As Promised

Sweet potatoes enjoy rain, Glad. They were brought to New Zealand by the Maori about 1400 years ago & they flourished with the plentiful rain. There they are known as kumera & are delicious.

I grew the orange sweet potato on Lizard Is QLD in pure sand with added leaf litter and bird guano scraped off beach boulders ,they grew profically.......

Thanks Joy and Pixie.

Maybe I should add some sand to the soil for next year.

Now there is a plan.I think they grew so well in the sand as they could spead their tubers without having heavy soils to push , they really produced huge tubers enough for the 4 permament family staff members and up to 1 dozen scientist researchers visiting the Marine research station.......

Pixie76 wrote:Now there is a plan.I think they grew so well in the sand as they could spead their tubers without having heavy soils to push , they really produced huge tubers enough for the 4 permament family staff members and up to 1 dozen scientist researchers visiting the Marine research station.......

Wow Pixie!

we do not get frost here either . Everything is looking so good Glad, you have green fingers methinks

I went to buy some eggplant /bringel not sure what it is called where you are? yesterday.. for three medium ones, once weighed was 1 1/2 kg's... would that be approx 3lbs? it would have cost me 99 Rands to my absolute horror . In season or out of season ... that is very pricey don't you think ? We had a change of supper plans and instead of real Mousaka (spelling) had mousaka (spelling) without bringel. For 99 rand we could have dined on a Fillet steak roast!!. Vegetables here are in many cases more expensive than meat.!

Wow, that is expensive for eggplant, Dawn. 99 rand would be $US12 & $AUS11. That is rather a lot to pay for them. Fillet steak is a bit dearer here but we would still have had a nice feed of eye fillet steak for that price.

I am glad you agree with me on the price Joy I am still dumbstruck, every one in the shop looked at me with blank faces when I showed how shocked I was, I did not even say much just told them to put it back as I will not be taking it, thank you very much. I actually thought of making mousaka as I thought it a dish that was economical

It is meant to be an economical dish, Dawn, seeing as it consists of mince meat & eggplant, etc. As it is a similar recipe to lasagne, pasta sheets would have been a cheaper alternative to the eggplant, wouldn't it?? I, too, would have said thanks but no thanks, at that price.

Yes it would have been cheaper with the pasta sheets Joy! but Dh and his diet is not allowed pasta only good carbs in the way of an apple etc. He bought a recipe book linked to the diet plan he is on and this was one of the options. This dieting is an expensive buisness ! As Veg is the main ingredient.

Dawn wrote:we do not get frost here either . Everything is looking so good Glad, you have green fingers methinks

I went to buy some eggplant /bringel not sure what it is called where you are? yesterday.. for three medium ones, once weighed was 1 1/2 kg's... would that be approx 3lbs? it would have cost me 99 Rands to my absolute horror . In season or out of season ... that is very pricey don't you think ? We had a change of supper plans and instead of real Mousaka (spelling) had mousaka (spelling) without bringel. For 99 rand we could have dined on a Fillet steak roast!!. Vegetables here are in many cases more expensive than meat.!

Nice to see you back Dawn. That sounds pricey for egg plant, ( is that what we call aubergine ? ) Veggies here are getting pricey too, makes me realise how much can be saved by those of us lucky enough to be able to grow our own.

Thanks for your welcome back BB Yes Aubergines that's it! I knew there was another name. My parents called it Brinjal, I think that is the name the Indians use for it, they were not Indian but grew up in Durban hence their use of the name.
Here are all the names used for this veg (eggplant, aubergine, melongene, patlican, brinjal or guinea squash) from Wiki. Yes, when I posted that was exactly what was in my mind, all of you growing your own vegetables so successfully!! not only probably less expensive so much nicer than commercially grown. We have to admire that well done !

Wow I never knew eggplant had so many names!

Doesn't look like an egg to me how it got its name I would not know. Only Easter eggs are purple.

