From your garden to your kitchen this autumn

Delwynne and Brian have a large garden and have grown many varieties this season. This is what they’re doing with them. Delwynne writes…

I've started experimenting with fermentation and currently have 3 ferments on the go as can be seen on the left of the first photo. They are kimchi at the back (a lovely spicy fermented cabbage with carrot, spring onion, garlic, ginger and chilli), fermented dill bean (using Xera Select bean and Dill Lena seeds) and fermented punchy mustard (yellow and brown mustard seed). All ferment recipes and equipment (glass weights and airlocks) are courtesy of www.countrytrading.co - a great company based in Mapua in Golden Bay.

On the right of the same pic are:

Bread and Butter Pickles (recipe from my friend Clare Burgess) using Cucumber Eun Cheon F1. I've been picking these since mid-January and there's no sign of them slowing down.

Hot Pepper Mustard Sauce (recipe from www.wyseguide.com) using Hungarian Yellow Wax chillies.

Chilli Jam (a variation on a recipe from Annabel Langbein) using Serrano and Cornos Red peppers.

Lastly, tomato sauce and chutney using Russian Red tomatoes, both from the Digby Law book.

Flowers that I've shown are only ones I've grown from our catalogue and include:

Antirrhinums Rose and Snowflake, Cosmos White Gazebo, Eryngium Sea Holly, Gerbera Transvaal Daisies, Marigold Kees Orange, Sunflower Procut Orange and Zinnia Dahlia Flowered Gold Medal.

Flower sales at the market have gone well this summer, but stalled after substantial damage from Cyclone Dovi in February.

I'm trying to talk Brian into releasing more of his lawn for me to expand my little flower farm enterprise and hope to supply online to local florists next season. There's also been lots of goings-on with plums, and there'll be quinces and persimmons to deal with soon.

Jude, dare I say it, has an even larger garden than Delwynne & Brian - some of it used for the production of seed varieties for the Kings Seeds range. But sometimes Jude gets to process the produce for her family's use as opposed to filling the seed coffers at work! Jude writes:

Having been away for my son’s wedding the previous week, I had to make a concerted effort to use up some of those tomatoes in my garden, relish the thought. So I set about making a couple of double batches of my favourite Tomato Soup for the freezer. I used Tomato Vintage Wine, so the colour was not as red, but the flavour was still great.

Tomato Early Baxter was next on my list and these were made into a tomato (funnily enough) paste which involved roasting with onion, garlic, sage, thyme (no puns please) and then blending, sieving & freezing into ice cubes. Round three – Old Fashioned Tomato Sauce – Wendyl Nissen recipe in the NZ Herald – used up the rest of the Tomato Vintage Wine and some Tomato Cherokee Purple. Quite pleased with the result, took longer than the recipe suggested but well worth it. Still a ton of Baxter's Bush to go, but will bring them into work.

Last on the list was to use up the last of the figs in a Rhubarb (Cherry Red of course) & Fig Jam. This was my second time making this jam & the last jar was used up at work on our favourite scones from a local café on Wednesdays. The jam absolutely benefitted from age so even though we will start on this new batch, I am happy to wait a year to get the benefit of ageing, like a good bottle of Shiraz.

Day done, thankfully back to work on Monday for a well-earned rest!

Thanks Delwynne, Brian and Jude for sharing your garden and kitchen wonders with us all.