I love all kinds of gardens, don't get me wrong. As long as you have a garden with plants, you're alright with me, from a bathroom full of them to a few pots on a balcony, a veritable forest or a shelf full of microgreens on the kitchen bench, or even bonsai. But I need to grow food to eat as well as to enjoy the beauty of. I was so busy writing about my native garden and my herb garden for @simplymike's #gardenjournal2019 challenge, that I never got around to talking about my vegetable garden at this time of year, and didn't want to miss it because there is a lot going on, and I'll likely update anyway at the end of October! So this post is to wax lyrical about what is going on on that side of my garden, as well as get a sneaky #fruitsandveggiesmondya post in for @plantstoplanks and @lenasveganliving. These are my two favourite challenges on Steemit, so it's kinda fun smashing them out in one post!

First of all, it's ridiculous windy out there, and if you've ever tried taking photos of vegetables in the wind, it's not an easy feat. So you'll have to settle for the vegetables inside instead. I've had lots of purple sprouting broccoli and broccoli, and we've been eating the leaves too. A lot of people cut the head off and throw the rest of the plant out, but it keeps on giving for a long time, and the leaves are super healthy and edible too. It's all I can do to keep my chickens from raiding that bed! I have been growing tons of silverbeet especially for them, but I have to fence it off or there will be nothing left. They're so busy laying eggs now it's Spring, that they need extra greens and extra bugs! This has been keeping a lot of bugs from eating my seedlings so that's good news. I do understand the chooks - I have massive cravings for raw greens too!

@kindredacres wrote about greens to grow in Winter in her neck of the woods. Here in Australia where I live, there's no snow, but we can get heavy frosts. That doesn't stop us growing greens all winter long - lettuce and silverbeet and cabbage certainly survive! I have 10 fat cabbage ready to be pulled for saurkraut. Full of slugs, but they need their greens too! The haul below is for today's garden salad - radishes, kale, rocket, calendula - yes, you can eat the flowers and they look so pretty on a salad! I keep getting free packets of radish seeds when I order other seeds so I've planted a heap more today. They are such a good little fast crop.

The garlic is growing great. Anyone who has got this garlic off me as a seed crop has been really happy with it. When I sow it, I throw some of the little cloves willy nilly about the garden but never let them grow to full size, picking them instead as spring onion or leek substitutes with a garlicky twist.

The limes are falling from the tree - I'm not sure if it's PH or water variation that has them do this but I'm checking it out. Much of them are going in ice cube trays with mint leaves ready for summer drinks. However I've also been squeezing them into morning smoothies, stir fries and into my water. My lemon tree is bursting with lemons and there's lots of new leaves on it - hoping a late frost won't lay waste to those. I was pretty excited to get a mulberry tree too last week, hoping it's not too late for it but I'll keep an eye on it and make sure it's loved.

Lots and lots of snow peas this year - my husband doens't eat them so I munch away on them happily in the garden whilst talking to the chooks. The broad beans are also starting to show. The kohlrabi bolted - I'm about to plant some more. The potatoes are starting to push up from the soil. All the fruit trees are blossoming. The grapevine is in full leaf from about two days ago. Rhubarb and garlic chives doing well. Transplanted berry plants surviving. It's all go - I go back to work on Monday so hoping the garden will look after itself a little now after a few weeks of working on it.

In the seed raising greenhouse I have growing:

• three sorts of zucchini
• four sorts of eggplant
• five sorts of tomatoes
• kohl rabi
• two sorts of cucumber
• herbs - ashwanghwa, echinacea, tulsi basil, mullein, st johns wort
• plus some flowers - don't usually grow them but got strawflowers and cosmos from @sagescrub and am quite keen to give them ago.

Braving the wind, I battled my way through banging fences and chooks with ruffled feathers hoping for handfuls of oats to pick my haul for lunch today. Not rocket science, this salad - though it does contain rocket - layered vegies with a dressing of fire cider. If you want a good recipe for fire cider, try @missdeli's great post on it this week. I shared it with the DIY folk in @makinstuff's server 'The Tinker Tribe' - it's all about resilience through do it yourself projects, and I thought fire cider is one we should all know. It's such an easy one to do and keeps the immune system going strong whilst we go about our busy lives! Better to prevent illness then search for a cure when you're floored with a cold and can't lift a hammer or a pitch fork.

I also made dry fried sunflower seeds with tamari for this salad - amazing. You simply dry fry the seeds in a pan with a splash of tamari until the liquid evaporates and the seeds are toasty brown. Oh, and I almost forgot - coriander hummous! I had to pull up the last of the coriander as it was going to bolt, so I blended it with chickpeas, limes and tahini - yum. Sprinkled on the last of the nigella seeds from last year too. Haven't seen them come up in the garden yet this year, so sprinkling more around and hoping they'll come up. They are one of my favourite garden seeds to cultivate next to fennel and sunflower seeds. Totally amazed, constantly, to walk out into my garden and get food for the table. A pure joy.

What are you growing in your gardens?

What is your favourite garden dish?

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