Our Potted Garden, Spring 2012

Spring is drawing to a close so I thought I'd do a mini update on what's happening. We finally have success with tomatoes!

today's cherry tomato harvest, along with a capsicum and a lime

The yellow cherry tomatoes have been the most successful tomato we've managed to harvest from our potted garden. We cut the tiny fruit up and put them on toasted cheese sandwhiches or pop them on top of cheesy veggie pasta bakes. While it grew, I draped the fruit on top of the mesh to keep them off the ground.

potted cherry tomatoes draped on top of some mesh

The lime tree also has fruit on it. From time to time, we take a lime off it to use in cooking, like in David's meatballs and spaghetti, which is one of my most favourite meals.

detail of potted dwarf lime tree fruit

The garlic didn't work out, so we removed it when Brian was here the other week, and in its place I planted some beetroot seeds, under the supervision of my father-in-law. Now they have sprouted, I'm looking forward to some freshly baked beetroot and steamed beetroot leaves.

beetroot sprouts planted a week ago where the failed garlic was

Finally, another job we had to do this spring was to repot some chilli. Potted chilli prefers to be repotted every year if you can manage it, we managed to transfer some that were in the smaller pots into the 30cm pots which is more like the size they need. We get so much chilli fruit constantly throughout the year. My favourite use is to dry it and blitz it into dried chilli flakes which is great for cooking or even added at the last moment to a bowl of pasta for some extra zing!

some of our chillies have been spoiled with new large pots