Adelaide Kitchen Gardeners

Lettuce-Leaf Basil

2012-01-29T11:00:00.001+10:30

...with tomatoes and mozzarella. It can't get better than that! :)

The best sweet corn ever

2012-01-26T16:46:00.000+10:30

Even though it does not look perfect. A few gaps, small, etc. but it's our own. We grew it. Just bung it in boiling water for a minute or two.
Then a dollop of butter on the cob, let it melt, tuck in. It was incredibly sweet, tender and creamy. Not that I am biased or something. But it was the best sweet corn ever. :)

Zucchini pizza

2012-01-23T14:49:00.001+10:30

Move over artichoke hearts! Zucchini strips are the go! Just use your vegetable peeler to get long thing strips of zucchini. Throw them on to your pizza.
Half the pizza has pesto instead of tomato paste. Plus some olives. YUMMY!

Pot-bound seedlings

2012-01-22T21:38:00.001+10:30

Something happens to plant nurseries over the Christmas-New Year holiday; its almost as though the efforts of spring and the rising heat of summer bludgeon them and their clientele into a state of apathy during January that results in rows of woebegone seedlings sitting listlessly on shelves where once beauty and vigour reigned.

Still, even these ‘pot-bound’ seedlings can be turned into vegetables, provided only that one takes a little care in breaking out the root system that has been tying itself in ever-tighter knots inside the confines of the tiny pots in which they arrived at the nursery months ago.

Take this celery seedling in the foreground above, from instance. It had a vigorous crown, which just shouted for a chance at life. Squeezing the side-walls of the pot helps pop it out of the container. Once the roots are exposed, they must be brutally broken apart to allow them to diverge in the soil; they won’t do this if simply placed in the ground, and will soon die.

I just stick my fore-finger up through the bottom of the root-mass and pull the root ball apart, as shown above.

Then it’s simply a matter of maintaining this ‘bell-shape’ root mass when planting out the seedling in the ground. Weeks later, all celery plants are 300mm high and growing like Jack’s beanstalk!

Today's harvest

2012-01-22T18:42:00.001+10:30

We've been picking zucchinis (who hasn't?) and cucumbers (variety - Home-made Pickles) and started with a few little cherry tomatoes. The big ones are still very green and will need a bit more time to ripen.
What are you picking at the moment?

Smoked Coorong mullet and garden salad

2012-01-15T17:28:00.001+10:30

As the heat of an Australian summer builds, with temperatures in the high 30’s and low 40’s (107degF), even gardeners avoid the garden just after midday, tending to hang out in the kitchen making simple meals while the cook sits around wondering why she ever emigrated from Europe…

Fortunately, some compensation can be found in the profundity of the garden as various crops come booming in; salads containing fresh tomatoes, capsicums, sliced red onion, pickled olives from last year, fresh basil and rocket leaves plus sliced cheese from the Adelaide Central Market, along with olive oil and apple vinegar dressing, fall into the category of ‘meals husbands can make!’.

Cold beer for thirst, and smoked Coorong Mullet for protein, finish off this simple South Australian ‘ploughman’s lunch’.

Carrot flowers

2012-01-08T10:45:00.000+10:30

I always let some vegetable plants go to flower/seed. Not only are they pretty, they also attract all kinds of insects and bees, and also supply us with next year's seeds.
Isn't this carrot flower pretty?

An Australian Christmas

2011-12-27T13:22:00.001+10:30

‘Down under’ here in Australia the seasons are all backwards to the cook, born as she was in the northern hemisphere. With us, the longest day of the year occurs just four days before Christmas (on the 21st December), though our hottest day is likely to be somewhere in February.

So our chances of a white Christmas - holly, snow, candlelight and sleigh rides - are pretty much zero. For us it’s a season of cold beer, beaches, BBQs, picnics in parks, shorts and T-shirts. Christmas Day was mild this year, somewhere in the mid-30’s - that’s around 100 Fahrenheit if Centigrade is not your thing…

For the gardeners among us, it’s also a time of fresh fruit and berries and some of the best breakfasts of the year, featuring raspberries, strawberries, cherries, bananas, mandarins, apricots and nectarines on top of Australian sultanas, almonds and pumpkin seeds; peaches will be along in January…

So Christmas day is generally a quiet day in the garden, with just some necessary watering done by hand in the quiet of the early morning and before the family lunch begins.

Christmas Eve was somewhat more hectic; the gardener had to lift the cook’s strawberry crop off the ground and into the gift he’d bought her - a raised Christmas garden bed away from mice, lizards and millipedes that also relish fresh strawberries. This was all done by evening, and looked fine on Christmas morning after overnight watering had settled the transplants.

Boxing Day is spent quietly too, but then, on the fourth and last day of the Christmas public holidays, its back to the garden - onions and garlic are ready for harvest after their six month growing cycle, started way back on the shortest day of the year.

Our middle son and his partner are over from their eighth-floor apartment in Melbourne and get to witness what they miss most by living in the big-city; fruit and vegetables picked straight from an Adelaide kitchen garden.

Did Mr Kiwi...

2011-12-25T11:30:00.000+10:30

...do the right thing by Ms/Mrs Kiwi at last?
Did he finally send out flowers?To enable the bees to pollinate the female flowers? And we'll finally get some fruit?So far the fruit is the biggest it ever grew. So, maybe this year? That would be nice! :)

Cucumber "Home-made Pickles"

2011-12-19T11:53:00.001+10:30

The plants are looking rather good at the moment.
There are lots of tiny cucumbers on the plant.
I'm just hoping that they will all be pollinated and result in lots of yummy cucumbers to munch on. Even though they are called "Home-made Pickles", I will be using them to eat in salads. There are still plenty of jars with pickled cucumbers in the pantry.

