March 2014 - the third meal

Third meal - potato frittata and early autumn salad

A piece of art - early autumn salad

Our summer harvest has been satisfying - few pests or problems. Lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, spring onions, spinach, lettuce - we haven't bought salad vegetables for many weeks. In fact, fruit is all we have needed to buy for a while. But it is reaching its end.

The final days of February see us roll with increasing haste to shorter days and cooler nights - a vegetable garden is a real indicator of seasonal change. The tomatoes we planted in October are no longer producing their dainty golden flowers, the original cucumber plants are wilting and looking their age and the asparagus no longer shoots up its tender spears. The lettuce and spring onions are however finding their stride.

One of the new vegetables to harvest now are potatoes. Three months ago we planted a dozen potatoes and the harvest was the basis for this month's peasant meal.

Potato frittata and early autumn salad

The early autumn salad is a palate of lime greens, bright burnt orange and sunny yellow. Peppery nasturtium flowers create a splash of colour against mini cos lettuce, mellow yellow tomatoes, Japanese cucumber and bush beans. Almost a piece of art.



The frittata
Dice 4 good sized potatoes into small chunks and steam until soft. Fry in an oiled medium sized pan with a couple of cloves of garlic until golden. Add a couple of handfuls of silverbeet and cook for a couple of minutes until wilted. Whisk together 4 egg yolks and 2 egg whites with lots of freshly cracked pepper. Pour eggs into pan with potatoes and cook over medium heat until the sides of the frittata are set - about 5 minutes. The centre will still be runny. Put under a grill for a few minutes. Sprinkle with some grated cheese and put under the grill for another couple of minutes. Cut and serve from the pan.

The art and science of growing a plant from seed

While it seems like magic that we can harvest a crop of 150g weight tomatoes from a plant that started as 3 mm seed, it really is not easy to get the whole process started. We can sometimes figure out why a seed did not germinate - too deep, too shallow, too wet, too dry - the next step of making leaves and then growing into a healthy plant proves much more difficult for our veggies. They grow leggy and weak - not enough light, not enough nutrients, not enough water? - we try to correct for all of these but it is often  unsuccessful and most frustrating.

We now have an electric propagator - let's see if this helps.