Will's Eats

Cactus fruit

These are cactus, chumbo, prickly pears;
and these are their fruit. I had them for dessert. Click for the closeup picture. We call the fruit cactus-figs, or “tuna”.

You can also distill the juices.

Grapes

We picked 45 kilos of grapes the other day [100 pounds]; off of the neglected trellis at the back of the sheds - on the north side, little sun, never watered it.

The crop

Some of today's crop from the garden; the lunch time harvest.

A Garlic Tree

This tree is made of dried garlic flower heads and planted in front of the prickly pears; which, by the way, are ripening nicely.

Figs

The fig harvest is running late this year. The suspicion lies with a wet winter that allowed the fig trees to produce more and bigger leaves than usual; which shaded the figs and slowed the ripening.

Fresh from the tree:

The second harvest (new figs are forming now while we harvest the first ones) will take place in the fall.

It’s so hot that they start to wrinkle before they’re evenly ripe. We should do like the professional growers do and put shade-netting over the whole garden plot. Or, in the old days, they grew their grapes on wines that formed a roof over the veggies – like a living pergola – thus shading the tender plants below.

Tomato

tomate

The 3rd tomato of the season; ate the first two without taking a picture. There’s loads more; still green.

Stick insect

A big one, 12cm [5 in] or thereabouts.

There was rain yesterday; and the day before; and a drizzle the day prior to that. Somewhat unheard of for June to 1) have rain; or 2) has 3 consecutive days of rain (might be 4 including today); or 3) have deluges that overflow that water troughs that catch the roof run-off. On the upside: the vegetable garden will be happy. On the downside, it rained so hard it knocked a bunch of limes off the tree.