Purple Congo Potatoes

2011-12-17T22:30:00.001+10:30

‘I need potatoes!’, says the cook to the gardener…

‘AAhhRRrr!!!’ thinks the gardener, potatoes being out of season just now…

‘How about some nice beans? – I’ve got plenty of beans…’, says the gardener hopefully, earning a black look. This recipe calls for potatoes apparently, and there’s no suggestion in here that the gardener trudging down to the local shops is going to solve this one…

‘Potatoes from the garden’, repeats the cook, with all a woman’s logic and with just a faint suggestion that the gardener is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.

If potatoes are needed in the kitchen, there must as a consequence be potatoes available somewhere in the garden.

‘OK, now we’re reduced to eating weeds’, thinks the gardener, no longer daring to speak his thoughts out loud. The family is coming to dinner in a few hours time – who needs a crisis on the threshold of that?

So weeds it is – ‘purple congo potato’ weeds, which live forever apparently, as I started with a handful from a fellow seed-saver decades ago, and the damn things just won’t go away – there's always one left in the ground that kicks off the next weed, and I know there’s a patch right down the back getting in the way of my developing pumpkins.

So out with the potato hoe, and 15 minutes later, a few kilograms of the world's ugliest potatoes make their way up to the kitchen to earn an ‘I told you so!’ look from the cook. A good husband is a man who understands just what his wife doesn’t say, so silence fills the silence that follows.

At least I don’t have to peel the bloody things (they’re tiny); we just cut them in half, skins and all, and drop them in the chicken curry. They make a very pretty mashed potato too, and don’t taste bad when roasted…

All’s well that end’s well, I guess.

Berry brekkie

2011-12-02T14:46:00.001+10:30

One of the marvellous things about a glut of berries is that breakfast turns into pure indulgence.

Take bowl, fill with selection of berries.Mix in (home-made) yoghurt. Enjoy. Simple but - oh! - so good. :)

Berry season

2011-11-30T09:17:00.001+10:30

Berry picking has started in earnest in Gnomesville. This year we had to net the berry patch as the birds had started to move in.
First we had the little birds (wrens, thrushes, etc.), and we didn't worry too much. But then the magpies came in great numbers, and finally the yellow-tailed black cockatoos. That's when we knew we'd have to net the patch, as the cockatoos do a lot of damage. Not just eating the berries, but breaking off branches.
This is yesterday's haul. All together 3.5 kilos of berries.
There are raspberries, silvanberries, tayberries, yellow raspberries, boysenberries.And strawberries.

Autumn back to Spring

2011-11-27T18:42:00.001+10:30

German vegetable gardens – much like those in Australia – have been quietly fading away in the thirty years that this Aussie gardener has been trekking halfway around the globe on our annual pilgrimage to Baden-Württemberg to catch up with the German cook’s family. The economies of self-help have given way in both countries to the convenience of supermarkets and small garden plots have given way to lawn and leisure.

Yet the sun shone in southern Germany through October and early November, and while the cook cooked for the oldies, the gardener drifted through the countryside on an old bicycle that spends 11 months of each year in the garage. Once the main meal of the day had been eaten at lunchtime, the cook could put her feet up while the gardener cleaned up the kitchen and dining room.

But every arrival is followed somewhere by a departure, and just as the days shortened markedly, the trees lost their wondrously coloured leaves, the skies turned gray and the temperature fell through the floor, it was time once more fly the 16,000 kms (10,000 miles) home from Europe to our other life in southern Australia.

Chaos!

Spring rains and a five week absence have turned order in the veggie patch into jungle while a stiff dose of jet-lag makes any decision-making an effort. But I’d better hurry – next Thursday marks the beginning of the Australian summer,and I’ve got all sorts of crops now months behind schedule.

Ah well! – we’re both enjoying the Spring sunshine and the long hours of daylight that Nature and Qantas have delivered to us, as if to keep at least one garden somewhere in production…

Elderflowers

2011-11-17T09:29:00.002+10:30

The elder tree is laden with flowers again.
What a gorgeous sight that is!It started flowering a few weeks ago.I never get tired of our beautiful elder tree and its flowers.

Mullein

2011-11-08T15:48:00.000+10:30

This is a fairly new addition to my herb garden. It's a stunning plant. The leaves are a gorgeous silvery-green colour, and the long flower spike is laden with flowers, when in full bloom. Every part of it can be used for medicinal purposes, but I haven't experimented with it yet. It's also very low maintenance - always a bonus! :)

The Red Hot Pokers...

2011-11-07T15:25:00.001+10:30

....are a-poking madly.

Strawberry bed

2011-10-26T18:29:00.000+10:30

The strawberries are looking really good. However, they are still very small and green. The structures are in place - so that we can put netting over the bed when they ripen up. So, grow, strawberries, grow! :) We are ready!

Miner's lettuce flowering

2011-10-20T09:32:00.001+10:30

Spring is such a beautiful season!One of my all-time favourite winter veggies is now flowering. Miner's lettuce.I let it go to seed every spring, and come autumn after the first rain, it pops up again. No work involved. :) What's not to like about this?!

Blossoms

2011-10-10T11:03:00.001+10:30

The fruit trees are covered in blossoms and the bees are busy buzzing about.
The whole orchard looks a treat!

Apple blossoms.Bee busy on apple blossom.
Some pears have already set.Getting excited about our potential fruit harvest! Fingers crossed. :)

Cooking red cabbage

2011-10-09T03:37:00.001+10:30

The whole place stinks of cabbage, and its no-ones fault but my own!

There’s something friendly about red cabbage that I’ve never felt for its green relatives, and I suspect that its because I get to grow it in summer rather than in winter when the green cabbages thrive under frosty conditions. Something went wrong last year though, and I planted the red cabbage late in summer, with the consequence that this last lot soldiered on through the winter and produced lots of small cabbages that I’ve now been cutting up for the cook just to get the darn things out of the garden to make way for Spring crops.

