Crazy cucumbers are enough to drive Jackie French batty

There are too many apples, too many nashi pears, too many lemons and far, far too many apple cucumbers. The NSW colony's first chaplain and probably its best gardener, the Reverend Richard Johnson, spoke of harvesting 2000 cucumbers. I thought he was exaggerating, just a little, until this year.

A few nights of fruit bats could control them all, but the fruit bats, sensible creatures, like their native tucker best, and this year the crops of wild native figs, Ficus coronata and F. rubiginosa, are luscious and there is a good choice of native blossom too.

Fruit bats are relatively easily discouraged. Forget bird netting or even bat netting – the bats get tangled, which either injures them or makes them very cross, destroying more fruit as they try to escape. If you do find an injured fruit bat or other bat, phone WIRES (Wildlife Information Rescue and Education Service) or NARG (Native Animal Rescue Group), which have experienced bat handlers who will remove and, if possible, tend to their injuries. Don't try it yourself.

The best fruit bat control I know is fruit-fly netting, which, naturally, also keeps off fruit fly. It isn't actually netting, but a porous cloth, that fruit ripens under. It also gives a few degrees of frost proofing and helps prevent hail damage, as long as there's only a little hail, not great cricket balls of it. It also helps moderate wind damage – again, as long as it is not a mini cyclone.

The most effective, as proposed to the best, fruit bat control I know of is one you do not want to try. It was part of a test done about 20 years ago to see what worked for fruit bats in mid-coast Queensland. I suspect it would effectively repel human fruit eaters too.

The testers collected rags, stuffed them into the ends of stockings with at least six mothballs per stocking, then hung the toes of the stockings in human urine in the sun for 10 days, replenishing it as it evaporated. The resulting balls, now extremely odorous, were hung from the branches, with at least two on each branch. The effect lasted at least a month, but I suspect that would vary on the amount of rain, as rain would eventually wash the stockings clean.

This has been an odd season, and not just because the fruit bats decided that their usual annual two-month nightly visits to our place should be reduced to the two weeks it took to eat the early pears. The chilacayote melons that are only supposed to fruit in autumn have been putting out melons all season, but my other melon vines all withered, except one, which put out a single rockmelon, then a third of that rotted too, before we had time to eat it. (The remnant was pretty good – not marvellous, but better than shop bought, at least.)

This year the shasta daisies I put in last year are blooming and blooming and spreading into good-sized clumps, but the roses are waiting for the sun, and the wallabies are waiting for the roses. They reckon they deserve at least three roses a day and haven't got their ration yet. A rhododendron has turned into a tree after pretending to be a geranium, no taller than my knee for a decade.

Four pumpkin vines have given us one pumpkin, one rotted pumpkin and many small "were going to be pumpkins, but rotted first" female flowers. They are still growing madly and may yet surprise us with a late autumn crop, or not. The chillies are climbing up the lemon tree and, for some reason, the capsicums are great too.

The tomatoes have come in weird prolific bursts, setting masses every time they have a dry three days, all ripening at the same time then none for another 10 days. We have had one long green cucumber, almost as many apple cucumbers as the Reverend Johnson, sad silver beet, happy parsley and gigantic rhubarb, not that we have bothered eating any of it yet. We leave rhubarb for winter pies and fool (stewed rhubarb in layers with orange-flavoured cream whipped with a little sugar, grated zest and Cointreau).

This is a year to be glad that our gardens have a harvest of food plants that originated in many parts of the world and many, many climates. Some do best in wet years, some in dry and a very, very few at any time.

The moral? Plant lots of many different vegetables. The one thing we can be certain of in our land is that things change, quickly or slowly: years of drought interspersed with a few floods, years of floods but sunny days, frost at Christmas, or snow, hail or 40C and bushfire smoke.

Plant South American tomatoes, and pumpkins and the potatoes that could be cultivated in cold high Andean mountain gardens. Put in African watermelons, once used and bred to carry water across the Kalahari Desert. Grow the vastly improved forms of ancient Egypt's lettuce that once grew as a weed along the Nile, or kale from the northern European shores that likes hard frost to make it sweet. Try blueberries, once a wild bog plant, and corn bred for a Mexican desert, planted under 30 centimetres of sand to keep it cool.

When you have lots, you finally get to the point where you welcome the fruit bats, wallabies, wombats and even possums, as long as there are powerful owls to keep the population from exploding too much. You can hear their screams at night as the owls carry them up the gorge.

Even in a weird year, there will be plenty.

John Carter suggests boiling down over-abundant apples to make syrup: strain the pulp and keep the liquid in the fridge. It can be added to any fruits that don't have a lot of pectin, such as raspberries or strawberries, if you want to make jam or jelly. With an excess of apples this year, we'll try it.

This is absurdly rich, extremely old-fashioned and incredibly comforting when you are bushed. You don't need large amounts. A good splodge with a salad or with several helpings of steamed vegetables is excellent.

Salmon filling:

1 can red salmon

2 cups milk or cream

2 tbsps cornflour

juice of 1 lemon

1 bunch chives, chopped

Place the flour in a saucepan, add the milk and stir until the flour dissolves. Heat on low until it thickens, then add the chives, lemon juice and salmon. Stir until well mixed.

Pour into an oven-proof dish.

Potato topping:

4 large potatoes, peeled and sliced

125g butter

½ cup cream

½ cup of grated gouda cheese

Boil the potatoes until soft. Mash in the butter and cheese, then add the cream until it is moist but not runny. Spread over the salmon mix.

Bake at 200C until the top is crisp and brown. Eat hot.

This is a cheat's sauce: four ingredients and easily made, but the flavour of the cheese is all you need with the broccoli.

3 heads broccoli

1 cup blue cheese, chopped

3 tbsp cornflour

2 cups milk

Boil or microwave the broccoli until it is tender, but retains its its structural integrity. Don't go for crisp – you need to be able to spoon it, not cut it.

Place the flour in a saucepan, add the milk and stir until blended. Put on a low heat, keep stirring until it thickens, which will be before it boils, then take it off the heat and stir in the cheese. Stir until it dissolves, reheating on low a little if it won't all melt.

Place the broccoli in an oven-proof dish and pour the sauce over it. Bake at 200C until it's just beginning to brown. Eat hot.

This is also good with a sharp cheddar.