Autumn Harvests
Hello friends,
Autumn is well and truly upon us, and the harvests are coming in thick and fast.
My grapes have already been harvested.
And my mandarins are now being harvested too.
I also managed to harvest my pumpkins before our first frost on the 24th of April.
And it's now peak feijoa season, which means picking up feijoas off the ground before the birds get to them, and them giving them away to anyone who wants them because there's a glut.
I love the bounty of fruit and vegetables this time of the year, the challenge is to process them as they come in so that the food doesn't gooff while sitting in our fridge.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Our First Apple Harvest
Hello friends,
Back in the winter of 2024 I planted two apple trees, Ballerina Waltz, and Ballerina Flamenco. I chose those two apple trees after a garden consultant suggested the Ballerina apple varieties, as they grow narrow and tall, and have an abundance of fruit, which make them perfect for smaller gardens.
Ballerina Waltz is a tart eating, cooking, and dehydrating apple, and Ballerina Flamenco is a sweet eating apple. Between both trees, we would have enough apples for hubby and I to eat fresh, and we could also use them for cooking and dehydrating when we have excess produce.
In spring they both flowered for the first time, but only Ballerina Waltz set fruit, and we've been impatiently waiting for them to ripen ever since.
By the time we got to March, only two apples remained. They slowly turned red, and over the last couple of weeks I periodically tested them to see if they were ripe.
And finally, the first apple was ready. When I tilted the apple upward, and it snapped off the tree.
I very excitedly took our first apple inside and showed it to hubby. We cut it open, and the seeds inside were a nice brown colour, showing that the apple was ripe via a another method.
The Ballerina Waltz apple was indeed sweet but tart, but it was also nice and crunchy and juicy. It also wasn't so tart that hubby refused to eat it. A couple of days later the second apple was ready to eat, and we once again cut it in half so that we could share it.
We are very happy with our purchase, and over the coming years when we'll get bigger and bigger harvests. If you are wanting an apple tree, but just don't have the space in your backyard for a full sized apple tree, I really do recommend the Ballerina apple varieties. They now have a bigger selection of varieties, so you can choose one (or more) depending on the type of apple you are interested in.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Dahlia Profile - Floret Bee's Choice Flowers
Hello friends,
Today's dahlia profile is for my Floret Bee's Choice flowers. I bought dahlia and zinnia Floret flower seeds from Emerden in New Zealand last spring, and sowed them in October.
From Floret's Website: "Floret Bee's Choice was collected from all of our different dahlia breeding patches on the farm and includes a wide range of shapes, sizes, and colors—no two plants will be the same! Most of the flowers will have open centers, which will attract lots of pollinators to your garden. If you discover a variety you love, tubers can be saved and planted out the following year." Planted in full sun, plants will reach 48 to 72 in tall.
Floret 1:
Floret 2:
Floret 3:
Floret 4:
Floret 7:
Floret 8:
Floret 10:
As you can see from the Floret Bee's Choice dahlias that have flowered so far, dahlias 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 all have yellow/orange colouring, with a range of petal numbers, with dahlias 3 and 8 having extra frills. Dahlias 7 and 10 are shades of pink, with dahlia 7 has curled inward petals, and dahlia 10 being pretty plain.
In terms of choosing which dahlias to keep at the end of the season, the only one I definitely want to keep is dahlia 3, with it's yellow/apricot colouring and pretty frills. I'm also kind of tempted by dahlia 8, but I'll see how it looks as the season goes on.
I have really enjoyed the process of dahlia growing from seed, watching the process from germination, to flowering, and I'll definitely collect seed from them in autumn.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Processing Damask Rose Flowers For Rose Water and Essential Oil
Hello friends,
And welcome to 2025 on my blog. I did a bunch of stuff over the Christmas break, so in the coming weeks you'll see what I got up to crafting and gardening wise during that time. One of the things I got up to in November and December, was to harvest, and then process my own damask rose flowers.
Damask roses hail from Syria, and their flowers have been used to make rose essential oil and rose water for thousands of years, for use in both perfumes and food. In New Zealand, damask rose plants are hard to come by, and it took me a few years to get hold of two rose bushes from small, specialty rose growers. The two varieties of damask rose bushes in my back garden are Duc De Cambridge and Isapahan.
Duc De Cambridge.
Isapahan.
Damask roses only flower once in spring, and their flowering happens over the course of a month. After some research, I found a scientific paper which said that the damask rose flowers could be stored at -20˚C for a month without losing any rose essential oil, in order to collect enough rose flowers to process them by steam distillation. From mid-November to mid-December, I went out into the back garden each morning, and collected flowers from my damask rose bushes, and them stored them in our chest freezer.
When flowering finished in mid-December, I defrosted my damask rose flowers and placed them inside my Air Still pot still for distillation. After filling the still with enough water to cover the roses, I began distilling the rose essential oil and rose water.
After about twenty minutes of heating, the strong scent of rose essential oil gases began filling the kitchen. A minute after that, the combined liquid of rose essential oil and rose water began exiting the pot still.
The distilling process took about an hour, and I was left with 700 mL of combined rose essential oil and rose water afterward. The amount of rose essential oil was tiny compared to the rose water, so I decided to leave the two combined for storage. I split the resultant rose water into two 350 mL containers, and gave one to my sister, who likes to make natural products for her home.
I'm really pleased with the resulting rose water, which smells lovely, and in the coming years as my rose bushes grow, I'll get bigger harvests of rose flowers each year. My plan with the rose water this year is to use it in my cold-processed soap recipe later on this summer.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Making Lime Syrup With A Glut of Limes
Hello friends,
As it's now winter, it's peak citrus fruit season for our lemon and lime bushes. The lime fruit ripened on the bush first, so we've been using them in various baking and cooking recipes for the last couple of months (wherever citrus is needed), and I've even been giving away limes to anyone who comes to visit us...
But even after doing all that, we still have too many limes sitting on our kitchen window sill and also on the bush, so I searched the internet for ideas for what to do with all the limes.
After searching for a while, I settled on making some simple lime syrup. It uses up a lot of limes, and it means I have homegrown syrup for hot and cold drinks, and also for using in baking recipes.
Simple Lime Syrup
Ingredients
1/2 Cup of Fresh Lime Juice
Zest of Those Limes
1 + 1/2 Cups of Water
1 Cup of Sugar
1/2 Teaspoon of Citric Acid (citric acid makes the lime syrup flavor more intense)
Recipe
(1) Zest limes one by one before you juice them, aiming to have 1/2 a cup of lime juice, plus the zest from them at the end. This step is not exact, depending on how much juice is in the limes. As I had a lot of limes, I just kept juicing them until I had enough juice and zest. It's always easiest to zest the limes first before cutting them in half and zesting them.
(2) To a pot, add 1 + 1/2 cups of water and heat to a simmer, add the sugar and citric acid, and mix until the sugar is completely dissolved. Add in the lime zest and juice, and cover the pot, and simmer for 15 minutes.
(3) Remove the syrup from the heat and allow it cool. When the syrup is cool enough to handle safely, strain the lime syrup to remove the zest and any stray lime pieces. I used a dexam strainer that I got from Moore Wilsons when we lived in Wellington. (The dexam strainer is very useful for many cooking, bottling, juicing, and jam making projects, as the strainer is super fine.)
(4) Collect the lime syrup in a container, and store it in the fridge, where it will last for up to a month.
You can also use this recipe to make a simple syrup with other citrus fruit like lemons and mandarins and oranges. I've found that the lime syrup is great for making a hot citrus drink, similar to making a hot lemon, and you can add honey to it as well. It's quite refreshing and warm on a cold frosty day.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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