Normally we’d keep some of these red cabbages for salads, but this time we’re in a rush, and so we’ve cooked the 2kg of shredded cabbage harvested and will store this in jars.

Onions and apple are chopped and fried in butter and oil before the finely-shredded red cabbage is added. Sultanas, raisins, a little sugar, salt and pepper, balsamic vinegar and a bay leaf are thrown in, and after some frying the whole operation changes to steaming in a large pot with a lid on it, reducing the whole to a half.

Like so many things to do with cooking and gardening, this seems like a great deal of work for a small result. But that perception probably arises from the little we see these days of food preparation in a society fed on factory foods processed out of sight and designed for convenience, allowing one to spend ones days sitting before a television set instead of spending healthy time in kitchen and garden.

I’m sure I’ll appreciate this home-grown recipe some time in the coming months, just as soon as the smell goes away.

In the meantime, I’m escaping the kitchen and grating duties to head out into the garden and plant more Dutch red cabbage. This time on-schedule…

Purple Cauliflower...

2011-10-03T17:36:00.001+10:30

I know, I know. Purple Cauliflower. Again. Sorry. But I think this should be the last one for a long time. Until next winter, hopefully.

Everyone was curious to know, what colour it would have when cooked. Here it is, sautéed in a little butter.
Served with some home-made, spicy beef sausages and hand-cut chips (from home-grown potatoes).Gosh, it was good! :)

Midway mark for the garlic, onions and leeks

2011-10-01T18:37:00.001+09:30

The allium family – chives, garlic, onions, leek – are the slow-growers of the vegetable world, needing six months from mid-winter to mid-summer to mature. As September rolls to an end and Spring is all around, three months of those six are now behind us since garlic-planting took place on the shortest day of the Australian year – the 21st of June.

That the allium bed is in such good shape owes everything to the cook this year; she weeded nettles from the bed when the onions and garlic were small and vulnerable and so gave them a chance to survive.

In the past week we’ve been blessed with 35 mm of rain; today she was out there once more, packing pea-straw mulch between the rows to lock that rainfall into the soil against the coming heat.

And why is the cook doing this, not the gardener? While it’s true that she’s half my weight, twice as flexible and has four times the stamina, its a matter of logistics – at this time of year, the pressure to get crops in needs both cook and gardener. So there’s a ‘trade’ going on; the gardener is chain-sawing and mulching trees that the cook wanted sorted for her flower garden, so the heavy labour is elsewhere…

And the grapevines planted and mulched last week? Perfect timing for once; the rain soaked through the pea-straw and they’re doing well.

Mulch in a ten-minute vineyard

2011-09-25T12:27:00.001+09:30

Anyone who experienced the fortnight of straight daily maximum temperatures over 40 degrees C (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in the drought-stricken summer of 2009/10 on the Adelaide Plains will now be preparing for a summer kitchen garden with a whole new sense of caution.

Top of the gardener’s list is to lock winter rainfall into the soil against evaporative forces over the next few months, and to keep that soil cool enough to bring various crops through.

A couple of other nasty things rolled over us as a consequence of that drought-stricken decade; fresh food prices went through the roof and so (much less visibly) did the cost of pea-straw mulch. Worse was to follow: water was rationed to the point that one had to live outside the law to grow one’s own food. The 60 000 litres of winter rain water that I am holding in my tanks will be enough for only a month’s supply in this large garden if the heat turns back on and spring rains fail us. To eke out that supply, I have to invest instead in bales of pea-straw laid down in slabs across the whole garden. Each bale costs A$7.00, and longer-lasting barley or lucerne straw costs significantly more.

So now in my Spring garden I plan for these harsh conditions, while hoping for the best. Every shower of rain is a blessing from now until next April. I’m paying for pea-straw mulch for this year, but next year’s winter garden will grow my own mulch in-situ while adding some soil nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere by broad bean crops grown this past winter for bulk seed; kilograms of it. Broad beans shade the soil long into late Spring, and can be cut down in place as mulch. I’m growing two types; the large heritage Aquadulce broad bean for eating, propagation and seed, and the smaller Coles Prolific as mulch.

And so here in our fenced orchard, under a $100 coat of pea-straw mulch, are 16 Isabella table grapevines grown in a pot over winter and costing nothing at all (they were given to us by seed-saver friends). These grapes will provide fresh fruit on our breakfast table in year’s to come, even during drought and times of high food prices.

And yes, we did plant the grapevine cuttings in only ten-minutes; preparing the area and laying the mulch took up much more time…

Sowing Spring seeds

2011-09-18T15:24:00.001+09:30

My Spring seed collection (as distinct from my autumn seed collection) has been sitting on my shed bench for weeks now, waiting for those harbingers of Spring; the honey bees. Today the whole garden resounded with their humming as they gathered nectar and pollen from the flowering citrus trees and the broccoli, rocket and cabbage flowers in the kitchen garden.

While the plant nurseries have been alive with humans for some weeks now, it’s the activity of these bees that lets me know that Mother Nature has started her Spring engine in earnest after the quiet of the winter garden. It’s time to plant seeds.

For some years past I’ve experimented with various peat pots and potting mixtures into which to plant my Spring seed collection; those seeds, at any rate, that start life best as seedlings, rather than those best sown directly into the garden beds, such as the large seeds of sunflowers, cucumbers, beans, corn, zucchini and pumpkin.

But it’s all too tempting to mistake purchasing stuff with gardening; the natural adjunct to seed saving is to plant out one’s own seed, and it’s quicker too. Why is that? Well, because I’ve saved on all sorts of discarded seed punnets and seed trays, old coffee tins for seed storage, cake trays to stand seed trays on out of reach of earwigs, and flat wooden window blinds that can be cut up and used to label seed trays.

But the real work in preparing for seed planting day has been done by the chickens whose breakfast table and toilet both reside under our huge old lemon tree; they have been scratching about for years turning the top layer of soil into a fine and nutritious seed-planting mix. One need only sieve off a shovelful or two of this wonderful natural material to replace bags of potting mix full of coconut fibre and man-made chemical nutrients.

There’s only one small catch – for reasons unknown to me, this great stuff comes out of the chicken yard so dry that for the moment it forms a ‘non-wetting soil’; water beads on the top of it instead of sinking in. So now begins the careful process of turning my seed trays into seedling trays by careful and very regular slow watering with rain water from a watering can.

This allows the moisture to move in around the seeds and to kick Spring off in earnest.

Purple Cauliflower

2011-09-14T16:26:00.002+09:30

I just have to brag about this beauty! I will harvest this one tomorrow or Friday. Isn't it a ripper?! :)

Curry puffs

2011-09-08T09:52:00.001+09:30

The leftover curry from the previous post was perfect as filling for curry puffs.I used the pastry recipe from Stephanie Alexander's "Cook's Companion". You can also find it here. It's easy to make, easy to work with and very tasty.Some of the curry puffs.
I filled the smallest of my cast iron frying pans with oil to do the deep frying.
The pastry got all blistery and flaky, as described in the recipe.
Served with a celeriac salad and some lacto-fermented carrots & cabbage. And chilli sauce. Delicious!

Garden Curry

2011-09-05T10:31:00.000+09:30

The proper name for it is Chard & New Potato Curry. The recipe is here.

We had nearly all the ingredients in the garden. Here the greens (mustard leaves, kale, silverbeet, komatsuna, rapa, chinese broadleaf celery). Plus all the other ingredients. Instead of the onion I used some walking onions. The picture is out of focus, sorry, I must have been quite hungry.
The greens nearly didn't fit in the pot.
But wilted down in no time.
Finally, time to eat! It doesn't take long to prepare and cook. It was absolutely delicious. Well worth making! With the leftovers I made curry puffs. But that's another post. :)

Budding Spring

2011-09-04T18:21:00.001+09:30

The Satsuma plum tree is in flower, but then so are the pear and peach trees…

One of these peach trees is in for a surprise; it’s about to become the proud parent of some three different varieties of freestone nectarines, grafted on to one of its somnambulant branches during winter. These buds will become branches that might produce fruit next year; this year any early fruits will be stripped off to allow the graft to heal and strengthen without the added weight of fruit threatening to break them off the parent tree.

Out in the front yard, our winter-grafted Granny Smith apple tree is also setting buds on six different varieties of apples, and the ornamental pear tree is boasting a successful edible pear graft.

Other things are budding too; a pot full of Isabella grapevine cuttings – just a bunch of twigs in a pot only weeks ago – is now popping out grapevine leaves above the soil and roots below the soil. These twenty twigs will form the basis of a row of table grapevines that will supply our future summer breakfasts once they have been established in our new enclosed orchard well out of reach of parrots and possums.

Even the vegetables are blooming, especially the broad beans, broccoli, German cabbage and Daikon radish.

A Seed-Saver’s Spring Sunday Seed Selection

2011-08-28T13:53:00.001+09:30

It’s late winter in Southern Australia. Really late in fact, because the official start of Spring ‘down under’ is the 1st of September, now only four days away…

Someone should have told Mother Nature – she’s turned up early, the weather is sunny and warm, and the peach and pear trees are in blossom. Time to get out the seed collection and look for any holes that will give me the delightful excuse to wander down to the shops and buy one of the few things that shops sell that interest me – packets of vegetable seeds.

But this year that thill is not to be – the only seed I haven’t saved on from last autumn is Spring Onion seed.

So on this Seed Saver’s Sunday, I’ve whittled the collection down to about 50 varieties of vegetables that will be planted out in the coming warmer months. Another 50 tins of seed have been set aside: these contain winter vegetables, varieties that I’ve saved on but have no further interest in planting out, some (like sweet corn) that use too much water, and a few that are probably past their used-by-date.

Here’s the list for this year – it doesn’t include all those winter herbs and vegetables already out in the beds and powering along (broad beans, potatoes, fennel, mint, horse-radish, onions, leeks, garlic, purple-sprouting broccoli, silver beet, chillies, peas, asparagus, red cabbage, lettuces, strawberries, corn salad and so forth): -

Tomatoes: – Amish Paste, Golden Sunrise, Red Ox Heart, Italian Red Marl, Joy’s Yellow Cherry, Mortgage Lifter, Burpee’s Delicious, Yellow Pear, Tommy Toe, Roma and Red Cocktail
Beetroot: Crimson Globe, Cylindra, Derwent Globe
Cucumber: German Pickling, Syrian, Muncher Burpless
Basil: Sweet Genovese
Coriander
Dill
Eggplant: Black Beauty
Capsicum: Large Red
Lettuce: Royal Oak-Leaf, Purple Oak-Leaf, Green Cos, Red Cos, Canasta, green mignonette, etc
Radish: Daikon
Pumpkin: Butternut, Queensland Blue
Silverbeet: Malcolm’s Flat, Red Chard
Beans: Lazy Wife (climber), red kidney (dried), Giant of Stuttgart (climber), Cherokee Wax (yellow bush bean), Low’s Champion Bush Bean, snake bean, Bert and Augustino’s seed-savers’ beans
Sunflower: Multi-flora, black seed (name unknown), Mammoth, Evening Sun
Chinese vegetables: Pak Choy, Wombok
Rocket
Parsley: Triple-curled, Italian flat-leaved
Carrot: Nantes
Kale: Red Russian
Spring onions: flat-leaved
Celery: Green Crunch
Zucchini: Black Jack, Early Prolific Straightneck

Spring omelette

2011-08-23T13:01:00.001+09:30

Well, okay, it's not spring yet. But have a look out of the window! Doesn't it just feel like spring? It's sunny, warm and the bees are buzzing about.

