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Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – less familiar currants

2023-02-15T14:28:49+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. Most Kiwis are familiar with blackcurrants – those pungent, tart, vitamin C and antioxidant-loaded black spheres (even if it is via over-sweetened Ribena drinks consumed as a child). Blackcurrants are cold-hardy and prolific, ripe about now in mid-December, and certainly worth having in the garden for cooked desserts, cordials and preserves – though in my experience, only the toughest of the tough can eat mouth-puckering blackcurrants fresh in any great quantity. Did you know that blackcurrants have some lesser-known relatives which are much milder on the palate and can even [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – less familiar currants2023-02-15T14:28:49+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Feijoas

2023-02-15T14:38:02+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. I’m pretty sure kiwifruit takes centre stage as New Zealand’s national fruit, but I reckon the feijoa runs a very close second. Supermarket shelves, greengrocers’ bins and roadside stalls are bursting with these fragrant green grenades in autumn, not to mention the many hundreds more littering lawns throughout the nation. You either love or hate the floral-medicinal flavour of these fruits, although like olives, capers and anchovies, an acquired taste can develop over time. My Mum never partook in the feijoa frenzy when I was a child, but during the [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Feijoas2023-02-15T14:38:02+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Apricots: Summer’s Gold

2023-02-15T14:37:41+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. I have a busy weekend ahead of me – my first case of apricots has arrived from Central Otago and predictably, the mercury is still hovering around 29°C at 4.30 pm. I’ll be spending most of my weekend in the kitchen, engulfed in a cloud of steam, with a sticky bench and even stickier complexion. Is it worth it? Absolutely. In the depths of winter, nothing can brighten a dull day better than the glow of bottled apricots with your morning cereal, a tubful tucked into a packed lunch or [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Apricots: Summer’s Gold2023-02-15T14:37:41+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Notable plums

2023-02-15T14:38:20+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. I spent a good chunk of my summer break up a ladder and on the carport roof picking plums and lowering laden buckets down via a rope to my parents, waiting expectantly below. It’s become somewhat of a ritual and we make deliveries of bags and boxfuls around the neighbourhood afterward, as there is far more fruit than we can handle. The trees are seedlings, resulting from stones hurled out the back door and into the undergrowth in summers past. We’ve ended up with an Omega-like wannabe that’s ripe in [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Notable plums2023-02-15T14:38:20+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – A peach by any other name

2023-02-15T14:38:39+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. The dark red, velvet-skinned, late season peach beloved of many a Kiwi has recently undergone a name update, bringing it firmly in to the 21st century. Sanguine peach, blood peach, Pêche de Vigne (peach of the grapevine; vineyard peach) or simply, as I heard recently – purple peach – call it what you may, this fruit holds a special place in the hearts of countless New Zealanders. I’d like to contribute a suggestion of my own – given this fruit’s ability to produce quick-maturing trees that come reasonably true from [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – A peach by any other name2023-02-15T14:38:39+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Tamarillos

2023-02-15T14:35:11+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. New Zealand horticulture has a reputation for turning obscure fruits into success stories. From Chinese gooseberries (now recognised far and wide as kiwifruit) to feijoas, it seems we can take a species little-known outside of its native range, cultivate it successfully in our amenable climate, make it a domestic favourite, and then more often than not, turn it into star on the international stage. The tamarillo, Cyphomandra betacea (syn. Solanum betaceum), formerly known as the tree tomato, or ‘arbol de tomate’ in Spanish, fits neatly into [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Tamarillos2023-02-15T14:35:11+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Loquats

2023-02-15T14:33:47+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. You’ve probably heard gardeners and self-sufficiency enthusiasts talk wistfully about the ‘hungry gap’ as winter turns to spring. In terms of fruit and vegetable production, the late winter and early spring months can be deceptively sparse, as the cold-weather crops finish or bolt to seed and the new-season crops are in their infancy. This is particularly applicable to the fruit crops – citrus has its heyday and then declines, rhubarb fills a gap, then the early strawberries pop in, but the hefty summer crops of stonefruit [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Loquats2023-02-15T14:33:47+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Rhubarb

2023-02-15T14:31:46+13:00

Rhubarb and patience can work wonders – German proverb By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. When is a fruit not a fruit? When it’s a vegetable, of course! A vegetable, you say? In botanical terms, rhubarb is indeed a vegetable, as it is the herbaceous stem portion that we cook and eat, as opposed to its actual fruit, which by strict definition is the ‘mature, ripened ovary of a plant, including the contents of the ovary’. Conversely, this means that many things we term vegetables are actually fruits – think the squash-pumpkin [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Rhubarb2023-02-15T14:31:46+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Beyond the Meyer lemon

2023-02-15T14:34:41+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. I’d like to survey every backyard in New Zealand, from Cape Reinga to Bluff, and count up all the lemon trees. I reckon you’ll find one more often than not, and chances are those trees will usually be the ubiquitous stalwart of the hardy citrus tribe, the Meyer lemon, and not without good reason. The section I grew up on sported a very large, very old Meyer. Upwards of forty years old and a good five metres in diameter, the tree formed a centrepiece in our [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – Beyond the Meyer lemon2023-02-15T14:34:41+13:00

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – The Humble Choko

2023-02-15T14:36:11+13:00

By Anna-Marie Barnes This article was originally published on lifestyleblock.co.nz. This month, it’s time for something completely different as we step away from the ordinary and take a look at the much-maligned but eager-to-please choko. You may or may not have heard of this strange pear-shaped “is it a fruit, is it a vegetable?” Those in New Zealand’s northern climes are perhaps more likely to be familiar with this outlandish member of the Cucurbitaceae or gourd family. Maturing in late autumn to early winter, and with good storage potential, it is a handy substitute for cucumbers [...]

Your Backyard Fruit Bowl – The Humble Choko2023-02-15T14:36:11+13:00
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