We removed a gigantic old SheOak tree from the garden just before Christmas but it left a big, ugly space. What on earth could we plant there that would;
- fill up the space
- grow very quickly
- survive a Melbourne summer
- be productive
- stop the topsoil blowing into the house
Answer: pumpkins! A trip to Meditteranean Wholesalers in Brunswick and we had some seeds of Italian varieties that we hadn't tried before. Result - within 3 weeks we were eating zucchini. And then more zucchini, plus still more zucchini!!!! The pumpkins are a little slower in growing - lots of foliage, some blossom and a few marble sized fruit. But apparently that's just temporary. The fine print on the seed packet says that these pumpkins can grown up to 80cm long and weigh in at 10K. And I don't even like pumpkin soup!!!!
Of course those pumpkins were a little more fragile than we had first thought. Melbourne summer is just too hot so they now have their own little pumpkin pavilion made out of Bunnings best 70% shade cloth. Melbourne has water restrictions too, so we had to buy them their own water tanks (nicknamed Solyent Green) and an automatic watering system as well.
So home grown veggies are certainly not a cheap option.
But oh how wonderful to eat fresh picked zucchini flowers with ricotta.
1 comment:
Zucchini!
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