Monday 12 March 2007

She'll be apples.


One of the joys of your own garden is growing your own food.

Sadly, often the common things are cheap in the shops at about the time yours ripen so there is not much financial reward, although the flavour of some things like tomatoes is orders of magnitude above that of the shop ones. There is also the joy on knowing you have grown them; especially in the current drought as they have been kept alive by you carting shower and washing machine water to them.

There is also the pleasure of going out and just picking things as you need them. Except for the zucchinis (courgettes) which must be picked with discipline, whether you need them or not; not to is to permit them to grow into monsters that you can half, hollow and use as canoes.

But one of the really special joys of a garden is growing different foods.

The photo above is of some apples in my garden. You wont see these in the shops in the US or UK. You wont even find them in Australian shops. They are Stewart's Seedlings (also called Ballarat Seedings), apparently bred at Ballarat around the time of the goldrush. A quite tart cooking apple, you only try to eat them raw once (true, the possums do like them), that needs no lemon juice to tang them up.

I had remembered them from my Granny's garden (curiously she came from Ballarat) and some years ago tracked the tree down at a specialist orchardist.

It is great to be different.

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Footnote: The title phrase, "She'll be apples" is Australian slang for "Don't worry, it will be alright."
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6 comments:

  1. It's such a delight to be able to pluck different things from your garden..and the apples look splendid! I only pluck apples in supermarket here..you have such productive green hands..

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  2. Again remembering my uncle's farm, we love walking down the orchards, we ate apples, peaches, apricots and mandirins.
    Your apples look great Lee, do they have the sour taste of green apples?

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  3. Right up my alley!
    Great post, as usual.

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  4. oh yum! i love tart apples! will you be making a pie? please do and post in detail how yummy it was.

    we don't have apples here in my neck of the woods. but my uncle has plum, pear, peach trees that produce fruit ambrosia every year. love those country relatives!

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  5. lovely apples, here apples never get cheap, even though they grow them up at Elijay. right now they are 1.68 a lb. That is about 2.00 and apple.

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  6. Well no, that would be a pretty big apple, say 75 cents an apple.

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