{"id":74,"date":"2007-03-06T01:27:54","date_gmt":"2007-03-05T13:27:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/?p=74"},"modified":"2007-03-06T01:27:54","modified_gmt":"2007-03-05T13:27:54","slug":"summer-goodies-winter-planting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/?p=74","title":{"rendered":"Summer Goodies, Winter Planting"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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!<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<div style=\"border: 0px solid black; padding: 15px 15px 40px; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; width: 448px; height: 597px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"448\" height=\"597\" style=\"border: 0px solid black\" src=\"\/images\/pumpkinharvest.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<small>Austrian hull-less seed pumpkins<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<div style=\"border: 0px solid black; padding: 15px 15px 40px; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; width: 448px; height: 597px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"448\" height=\"597\" style=\"border: 0px solid black\" src=\"\/images\/pumpkinseeds.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<small>Pumpkin seeds ready for the oven<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>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&#8217;t imagine that we&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;overflow method.&#8221; This will be my first attempt ever at making preserves, so I&#8217;ll be sure to report on the results &#8212; favourable or otherwise! <\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">\n<div style=\"border: 0px solid black; padding: 15px 15px 40px; background: white none repeat scroll 0% 50%; width: 448px; height: 597px; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; text-align: center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"448\" height=\"597\" style=\"border: 0px solid black\" src=\"\/images\/tomatoharvest.jpg\" \/><br \/>\n<small>Can you ever have too many?<\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farmlet.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}