Winter officially starts this month. I love winter in my area – the nights are chilly and the mornings foggy. The days, however, are warm enough to wear a t-shirt in the garden if it is sunny!

In June, I experienced the contrast in seasons between states after a quick trip to Melbourne. Getting on the plane in Melbourne you are rugged up – I could feel the chill in the wind! When I landed back at the Sunshine Coast, it is 10 degrees warmer and I was too hot.

At the start of June, I found some black beauty capsicums ready to harvest. I love the chocolatey colour of these capsicums. They were quite small, so we had a Mexican meal one night and I chopped them up and mixed them with red capsicums for a side salad. The colour contrast was amazing.

This month, there are some Perennial capsicum plants in my front garden. When I bought these from the market, I was told that the plants can last for up to five years and are hardy. This appealed to me because I like capsicums and would love to have a supply of them in my garden. These have started to fruit in my garden in June.

Our tangelo tree is also overladen with fruit this month. Last year we didn’t get that many fruit… This year there are loads of fruit. We make juice out of them, which is great for keeping away the winter sniffles because the juice can be tangy, we also add oranges to the mix.

I sowed some mesclun seed mix in the veggie patch a few months back. This is now providing me with an excellent mix of mizuna, tatsoi and rocket. I also have some speckled, loose leaf lettuces types and endive growing in the garden. I enjoy having a variety of greens in my salads. Not only because I love how beautiful my salads look with all the different types of colours and shapes of the leaves but the flavour can be quite intense as well. The nuttiness of the rocket and the bitterness of mizuna combine well with the mildness of the other salad greens.

This month I planted some ‘Walking Stick Kale’ seedlings. I had seen these at the markets and had heard that they grow really tall. I love trying to grow interesting veggies (and I love Kale), so I now have some Walking Stick Kale seedlings in my veggie patch. If you have grown these before, please let me know your experience!

The chilli seeds that my partner had sown in an old toilet bowl in our garden have now grown into a decent sized plant with loads of chillies ready to pick. He has nicknamed this chilli bush the ‘Ring of Fire’ because it is growing in an old toilet. Haha! Whenever we have an abundance of chillies we pop them in a bag in the freezer, as chillies freeze really well. We then just chop them while they are still frozen to add them to hot dishes. Another way we like to use chillies is chop them up finely, mix with fish sauce and keep a jar of this in the fridge. The flavour intensifies over time and a drop of this to any Asian dishes adds quite a firey kick.

There is a quick rundown of what has been happening in my veggie patch this month. For more regular updates, don’t forget to Like our Facebook page.

WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR JUNE HAPPENINGS IN YOUR VEGGIE PATCH? WE WOULD LOVE TO KNOW! PLEASE LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW.