A byootaful Life

I struggled with the title because, seriously, what do you call two pots of vegetables, one pot of herbs and one pot of fruit – it’s hardly a garden or a patch. And they live on the BBQ. Whatever they are called, they are my latest obsession. You might remember me mentioning going to Bunnings and buying some plants? Well, let me tell you – they are doing really well (except the strawberries because well, apparently they’re not going to fruit for a while).

So let me introduce you to my little selection of plants:

Cherry tomatoes! This is how it looked when we first bought it, with heaps of little green tomatoes already growing. You can see the little flowers that bloom, then die which allows the tomato to grow. It took just less than one month for us to start picking, but our only (tongue-in-cheek) complaint is that they don’t all ripen at the same time! They taste delicious though – like tomatoes, which is always a good sign when you’re growing them yourself.

I love the green unripe tomatoes because they’re slightly fuzzy all over and as they ripen, they lose that fuzziness. Just yesterday I was able to pick three more tomatoes – one a good size, the others rather small.

Please ignore the dirty bench. Thankyou.

There’s something incredibly satisfying about growing (and eating) your own food. When we end up buying a house and settling down, I want a full-blown veggie patch with all sorts of food – lettuce, tomatoes, chili, peas, beans – anything and everything!

So now for pot number two…

Chili! Aren’t the flowers beautiful? They follow the same theme as the tomatoes – flowers bloom, they die miserably, then drop off as the chili grows through the centre of the dead petals. You can actually see the start of a chili in the big flower, that little green thing poking through the centre. The white bulbs are flowers that will bloom within the next couple days. As you can see, there’s a lot of chilis coming!

And come they did – here’s what the chili plant looks like now. I couldn’t believe how fast they were growing. They all (except for one stubborn tiny one) started out green and are only just starting to tinge red. Apparently they will ripen to a deep red. I have no idea why the tiny one is already red – maybe it will be the first one we’ll eat? I’m already thinking of dishes to make with the chili – there’s going to have to be some sort of Thai stir-fry!

The chili plant is in a little pot, so it needs frequent watering because it seems to gulp up the water like crazy. We’re thinking we might re-pot in a larger pot this weekend to give it a little more room because, well, it’s very busily making us chilis so we should look after it.

Pot number 3 isn’t too exciting, it’s just…

Chives! Good ol’ chives – you can do so much with them. I think these are a garlic version, which adds a nice flavour (I love garlic) and also helps to prevent Puddy from chewing on them. I think my favourite dish with chives is simple mashed potato with butter and chopped chives – YUM. I think I might have to start looking for more dishes to make, since the chives are growing at a rapid pace! It seems that when you chop it back to use it, it grows back twice as fast!

And finally, the last pot in our collection:

Strawberries! We were so excited about growing strawberries, but we’ve discovered that, while the plant itself is doing quite well, we probably won’t see fruit for another few months (booooo). We’ve also had to battle with hungry grasshoppers which seem to love the strawberry plant – we awoke one morning to discover one had eaten almost completely one of the plants (there had been four in the punnet). Luckily it grew back quickly and we’ve been keeping the grasshoppers under control by, well, disposing of them.

I keep checking for fruit but nothing yet – don’t worry, when they start to grow strawberries you’ll all know!

So that’s my humble little experiment. I’m lucky in that Phill used to work at a nusery so he had a fair bit of knowledge about repotting plants and the how to care for them – let’s just say the only plant I’ve managed to grow is a cactus. So far so good, and I’ll definitely keep you all updated on their progress. Come on strawberries – you can do it!