The asparagus is starting to shoot up in earnest.
There are some absolute rippers in the patch!
Let's just cut them a little, get some eggs from the chooks - and ready for an omelette!Lunch is sooooo good! :)

How to make chocolate-coated orange peel snacks

2011-08-21T18:26:00.001+09:30

The citrus trees are heavily-laden as winter draws to a close in southern Australia. As the Washington-Navel oranges sweeten up they become easier to peel and break apart into juicy segments, just like mandarins. The oranges taste great, but the peel makes something even better – chocolate-coated orange-peel snacks.

We have two types of orange trees in our kitchen garden – the other type (Valencia) is a juicing orange that is not easily peeled, and whose skin is too thin for this recipe. Nor will they be ripe until sometime in summer, when they last for months on the tree, and make a wonderfully cool and refreshing drink of a sunny morning.

Typically, two large Washington-Navel oranges are peeled, and this peel is then cut into strips one centimetre wide. These are placed in a saucepan, covered with water, then brought to the boil before draining with a sieve. This process is repeated three times to take the bitterness out of the peel. Then a cup of sugar is added to a cup of water and heated until the sugar is dissolved. The orange slices are then dropped into the sugar-water and the whole mixture brought to the boil and simmered for a further 5 to 10 minutes. Strips are then removed from the water and allowed to cool and dry overnight on a cake rack.

125g of dark chocolate is then melted inside a metal dish which is itself placed inside a saucepan of gently boiling water; this method prevents the temperature of the chocolate rising above the boiling point of water (100C). The cool orange strips are dipped in the melted chocolate and laid out on a piece of aluminium foil to cool and set. If it’s a warm day, place them in the fridge to cool.

At this point the cook would prompt me to add that these chocolate-coated orange strips don’t keep very long, so they ought be stored in the fridge regardless.

But we don’t actually know how long this optimum storage period might be, as they disappear well before their use-by-date in some other mysterious and stealthy fashion, marked only by the smile on the face of the gardener.

Winter in the garden

2011-08-17T10:34:00.000+09:30

The cabbages are getting bigger.
The cauliflower is thriving.Purple cauliflower.
Another purple cauliflower. Groovy colour, eh?
The garlic is looking promising.
And a sookie sheep. Froggie wants pats.
How is your garden doing? Is it feeding you well? :)

Brussel sprouts

2011-08-15T11:17:00.002+09:30

I have not had any success growing brussel sprouts. Yet. This year I am hoping to harvest a few.

So, this is what they look like at the moment. Loose sprouts on the stems. Will they 'hearten' up? I sure hope so. And how long does that take? When, oh when, can we harvest a delicious, home-grown brussel sprout?
Have you been successful with brussel sprouts? What's your trick? Advice?

Spring is in the air - Asparagus

2011-08-14T15:53:00.001+09:30

Darn, darn, darn! – this is the publishable version of what’s running through my mind as signs of Spring pop out everywhere to warn the gardener that burgeoning new life waits on no laggard’s schedule…

So here stands the asparagus plot, with all the old dead fronds still standing about from last autumn – these should have been cut down months ago and compost added to feed the new growth underground.

I like asparagus; once a good plot is established, it looks after itself for twenty years or so, and fills the cook with joy each Spring as we harvest the nutritious shoots of these edible ferns. I don’t actually water it very often, and it just plods along producing a brief burst of nutritious food year after year.

I should be more grateful, I expect – after all, it gives me my once-a-year chance to get out the antique scythe I keep in the shed, simply because I’ve always wanted one. A few swings, and the old ferns are down and out of the way, and the scythe goes back to the shed for another year.

And sure enough, I’ve mown down a dozen good asparagus spears, which I will contritely hand to the cook to drop into tonight’s supper or put straight back into the compost bin to feed some future crop.

Ah well, at least the chooks will be happy – I’ve moved a year’s worth of compost from one of our four Geyde bins onto this accessible bed, and this is alive with worms; the chooks will turn the whole lot over and plough it in without doing any damage to the sturdy asparagus shoots. One less job for an over-run gardener to do…

Late-winter plantings: broccoli and Chinese cabbage

2011-08-07T21:32:00.001+09:30

It’s early August here on the Adelaide Plains, so there are only three more weeks to the official start of Spring in southern Australia. And, as it was in every other year and in every other season, the gardener is trailing the calendar by at least a month…

A month ago, I’d sown Chinese cabbage seeds (Wombuk and Buk Choy)into fibre pots and potting mix for making kimchi, Hollow Crown parsnips for soups and puree, and purple-sprouting broccoli to please the cook; these seedlings have now germinated despite the cold and the rain, and it’s time to bung them in the soil while it’s nominally still wintertime.

This sounds simple enough, but in reality is compounded by the chaotic state of my shed bench which must first be cleaned up so that I can lift the seed trays to a suitable height to thin the seedlings. A month ago, my aim was to put lots of seeds in each pot just in case the germination rate was poor, and because thinning is easier than re-sowing empty pots. So here’s a photo showing the before and the after, and further down those sad little seedlings that didn't make the cut. This is a ruthless business, and so anyone named Ruth is kept off the property until the job is done!

Planting seedlings sown in these square fibre pots is simplicity itself; a narrow hoe is used to dig a 100mm line along the drip lines (which are already in place), and the pots are taken out of the tray and spaced appropriately on the flat bottom of this small trench. Soil is then scooped back into the trench between the pots and tamped down around them. That’s it!

Now we wait some more for the warmth of Spring to bring them to maturity. In the case of the slow-growing parsnips, this is likely to be about six months away, at the height of summer.

