Harvest Basket

Every second day this weekI have been filling my basket  from the garden.  Most days there have been a number of zucchini and eggplants and a few tomatoes.

This year I grew small varieties of eggplants as the large ones tend to get attacked by bugs before they are ready for harvesting.  This also happens to capsicums so this year I am growing the long sweet peppers and mini capsicums.
Then there is the bug that turns my tomatoes to mush grrrrr.  I have grown both beefsteak and russian black and I have just picked the last of the fruit on them (most of them green) as they were all either getting affected by the bug or were damaged by the hail storm we had last week.  Thankfully they ripen up pretty quickly on the bench in this weather since tomatoes don't need the sun to ripen just warmth.
All of my lettuce has bolted to seed with the heat and so has the parsley.  This really hot weather has also stopped my tomatoes from flowering and since they are already 4 foot high and not looking so great I am considering pruning them back and letting them shoot again.  This is not a method I have tried before but I figure I the established root system should be able to produce new shoots.

My sad tomato plants

It will be a bit of an experiment but since I had considered pulling them out all together I am prepared to give it a go.

Has anyone else ever tried this?

The Harvest and a Home Made Feast

Yesterday I did my usual walk around the garden to seething if there was anything to harvest.
There was the usual cherry tomato's and the beans are still producing a few each day.  There was a couple of button squash, a couple of mini white cucumbers, a capsicum and some basil.  But most exciting of all there were 2 figs and 2 raspberries.  I know that 2 raspberries are not that exciting but I had 2 last week too and they only got planted back at the start of January and the fig has not been in for a year yet either.  There are more figs yet to ripen and now I just have to be patient.  Hubby also informed me that he is not that taken with figs so lucky me I can have them all.
Any thoughts on what I should do with them?  They are ripening a couple at a time.

Because it it a rare treat that Hubby and I get to spend an entire day just pottering about together I decided that   I would make us a nice lunch to have enjoyed with a bottle of red wine Turkish bread, and some dips, basil pesto, hommous, guacamole.  Then we had olives, my bread and butter pickles, olive oil and dukkah  a bit of cheese and a pesto, tomato and salami pizza.

It was a lovely long lunch shared late in the day after a few hours pottering in the garden.