Midwinter is the time for feasts — not just around the table, with friends on long cold winter nights, but in the garden, too..
Summer’s harvests often have to be picked fast, before the fruit fly get into the apricots or the lettuces go to seed. Winter harvests are more gentle, and more generous too. They go on producing for months, while you pick them as needed — if the birds don’t get there first.
If you don’t have any of the winter beauties below, this is the perfect time to plant most of them, so that next year, or in two or three years’ time, you too can pick baskets of winter bounty, and share it with your friends.
The most beautiful winter harvests:
There is nothing as elegant as rich orange persimmons, hanging from a leafless tree. They are almost too lovely to pick. Sadly if you don’t, the birds will soon find them. I tie “bird bags” — calico bags or old stockings — over some of mine, to keep at least some of the fruit for ourselves. I have to admit that daggy calico bags do dampen the elegance a bit.
Persimmons grow in any climate, though they may need a sunny wall in very cold climates, and may not lose their leaves in hotter winters.
Red round pomegranates hang from leafless branches too. I used to battle the birds for them, until I decided to grow five pomegranate trees instead of one. Now there’s enough for all of us — and the birds look beautiful, too, cavorting upside down as they eat the fruit. Pomegranates suit almost any climate, and are wonderfully drought-hardy once they have been growing well for two or three years to get established.
I love the bright orange fruit of cumquats and calamondins — calamondins are like cumquats, but smaller, sourer and hardier in frost and heat. They make great marmalade and cordial, too. Oranges and mandarins also have their own beauty, glowing orange in the deep green leaves. Starved citrus, on the other hand, just look ugly.
If your citrus trees have narrow, yellowish leaves, give the poor things a good feed of old hen manure or other organic fertiliser or citrus food, a good water, plus a good mulch too.
In frost-free areas, tamarilloes can be stunning — dangling from the tree or rather large bush. They also fruit the same year you plant them. Commercial tamarilloes are deep red, but there are dark orange and pale orange and even yellowy orange varieties around too, that seem to be a bit more cold-hardy than the red ones.
Tamarilloes are one of the few fruits that grow in dappled shade — a great plant to fill in awkward spots in the garden. Tamarillo grows quickly from seed, or you can propagate it from a cutting in late winter. The bush tolerates about three degrees of frost. Even if all its leaves disappear, they’ll come back in spring and it will bear a late autumn crop. In mild areas, tamarillo crops all year round.
Peel your tamarilloes before eating. Chop them into fruit salads, use instead of kiwifruit on pavlova — or try a mix of red tamarillo slices and green kiwifruit. Add tamarillo to a salsa of chopped coriander leaves and diced avocado.
The most generous winter harvests:
This might be lemon trees or Tahitian limes: so many fruit you’ll find yourself giving away baskets full and hopefully getting some jars of marmalade in return. Avocadoes give lemons and limes a run for their money, though — a good, well-grown backyard avocado tree can give you hundreds of fruit each winter.
Another over-the-top cropper is kiwifruit. You need a male and female for pollination, and a good sturdy fence or pergola for them to ramble over, or a warm balcony in cold areas. But in return you get masses of fruit … or the birds get masses of fruit, so pick them as soon as you see the first bird pecks, or you may find they vanish before you can get a taste.
The prickliest winter harvest:
Chestnuts take about 10 years to fruit and grow into enormous trees. But if you have space you’ll find they drop their spiky nut vases all through winter, so every day there is a basket full to pick up — carefully, with gloves on. They are great fun for kids, like a backyard treasure hunt tree, where they never know quite how many nuts they’ll find each morning. Chestnuts are traditionally roasted, but they are just as good boiled for about 20 minutes — and it’s much easier!
Winter salads:
I plant masses of red mignonette lettuce in autumn, enough to see us through the winter. Although mignonette and other winter lettuce like cos are frost-resistant, they don’t grow fast (or even much at all) in cold weather. They make lovely salads though, soft-leafed hearts mixed with crisp slices of apple and thinly sliced celery.
Parsley is another wonderful winter salad standby, if you’ve remembered to plant lots in summer to see you through winter. Finely chopped broad-leafed or Italian parsley is wonderful mixed with chopped avocado, celery, apple, peeled tamarillo and a touch of lemon- or lime-based salad dressing.
And then there are garlic chives, and winter sweet broccoli and cauliflower to steam or roast and serve with vinaigrette too, and carrots and beetroots that really are sweeter and have a richer flavour in winter, and superb either raw or grated with salad dressing, served hot or cold.
Australian gardeners are lucky. We have backyard bounty all year long. Midwinter is the perfect time to share it — winter harvests that become midwinter feasts.
Your say: What do you do to your garden in winter? What are your winter gardening tips? Share with us at [email protected]
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