Nothing like putting a piece of cake as your thumbnail image, hey? Tempting? I couldn't even wait for the picture I was so hungry. I'm not really a cake person, but when the ingredients are coming from your garden you have to do something about it, surely. I love that my garden provides all year around, and this year has been a good one for abundance! Recipe and ingredients to follow, once I've walked you through my July garden journal - a lot busier than last years one!
They say when the wattles start to bloom, it's six weeks to Spring. Yet there's signs of Spring everywhere in my garden, even though it's still very cold by our standards - 11 to 13 degrees during the day, and as little as 3 degrees in the morning. Not as cold as in previous years - in fact, it's been the highest average maximum temperatures for the first half of the year - up 1.78 degrees from the 1961-1990 baseline, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. What this means in regards to climate change is contentious, so I don't want to go there. We do joke it's good for the garden - at least this time of year anyway. My lemons and limes are doing well for the first time in a few years - they didn't die in the summer heat, and no frost has come along to impede them.
I've been pestering Jamie to build me a greenhouse but we just don't have the time, money or gathered materials right now. Hence, the plastic affair from the hardware shop - not really impressed with my self as I KNOW it's plastic - the guilt is weighing heavy right now but it's tempered by the plastic FREE months I've been diligent about my consumer habits - plus, I've planted so many plants and trees this year I almost feel I'm carbon offsetting myself. We found a watering system at a garage sale last year so I was proud of myself for installing that - one of the things that I find tricky about seed raising is that I forgot to water them and it dries out. Having it on a timer is just awesome, totally high fiving myself for my skills.
In the greenhouse I've planted some of the herbs that 
We've had a LOT of rhubarb and limes, meaning CAKE and crumble galore. I'll include a recipe below. Yesterday I put some crowns up for sale on the local Facebook group and sold 4 for $5 each. I love people popping over to chat gardening with me. Met an ex-teacher who'd spent time teaching on indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, which is something we've been thinking about as an option after we have our year's rest next year.
The chicken herding system is working brilliantly. Most of the time they have full run of the property if we're around - a few hours in the late arvo and all weekend, but they also have been put to work on the beds that aren't planted out. At the moment I can't let them in most of the garden as I have seedlings in there and don't want them to eat ALL my food. It also means they're really easy to herd back in where I need them. I've never had the garden working so well and I'm thrilled to bits with it.
In the photo below you can see broad beans, kohlrabi, broccoli and there's some beetroot sown in there too. I actually had a lot of self sown beetroot, but I've been using that as salad leaves and greens whilst waiting for other greens to come up. In the garden beyond the parsley has fed us since late summer, the kale seedlings and purple sprouting broccoli are also doing well.
I've had heaps of marigolds last right through which I've been picking and drying for medicine and tea, lots of cabbage, silverbeet and spring onions as usual, and the garlic seems to be on track too. The big silver foliage is the artichokes - can't wait for artichoke season! All the fruit trees are budding, and the lemon verbena is coming up. No sign of the hops as yet but I dont imagine it will be long.
The Facebook group is starting to pick up now Spring looks like it's coming. As much as I hate Facebook, it's a great way to organise community and there's about 300 residents on it. This week I gave away a heap of kangaroo paw from when I was cutting them back and ripping up their centres so they'll grow back again into a beautiful hedge. I also sold a garden bench, four rhubarbs, a compost bin on that site (I'm trying to raise enough cash for a small garden shed as my current shed is an upended apple crate with a corrugated iron roof), plus befriended a guy who came over for elder cuttings and dropped me off some poppies. He's an old guy originally from Norfolk and we were talking fondly about missing the hedgerows - the elders, the blackberries and sloes - plus being all nostalgic about bluebells and snowbells, ramsons and nettles. I told him I planted nettles in the far corner of the property and he laughed, as most people try to get rid of them. But, like most people, he doesn't use them for tea or soup or stews, though he might do now after I talked him into it!
There's so much going on in my garden and writing this post, I realise just how much - there's a lot more to write but I'm running out of time.
What's happening in your gardens?
Do you have a good recipe for rhubarb?
Rhubarb and Lime Cake (With Vegan Version)
I did the vegan recipe for this cake, but I'm sure it's perfect non-vegan - giving both versions here. It's a super moist, tart and delicious cake, that lasted us about 24 hours. Ooops.
150 g butter or dairy free butter
75 g flour
120 grams ground almonds
2 large limes, grated and juice reserved
2 large eggs or egg replacer
150 g sugar or alternative (I used coconut sugar)
400 grams of rhubarb, cut into cm slices.
Cut the rhubarb and sprinkle with 50 grams of sugar. Then, blend butter and sugar til creamy. Add the eggs or egg replacer and fold in the rest of the ingredients with the juice of the limes, and the rhubarb. Put in a springform pan and sprinkle with almonds. Bake at 180, covered with wax paper, for about 40 minutes and leave the paper off to brown in last ten minutes. The skewer will come out wet because it's a super moist desert like cake, but it will be cooked.
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