March Madness

March is a crazy-busy month, harvesting all the fruits of spring and summer's labours.  We have picked tomatoes of every description - teensy yellow ones, small red cherry tomatoes, humungus heritage brandywine pinks, droopy acid-free Romas, yellow Taxi tomatoes (yup, that's their actual name!) and sweet-as orange ones (the latter I forget the name of as I bought it as a single plant, and I usually plant my own ones from seed).  Now I read somewhere that as a rule of thumb, one should plant one tomato per family member.  There's four of us (Shanti, the cat doesn't eat tomatoes) and at last count (not counting the ones that God plants haphazardly around the place) I had 48 plants.  So at the beginning of March, I was collecting up to 3-5kg of tomatoes each day!  Freezing them was one way of coping.  Some were made into tomato soups, tomato sauces, pasta sauces and of course, copious tomato salads!
We usually freeze enough to last the whole winter, in fact, there was surplus left over from last year which I still had not gotten to by February this year!!  They were quickly thrown into the slow cooker for a pasta sauce!  Did you know that apart from the tomato being the symbol of the NZ Heart Foundation, it is the Signature food for the heart!  That's what the Ancients taught!

The other foods we have been harvesting masses of are onions, courgettes, (which I managed to grow vertically, tied to a bamboo teepee), beetroot, gherkins (we have enough pickles for 2 families!), capsicums, pumpkins and then there's the fruit - Chilian guavas,apples (alas, with coddling moth), and just recently, cherry guavas, feijoas and figs.
We already have enough jam to last 2 winters - I think we might be giving away some home-grown preserves, chutneys and jams for gifts this year!
As a rule of thumb, my jams are made with equal amounts of fruit to sugar.  I usually try to get away with using a little less sugar but have to be careful as sometimes my endeavors have ended with runny jams.  I use an organic golden sugar from Ceres Organics.

The craziness of March is bearable only because of the knowledge that everything is slowing down.  The garden is finishing it's flourish of harvests, before slowing down for a winter slumber party.  I like to take my cues from nature, slowing down over winter too.  Not for me, the donning of winter woollies, rain parkas and wellington boots to bravely garden in icey temps!  I am definitely not cut out for cold weather pursuits!  Besides, our pantry is literally groaning under the weight of summer harvests, so there is little need to grow much more.

So for now I valiantly trudge on, pruning, harvesting, mulching and preparing our garden for The Big Sleep.  This weekend, we have just covered the bare ground which once boasted pumpkins, tomatoes and capsicums with a thick blanket of cardboard, newspaper and hay. That part of the garden sleeps.  Shhhhhh.................