Mid-winter grafting; one trunk, many apples

2011-07-31T20:40:00.001+09:30

It’s a mid-winter Sunday on the Adelaide Plains and the sun is shining from a blue sky, the temperature is heading for a maximum of 21 degrees C, and even a blue-tongue lizard has come out to soak up some warmth in the winter sunshine. Perfect weather to get the grafting done before the warmth of Spring starts sap flowing in the fruit trees and bud-burst comes upon us…

Out in the front yard stands a Granny Smith apple tree that I’m gradually bringing under control after letting it run wild for far too long. Year after year, Codling moth, parrots and possums have destroyed the green cooking apples produced by this old tree. Then, some years back, I joined the Rare Fruit Society of South Australia and learnt a bit about grafting; this old Granny Smith is the most tolerant of trees for a grafting beginner like me. Furthermore, grafting will allow this one tree to supply us with a dozen different types of apple over a longer fruiting season from an established root system in a limited space.

The ‘Rare Fruities’ – as they are affectionately known – have a grafting night every July and we went along about a fortnight ago to purchase scion wood (short lengths of dormant apple, apricot, nectarine, peach and almond budded twigs). These have been kept fresh in an old outside fridge, well away from the tantalising and wakeful aromas of the cook’s own refrigerator inside the house.

At the top left of the photo is a French ‘Bahco’ grafting knife purchased locally, while on the right is my hand-crafted German knife purchased in the Fatherland while all the other tourists were buying up big on postcards and ice creams. Not shown is the box of bandages I inevitably need for that moment when my concentration drifts away from the razor-sharp knife in my hand to one of those other two dozen fascinating subjects jostling for space in my head.

I’ve learnt to make ‘whip-and-tongue’ grafts, as these are perfect for joining together grafts of about the same diameter. First I prune the tree with pruning saw and secateurs to remove all the vertical growth that apples are so good at pushing up in a single season, and to get the tree back to working height with all the extraneous twigs and branches removed. I only graft on one side of this particular tree, leaving the other side to bear Granny Smith apples in case all my efforts at other flavours come to nought. This year’s apple grafts are Cox’s Orange Pippin, Fuji Red, Royal Gala 1, Canadian Red, Summer Strawberry and Braeburn Red. All buds below the graft are trimmed off. All fruit that develops on these grafts during the first year will also be removed lest they sap the strength of the developing graft or snap it off altogether.

First an oblique cut is made at the end of the scion wood that the buds point way from. Next the same type of shallow angled cut is made on the rootstock wood (the Granny Smith bit). A straight cut is ‘rocked’ into both these angles about 1/3 of the way down from the tip. (This gentle rocking action prevents excessive force leading to the knife slipping and taking a finger off!)

Then the two pieces are gently married together by dextrous pressure on the ‘tongues’ of the ‘whip’ cuts. Finally the whole joint is bound up with ordinary electrical tape that will be left on for six months or more to splint the new graft while it heals. Normally I’d use white tape to reflect radiant solar heat from the graft, but this year I’ve run out, so it’s back to black. One can buy fancy grafting tapes, but readily-available electrical tape also has the perfect combination of stickiness married with relaxation under pressure as the graft swells.

Over the coming months I will return again and again to these branches below the grafts, removing any Granny Smith foliage that develops to prevent it diverting nutrients away from the new apple branch being formed.

Now for the peaches, nectarines, apricots and almonds down the backyard…they are much more likely to be disappointing compared to the robust apple.

Cabbage Earliball #2

2011-07-21T14:09:00.000+09:30

A while back (beginning of June) I wrote about this cabbage. Well, here it is, the same head, all nicely grown and soon to be harvested. The rest of the cabbages in the same bed are of various sizes, just perfect. So we should have a continuous supply of cabbage, instead of one big glut.What's your favourite use of cabbage or recipe? Coleslaw? Sauerkraut?

Cauliflower

2011-07-18T09:48:00.000+09:30

Green Macerata (which does not look green to me, but who am I to bicker?) and more of the purple cauliflower. The latter has opened up heaps, so I just pretend I am harvesting purple sprouting broccoli. Looks exactly like that to me. We'll be having veggie feasts. I am not complaining. :)

How to save tomato seed – the last step

2011-07-17T14:27:00.001+09:30

It’s almost exactly the middle of winter, and the seed-saving tasks left over from summer are coming to an end – just tomatoes and sunflowers still to sort out…

Collecting tomato seed was described here, while photos of the tomato seed fermenting in their own juices can be found midway down the article here. The gelatinous gloop that surrounds the tomato seeds has been left to do its job inside the storage containers, and with luck, the various diseases that can be carried forward from one tomato crop to the next via the seed have been nuked by this fermentation process.

From here on, it’s only a matter of pouring the seedy fluid onto carefully-labelled absorbent paper kitchen towels and setting them to dry on a sunny window sill.

With that step behind one, seed tins are labelled and dated (7/11 is all I will write on them to show a storage date of July 2011) then seed is scraped off the paper towel with a sharp knife or just a fingernail. So hey presto, seed for next year’s crop is stored in the seed collection, to be opened gratefully in a few months time when there’s a hint of spring in the air and my thoughts turn to the next tomato crop.

Sorting bean seed for storage

2011-07-10T13:41:00.001+09:30

Quite some effort goes into harvesting and processing our ‘Lazy Wife’ bean seed for use next summer. And not just for our own backyard garden – by disseminating surplus seed, I am able to encourage others to grow on this wonderful old heritage variety of green eating bean.

These beans were shelled over a month ago, and have been kept ever since in an open sieve in a dry sunny spot away from mice and damp. With a cold wind blowing outside under grey skies, the laborious task of ‘bean sorting’ holds more appeal than usual…

Almost one third of the crop that was shelled is unfit for seed-saving. These seeds are separated out by firstly sieving out the small seeds and debris through the large sieve in which they have been air drying. Then all the seeds that are distorted, discoloured, misshapen, wrinkled or already under attack by bean weevils are hand-picked out of there and thrown into the compost.