I can't seem to grow the veggie in my garden. But no one likes it that well anyway. Guess we never grew to like it or I did not prepare it right.

Nice to see you back Dawn. My garden is about done and needs to be cleaned up for the winter. Right now I am working a lot more at my job. Hopefully next week I will get to the garden chores. We had a good rain over this past weekend so it should be easy to pull the weeds and use my garden tool. Still no tiller yet.

By the way......no frost yet but it has been down in the 40's at night. I picked lettuce the other day. So it was worth planting.

The beans are trying to bloom. Hopefully for another three weeks without frost. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm is that possible? You never know.

Sure do hope so, Glad.


Eggplant are tricky to use as they should be disgorged, ie sliced then the slices sprinkled with salt about 1/2 hour before use, to draw out the bitter juices. You rinse the salt off, then wipe them to dry.

You are right that is the way to prepare them Joy!

I think ?? it was on a Jamie Oliver cooking program that I saw him roast them in an oven whole, I think one must coat the skin with oil before roasting. After roasting peel off the skin and salt and pepper the flesh. I think they have an acquired taste. I love them now but never used to. One can buy the flesh pickled and bottled here. Very yummy if it is pickled properly with mustard seeds etc and I wish I had a recipe but I don't. One year... but years ago there was a glut of them and I just cut them into rings with the skin on then salted and purged them as you said Joy and then bottled them in just garlic oil raw, they were bottled for a good many months. We then moved away and I could not take them with and I gave the bottles to my sister, she told me later how delicious they were? Once cooked I love them but they do need flavouring. The recipe for Moussaka from dh's diet book, says to put them in salted water for 30 mins. My mum used to grow them in pots, they are quite easy to grow.

Yes, they do roast eggplants whole in the oven, Dawn. I have heard that this method is best used with the smaller, younger specimens as they haven't the same bitter juices of the more mature eggplants. Haven't bought or cooked in years. You are correct in that they need flavouring & to be cooked with other flavourful foods.

Glad may find pickling them to be a good option for her, if she was to grow them. I believe they are reasonably easy to grow.

Joy wrote:Sure do hope so, Glad.


Eggplant are tricky to use as they should be disgorged, ie sliced then the slices sprinkled with salt about 1/2 hour before use, to draw out the bitter juices. You rinse the salt off, then wipe them to dry.

I never knew that....thanks Joy.

My pleasure, Glad. Disgorging does make them more pleasant to eat.

Now that your vegetable garden is starting to wind down from its growing season, I should like to congratulate you, Glad, on your wonderful successes of this year. You have done very well & all looks great for next year.

What a huge veggie garden you have there Glad, and it looks like all the hard work has paid you in full. I will be looking forward to seeing this years crop

We don't grow very many veggies, just tomatoes and I tried a couple time to grow potatoes, but they failed to produce.

Thanks Justme.

As you know doubt know last week was a very bad week around the mid-west, south and east US. Over 70 confirmed tornadoes with loss of life and homes. Starting off too early this year. Today it is very windy but they are not calling for storms.

I want to go and purchase a lot of the garden seed tomorrow. We have had a few warmer days then turned cold (which causes those nasty tornadoes). I am kinda out of the mood for gardening until the weather gets like it is suppose to be.

I will take new pictures when we begin to do our planting.

Glad..I am so glad you are safe. I saw all the bad weather around your area. Just devastating

Thanks just me!

Sons sprung a fast one on me today and I wasn't feeling 100%. They said all I had to do was stay out of the wind and cut the potatoes for planting. So they planted two sections of potatoes and the snow peas around the fencing. It was way too windy for sowing the lettuce. Rain is expected tonight so it may be first of next week before we can plant the lettuce. I am happy the sons planted the potatoes for me and the peas too.

What great sons you have, Glad. They must enjoy the home grown spuds & peas. This is a terrific start to your 2012 veggie garden.