Harvesting

In spring I grow far too many plants so I give seedlings to all my favorite people. It's always interesting to see how things grow in other peoples gardens compared to my own. I didn't have much success with the Luffa I planted but one of my friends rang me yesterday for instructions on what to do once they've grown, so if you have luffa in your garden here's how to turn them into great back and foot scrubbers. Leave mature fruits in a dry place with the ends cut off and the seeds extracted. The flesh will wither leaving a network of cylindrical fibre. Easy eh? I also gave away lots of these Austrian oil seed pumpkins you just cut them in half and dry out the seeds for storage. You know it's ready when the pumpkin starts to go orange. I got about 3/4 of a cup from the first one I did, which isn't too bad considering if I'd bought the seeds from the shop they'd probably have been heat treated to stop them sprouting and flown here from goodness knows where, so I guess I'm doing my bit in my own garden to help towards stopping global warming. Now if only I could use the pushbike instead of the car sometimes. The catalogue says the flesh is lovely to eat but I find it quite watery like squash and give it to Skatey Boy's pet rats or the chooks, who incedently have stopped laying, autumn is obviously turning into winter for us here in the southern hemisphere. Wharepapa our Mt Arthur mountain range had a sprinkling of snow the other night but it would be very rare for us to get any down this low.