… so much to relish! (and no, the puns just don’t stop)
Hot on the heels of great success with ‘canning*’ dill pickles and beetroot and our two types of strawberry jam, Chris took to one of the three stands of sweet corn in the soil garden and returned a bounty of 8 lovely ears (OK … ears … why are they called ears? … but I digress).
We did a quick scan of the small selection of cookbooks we have on the subject of preserves and found nearly every recipe for corn relish has the same standard ingredients: corn, red and green capsicums (bell peppers), onion, celery, vinegar, mustard powder and mustard seeds. So, as I blog, the ‘throw everything into a pot and cook it’ combo is doing just that and we will can this lot after dinner.
We did a bit of a clean out of the aquaponics system just after Christmas as the infestation of caterpillars in the last and most abundant cucumber vine had spun out of control. I had taken to picking the little green grubs off and throwing them to the eager chickens, but this was a hopeless control measure. And let’s face it, we had harvested A LOT of cucumbers. The root system for this particular plant had taken up almost a third of the entire grow bed. Now that has gone, along with the under-performing strawberries, we are now infilling with herbs and onions. The one and only eggplant we have in the system has given us two plump rich purple fruit, with plenty of flowers also now turning into little eggplants.
I am hoping to blog more regularly this year and keep the pics coming. The small gallery to the right is today’s offering.
It would be really lovely to hear what is happening in your gardens and patches around the world, so please don’t be shy—leave your comments and links!
*Canning seems a weird word and can be confusing for people who think we have some sort of industrial set up with a steel mill or some such. But no … canning is the generic term for taking your preserves and processing them in sterilised jars through a water bath for 15+ minutes, in order to create a good, firm vacuum seal. 😀
SuburbanSource 
Sorry to hear about the cucumber catipillars. I am glad to hear that you had a great crop of cucumbers despite them. We have had problems with Cauliflower/brocolli/cabbage catipillars. Picking them off is time consuming. It works.
I am looking forward to see more post from you. It would be interesting to see how you can and perserve your food. I hope you post recipes and picks how you do it.
Honey
Thanks Honey! We too have not had a lot of success with brassicas (broccoli et al) but we shall keep trying. And thanks for the encouragement—I shall see if I can add a tab or page and start putting in some of the recipes we have had success with so far!