato crop, to be dug at around the first frost. If the weather turns cold early this year, then I guess we can put shelter-cloth over them to extend the season for a little longer.

More delights from the garden may yet be in store. We are watching in anticipation as the fruit ripen on the eggplant, bell pepper, pepino and okra. With all the rain we’ve had this February, it’s a slow season for the hot-weather crops. They look healthy enough, though, and we trust that they will be worth waiting for.

Recently I’ve been working on a new garden. It’s at the edge of the house paddock, between the olive trees and the boundary fence. We want to turn this area into a “barrier garden” between the main vegetable beds and the rampant kikuyu grass in our neighbour’s pasture. The area faces into the sun, so despite its proximity to the olive trees, I think it will get plenty of light.

Bill Mollison’s Introduction to Permaculture discusses the use of plant barriers to keep invasive plants like kikuyu out of gardens. In particular, he suggests comfrey and lemon grass as good barrier plants against kikuyu. Inspired by these suggestions, I started a whole lot of lemon grass from seed recently, and have planted a line of it along the fence at the back of the barrier garden. The rest of the barrier bed will be taken up with other useful herbs that we’d like to grow, but which are rather too large and/or rampant to put in beds closer to the house. These plants include:

lemon balm
tansy (too invasive to plant in the main garden, but must have it in the garden as it’s very useful for de-worming the goats)
echinacea
willow herb
borage

I’ve planted annuals, such as marigolds and calendulas, to fill in spaces in the bed for the time being. Eventually some of these will probably be replaced with valerian and astragalus (milk vetch), which I’m starting from seed at the moment. A neighbour has offered us some more comfrey, so we will probably end up trying that as a barrier plant also.

Barrier garden

As with our other garden beds, the area for this barrier garden was covered with black polythene for a couple of months to kill back the kikuyu. Before digging holes for the young transplants, I sprinkled the area liberally with lime and dolomite to loosen and sweeten the clay. Then I mulched with wood chips. I made a barrier of corrugated iron against the fence to keep out the pasture plants until the lemon grass and other barrier plants can establish themselves properly.

It will be interesting to see whether this barrier garden works. If it proves successful, we will probably make similar plantings around most of the edge of the house paddock. We anticipate keeping a further strip of weed mat or mulch between the barrier gardens and the vegetable plots.