Winter garden

Not much is happening in the garden right now except for weeds.  I have some parsnip seedlings that need to go in, but that means I need to pull out the weeds!

Mac the nut tree has some nuts though.

We have two macadamic nut trees.  They are still small but this older one produces more nuts than we can really cope with.  According to teh interwebs you have to dry them with husk removed and then roast them in their shell for a while and then crack them and roast again.  It's such a drama to do it that we've yet to complete an entire cycle of it.  I have a small nutcracker that works on a screw basis to crack them - you have to do them 1 by 1.  Which isn't really an option for someone like me with little patience.

Actually we wanted to plant a walnut tree until we read they don't really fruit until they are 50 years old. Which seemed a long time to wait. Pity.  I like coffee walnut cake. Instead I order walnuts from Naturally Organic because I can trust them not to be old and rancid. Unlike the ones in the bulk bins at Pak N Save.

My herb garden is currently bursting with chervil.

I use chervil in mushroom soup and also in egg dishes like omlettes. It is also quite nice with carrots.  Chervil is really easy to grow from seed.  In fact, it has self seeded into the lawn around the garden which makes for a nice herby smell when you mow.

In Auckland, the milder winter means citrus is also available in winter. We have a mandarin and a lemon tree.  The mandarin had only a dozen or so fruit on it this year, but they were good sized ones.  It's still a young tree and seems to have on/off years.  My lemon is currently in a pot.  I've not have too much luck with my lemon trees but this one is doing quite well. I use a lot of lemons.