What a difference a year makes

I’ve been reminded by reading this post by Michelle on From Seed to Table, that I’ve been meaning to post photos of my caper plants. It was Michelle who originally sent me the seeds in autumn 2009 from which my plants have grown.

These are the capers sown in December 2009, as they are today. The plants got mixed up while I was away last summer, but I think the one on the left here is an Italian caper and the one on the right is Croatian. They’ve grown a lot of extra leaves just in the last few weeks and now look like ‘proper’ plants, so I’m very pleased with them.

Last December (2010) they were like this (left) and a year ago they were seedlings in small pots (above).

And the next year’s plants….

In November 2010 I sowed some of the seeds left over from last year and five of these have germinated. Soon I shall have to decide which of the two to remove in the pots where two have germinated, cutting them rather than re-potting them to prevent root disturbance to the other ones, because caper plants are very sensitive to this.

It will be a long time until I can harvest the weight of capers that Michelle does, but I feel that these plants are on their way!

Olive flowers

Our Lucque olive tree is covered in tiny flowers, a promise of a good crop in the autumn.

Mid-May in the garden

With 70 tomato plants, 30 peppers, 4 cucumbers and 16 aubergines put out in their beds in the garden, we’re getting through the summer planting.  There are still courgettes, pumpkins (several varieties) and butternut squash plants waiting, and growing bigger every day, on the balconies.

The Kolaska pepper plants, planted out between the cucumbers (out of shot) and the chard and haricot beans.	A row of Turkish pink tomato plants, grown from seeds sent to me by beste in Normandy, next to a row of ungrafted aubergine plants.
Marseillais pepper plants (some of the few plants we’ve bought this year), then a row of ungrafted aubergines, then a row of grafted aubergines.	Roma tomatoes (left), Languedocian plants, growing very vigorously and starting to flower (centre), on on the right of the picture a mixed row of Coeur de Boeuf, Andes and Ananas.

At last the first sowing of haricot beans (sowed at the end of March) are flowering.  The second sowing are almost catching up,

The Greek sweetcorn, grown from seeds sent to me by gaiashope are doing well and I’m hoping they’ll be well established by the time the free water from the stream runs out.  Last year, gaiashope says, she watered them only 10 times in the whole summer, so they’re very drought resistant.  On the right are 4 small artichokes I picked this morning, and put straight into a bowl of water to get out the earwigs which seem to like them (although they don’t eat them).

Spring fair

Today la rue de l’Eglise, the widest street in the old part of the village, and the place where the Wednesday market is usually held were lined with stalls selling goats’ cheese, sheep’s cheese, honey, wine, olive oil, flowering plants, vegetable garden plants, asparagus, strawberries, and handmade crafts.  The weather was dull in the morning but it cleared up later, and the day seemed to be a success.

lemon trees, tomato plants, flowers……
goats’ cheeses from Mas Rolland……	asparagus, churros and children’s rides…..
our friends from le Moulin de Casso, which I wrote about when it first opened, selling their olive oil.

We bought some Bouteillan and some Picholine olive oil, each with its own distinctive and delicious flavour.  The Picholine oil went very well first on its own with bread and then with some Mas Rolland goats’ cheeses at lunchtime, accompanied by a salad made with leaves from the garden and grated carrot and apple.

Apples and cherries

We’ve never before had so many apples as there are on our tree this year.  It almost makes up for the poor apricot crop (I can see two fruits on that tree), but I’d much prefer to have apricots instead.  It’s exciting that our small wild cherry tree, planted as a sucker given to us by our neighbour about two and a half years ago, is bearing its first fruit (below, right).

And those irises again, framing some orange poppies:

Artichokes and a lot of spring flowers

I picked three more artichokes this morning, making 9 in all this year, so the plants are doing much better than they did last year and there are plenty more still growing.

It’s the most colourful time of the year in the garden and in the garrigue because all the plants flower now before dying down again when the weather gets too hot and dry for them from June onwards.

Cistus (left), poppies (above) and irises (right).

And because the irises look so lovely now and won’t last for long I took a lot of photos of them this morning:

Planting out aubergines and finding a green lizard

We’ve planted out about a dozen aubergine plants our neighbour gave us – six of them next to a row of peppers on the left below.  We usually grow the grafted plants, bought from a garden centre, because they produce so many more aubergines than the ordinary plants, but this year we’ll try these, as well as a few grafted ones.  The Greek maize I planted out a couple of weeks ago is doing well (on the right below).

Sweet corn (maize) and a row of lettuce.

We also planted a row of chard, also given to us by our neighbour, next to the two rows of haricot beans which are growing quite well.  I picked the rest of last year’s chard today as it was going to seed, and we ate it this evening with pasta and cured ham.

Our ‘big’ iris has started to flower (left below), later but more spectacularly than our white and mauve irises, and the red salvia was attracting a few bees (right).

 

And the green lizard under the olive tree

They’re much more shy than the brown wall lizards, so I was lucky to catch this one on camera!

Our garlic is growing quite tall, but I don’t think it will ever be as good as the garlic I bought from this stall in Pézenas market on Saturday.  It’s very fresh and tastes wonderful chopped raw onto salads and other vegetable dishes.

And home to lunch….

After working in the garden this morning we came home to a lunch of aubergine puréed with olive oil, garlic and oregano, some broad beans straight from the garden cooked with cured ham, and goats’ cheese from Roujan with thyme from the garden and olive oil that was milled in the village from olives from Servian, only about 10 kilometres away – all local, fresh and delicious!