In the garden...nearly harvest time

 Grapes and more grapes not super sweet, but not too tart either

 Trombocinos climbing up the fence

 Chook mix (autumn/winter) from Greenpatch organic seeds, a mix of oats, barley, spinach and bok choy.  I won't be feeding it to them from the box, or they might eat the foam.

 Last of the echinaceas

 First of the anemones- must be autumn

 Andrew's watermelon (moon & stars)

 One of Liv's pumpkins

 Chillis

Linking up with Jacqui this week from Dusty Country Road, sharing what's happening in the garden.  You can head over to her blog  and leave a link in her comments if you have a garden post to share this week.

February garden update

 Sedum 'Autumn Joy' with a lavender cotton border.  These two are drought hardy, and look great at this time of year in our front yard.  The sedum brings in the bees, and it's an area I don't have to water.

 Cucumbers still going- must go and pick the next lot before they get too big!

 Capsicums coming along after the first crop was burnt by severe heat.

 Cape gooseberries have taken off, and one of the fruit forming below like a little lantern.

 Autumn fruiting raspberries (fingers crossed for a first year fruit, I only planted them in December!)

 Leeks thickening up.  We lost some in the heat, but I'll fill in the gaps soon with some I'll grow from seed.

 Basil- pesto making this weekend

 Trombocinos have taken off, they were a bit slower than the other zucchinis

Beans of some sort that I pinched from some dry pods.  They were purple with black specks on them.
We had some good rain on Wednesday, and can see the difference in the garden.  The tanks have been topped up after being very low too.  It's still summer, but feels like autumn at the moment.  I've been spending a lot of time cutting things back and tidying up in the garden, fingers crossed for no more extreme heat.

Survival of the hardiest

 I didn't get around to posting about my fried garden after our ridiculous heatwave, probably better to focus on the plants that did survive well, some of them thrived.  The ones that did the best were in the newest raised beds with good soil.  My poor driveway garden with its sandy soil and radiant heat from the concrete didn't do so well.  We also sadly lost a chicken.

 These two photos are of two cape gooseberry bushes growing together, and I think they doubled in size, and now have little buds on them.  I'm looking forward to trying their fruit, to see if we'll grow them again next summer.

 The cucumbers have taken off, I've just discovered some ripe for the picking after buying a couple at a farmer's market yesterday.  I thought it'd be a few weeks before we had any!

 A little capsicum.  We had some nearly ripe ones, but they were cooked on the bush.

 Grapes doing well.

 Comfrey- it was a pile of brown leaves at the end of the heatwave, but had a small green leaf poking up.  This is one week later.

 Sweet potatoes are quite happy, but are yet to fully take off

 Zucchinis chugging along

New growth on a young raspberry, after some leaves were damaged.  So we'll have to have a good think about what we can grow in the driveway, and cover everything with sheets or shade cloth in extreme heat.

Early January garden

 The garden is producing well at the moment, luckily, we've only had one extremely hot day at a time, rather than a heatwave so far, so the garden has recovered pretty well after a hot day.  We've even had some rain this week, so I've confident enough to plant the next round of carrots, some leeks, and some cosmos (to attract beneficial insects) in the beds that the potatoes came out of.

 The biggest pumpkin so far.

 Cucumbers making their way up the teepee

 Leeks up one end, cosmos up the other

 The backyard in full bloom, attracting lots of Honeyeaters

 More rambling pumpkins

 Zucchini

Pumpkins taking over, with some watermelon and sweet potatoes in the foreground

Zucchini Bread (cake) recipe

This is my favourite recipe for zucchini:

3 eggs
1 cup SR flour
1 cup wholemeal SR flour
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp bi-carb soda
2 cups grated zucchini
1/2 cup pecans

Mix wet ingredients, add dry ingredients, pour into 2 loaf tins, bake at 180 degrees celcius for 1 hour. (pop one in the freezer for later).

They just keep coming!

To give you some perspective, the little one on the left is what I'd call a nice sized zucchini. Those monsters on top weighed 1kg each, they are now chopped up in my freezer, or in zucchini bread. Hoping to offload some to friends tomorrow, but I need more recipes! My freezer is full.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake

I tried out the chocolate and zucchini cake recipe today (another medium sized zucchini used up!) from here. It turned out pretty well, and the girls loved it for dessert...wrapping a vegetable in chocolate always helps! There it is with a couple of loaves of bread I made today as well. I feel very domesticated when I bake a few things in a day, especially when I can pop a few things into the freezer for another day. So I've made zucchini bread (one eaten, one in the freezer), sausage rolls with zucchini in them, chopped up 5 zucchini into a bag and froze them, then the chocolate zucchini cake today. I gave a couple to my parents, so I have used up most of the ones in my fridge, but I'll bet there's more ready to pick. Next I'll make curried veggie pasties, with potato, carrots and zucchini. Thanks for the generous supply of free range eggs Bec, my guess is you guys will be eating a lot of zucchini slice!