Good seeds have uniform size, shape and colour. This careful selection process ensures that the ‘best-of-the-breed’ continues on.

The big danger for bean seed is the inevitable ‘bean weevil’. Even though only a few months have past since the pods were picked and dried, some seeds are already showing the tell-tell signs of bean weevil attack; one or more small neat 1mm diameter holes drilled right through the dried bean seed. And sure enough, a vigorous shake of the bean sieve sprinkles a number of these 2mm long culprits out onto the kitchen table; the little devils can be seen below taking this opportunity to make more bean weevil eggs!

So the hand-selected beans are placed in old coffee tins (my standard seed containers) and will spend 24 hours in the deep freezer to kill off all weevil eggs remnant in the bean seed; the bean seeds will themselves survive these low temperatures

A walk through the winter garden

2011-07-09T17:51:00.001+09:30

With the arrival of grey skies and the onset of the gentle winter rains here on the Adelaide Plains, one might easily forget the vast arid desert on our doorstep to the north, a desert twice the size of Germany in South Australia alone. Not for nothing are we known as the driest state in the driest continent. Yet despite almost thirty years living with the Aussie gardener, the German cook has seen almost nothing of this vast hinterland. So with the rains sustaining the garden, there was just time for a one week dash north into the sunshine, and a memorable helicopter flight over Lake Eyre and Cooper Creek where it crosses the Birdsville Track.

Back home again, and the garden has survived, although everything has slowed down as the temperatures have dropped. Nevertheless, planting still goes on in a never-ending cycle of germination, growth, harvest and going-to-seed.

While we relish all the usual soft summer fruits such as figs, peaches, apricots, grapes and nectarines, plums and berries, winter time on the Adelaide Plains is citrus time; oranges, lemons, limes, mandarins and grapefruit flourish and provide plenty of Vitamin C just as the rest of the population starts to catch colds and flu.

Plenty of green things are doing well – broccoli, silver beet, beetroot, fennel, nettles, peas and potatoes.

Garlic, leeks and onions are also underway; their biggest competition in this rich black soil comes from self-seeding nettles which will swamp them unless hoed out.

Broad beans are one of the few seeds that germinate readily under these cold conditions; these ‘Aquadulce’ broad beans are part of my rare seed collection being grown on for seed rather than food.

Down in the asparagus beds, the ferns have died off and will soon be cut back with hedge shears to allow the asparagus spears room to poke through in spring. Once trimmed off, compost made over several years in a Gedye Bin from household scraps will be added to the bed to keep the fertility up.

Steamed Radish Cake

2011-06-28T13:39:00.000+09:30

Wow! I did it! I made Steamed Radish Cake. :) I used Kebun Malay-Kadazan girl's recipe. Thank you!

I peeled and chopped some of the daikon radishes that I received from M-K Girl and Andrew.Bung them in the food processor and process until you have some slushy mush or mushy slush.
Mix with the other ingredients.
Cook, then put into a heatproof dish to steam until done. I don't have a steamer, hence this weird contraption. I had to steam it a lot longer, due to that, too.This is the end result.We had it stir-fried (also known as 'carrot cake' in Singapore. It's not a cake and does not have any carrots in it.) But this is another story. :)

Grapefruit curd

2011-06-23T15:07:00.000+09:30

You may have noticed the pile of grapefruit in one of the pictures in the previous post. I took a few home to try and make grapefruit curd. A fellow seedsaver mentioned she'd made it years ago (thanks, Chook!), and I decided to give it a go. Couldn't imagine it not being nice.

I used this recipe for lemon curd (but I halved the quantities in the recipe), which works extremely well. It also appeals heaps, because it uses whole eggs. I modified the recipe slightly, instead of sugar I used honey.

Zest and juice your grapefruit. I used two biggish ones. You could use more, if you want a big hit of grapefruit.4 eggs - lightly beaten
100g unsalted butter
100g honey

Put all ingredients in a heatproof bowl.
Stir until it thickens, then pour into clean, sterilised jars.It's really nice, and even if you are not a big fan of grapefruit, you might like it. It doesn't taste too grapefruity. Just has a nice tang.

Curd does freeze beautifully. I just bung the jars into the freezer, and Bob's your uncle. Lemon or grapefruit curd, whenever you feel like it.

Visiting fellow gardeners...

2011-06-21T11:07:00.000+09:30

...is always great fun!

Here is our host, Andrew, happily chatting away.Left, right, left, right. Past the tanks and grapefruit.
There were still some pumpkins left on the ground. Looking good.
The winter vegetables are pumping away. Yum!
Gathering at the horseradish patch. Surrounded by heavily laden citrus trees and still fruit bearing chilli bushes.
Then gathered around the table with all the seeds, seedlings, produce, etc. to share. Lots of pointing going on. And HOW big does that grow?! :)
Thanks to the gardener and cook for having the crazy lot over. Lots of fun was had by everyone. Oh, and sorry, no pictures of the usual spread of cakes, dips, biscuits, etc. The photographer was too busy chatting. And sampling. :)

Pumpkin pickin’

2011-06-19T20:46:00.001+09:30

The arrival of winter is always blessed by the pumpkin harvest, which will supplement our roasts and dips for the next six months or more.

Pumpkins store well, and the sweet-flavoured Butternut Pumpkins that we grow each year are particularly fine-grained and tasty. The foliage that has covered one large garden bed has died down to expose the pumpkins lying on the ground; once the fruit can be lifted up without still clinging to the vine (which has now ‘dried off’) they are ready for storage.

Storing this volume of pumpkins (and this is only half the crop) takes some planning, as they are particularly attractive to rats, well able to chew through the hardy shell to find nourishment within...

One approach (above) has been to store them down the back shed on fruit-tree netting in a large Perspex cylinder found at an irrigation exhibition; the sides are too slippery for rats to climb. The netting allows air to get in below the pumpkins to keep them from going mouldy.

Another time we stored our crop in an old chest freezer inside the house – again, with the pumpkins laid on netting to allow air to circulate.

This pumpkin crop was planted out in late Spring from two packets of seeds worth about $7.00. This one-metre diameter ring of seeds is planted in fertile soil around a drip-line for irrigation. Once these pumpkin plants get going and spread out over all the available garden space nearby there’s no way one can get in close to the original seed bed to water, so an under-vine hose that stays in place all through summer and autumn does the job of getting moisture up to the vine roots.

Cabbage Earliball

2011-06-08T12:48:00.000+09:30

The cabbages are powering along! This is the most advanced at the moment. It's the variety 'Earliball', and it won't grow as big as other varieties. That's why it suits us just fine.
I planted the seedlings in March, when the soil was still warm and they could get a good start. Planted a few weeks later, the soil would have been far too cold and they would just sit there, doing nothing.

Been there, done that. It's very frustrating, watching seedlings for months on end, doing nothing. But you can't blame them, who'd be keen to sit in cold soil? And grow?? It took me a while to figure all that out. :)

Purple Cauliflower

2011-06-06T11:05:00.001+09:30

Look, what I found!
This was quite a surprise, as the plant was left over from last winter to go to seed. It may have gone to seed, I don't know, as I completely forgot about it. This is not a spot where I usually grow vegetables.

So, yesterday I happened to walk past and was startled by this purple beauty!

There is a smaller one.Then two more small ones coming along nicely.
Yum! What a pleasant surprise! :)

Shelling beans and planting garlic

2011-06-06T07:39:00.001+09:30

The shortest day of the year approaches, with the sun setting early in the northwest at 5.15pm in glorious palettes of red and orange below grey clouds that might finally signal the longed-for start of our winter rainfall. Cold short days bring the cook and gardener together before the fireside each evening, and a whole new suite of jobs - notably bean shelling and garlic splitting - begin.

Dried beans (for seed storage ) pulled from the last of the Lazy Wife beans have been separated from the green beans, which will be cooked by boiling in salted water, pureeing, then mixing them through onion cooked gently in butter.

Garlic saved for seed last year is taken out of the store room and the best cloves broken out and prepared for planting. Some of these garlic cloves are beginning to sprout; nature’s signal that planting time is indeed here.

The weekend comes around, and both cook and gardener can be found outside in the winter sunshine; 300 garlic cloves and about the same number of red, brown and white onions seedlings plus leek seedlings all get planted out in a single bed in a single day.

Night falls and the job’s done. By mutual consent, we declare ‘Feirerabend!’ – an evening off!

Ho Ho Horseradish!

2011-05-30T13:41:00.000+09:30

Everything you read about growing, harvesting, grating & preserving horseradish is true!

It's easy to grow. I shall plant out this piece again and we'll have another good harvest next season. And any little pieces of roots that you leave in the ground will grow, too.It's a bugger to dig up, if the soil is rocky, hard and/or clay.Wash and peel the roots, then chop into chunks, and grate or grind in the food processor. Open the lid very, very, very carefully, and ideally in front of an open window. And away from your face. Don't breathe! The fumes are incredible. They'll clear your sinuses in no time!
Add some vinegar and salt, if you'd like to have some ready to eat. (Quantities are stated in a post written last season.)
Taste a tiny bit - it's potent stuff! You don't want it to blow off your head. It'll keep for quite a few months in the fridge. It will get milder in time.
Or add some cream to your grated horseradish for immediate use. Very, very nice! Especially with smoked salmon.
I've also filled several small containers with the grated horseradish and put them in the freezer. Nice! :)

Fruit trees and rain water in an Adelaide kitchen garden

2011-05-29T06:45:00.001+09:30

The two kitchen gardens on this blog – while only 22 kilometres apart – are in quite different climates. In VG's hill's garden, some hundreds of metres of extra altitude mean a shorter growing season and the ability to grow cool-climate crops like berries and cherries.

Down here on the Adelaide Plains, and moderated by the sea in St Vincent's Gulf nearby, the climate is somewhat warmer and berries and cherries struggle, while citrus and stone fruits do better. So here’s a brief list just to show the great variety of fruit that can be grown within easy reach of the kitchen and the cook.

Fruit trees in this suburban Adelaide garden

Apples, mandarins, Valencia and Washington navel oranges, olives, Satsuma plums, grapefruit, lemons, purple and green figs, chestnuts, sultana grapes, freestone and clingstone peaches, almonds and Lady Finger bananas – all these provide fruit and nuts from this garden throughout different seasons. There are berries, such as boysenberries, raspberries, Kiwi Fruit, josterberries and of course, strawberries, but these are fairly recent additions to the garden and are not yet prolific bearers. Some common fruit trees are missing at the moment – persimmons, pears, prunes, passionfruit, nectarines, walnuts and apricots. These will be planted out into the new orchard, once it is fully enclosed to keep the parrots and possums out.

Rainwater

The major limitation to gardening here in Adelaide is water; rainfall occurs reliably only in the three coldest months of the year, and peak production in the garden occurs six months later during the long hot and dry Mediterranean-style summer. While we grow just as many crops during winter as in summer, holding water over from the rainy months to the summer months is all important. Every roof is connected to rainwater tanks, which have a total capacity of about 70 000 litres, or about one month’s supply when the heat’s really on and consumption peaks at 15000 litres per week. Just not enough. And with ‘peak water’ costing nearly $3 per 1000 litres from the town supply, making up the gap means water bills of $45 per week. The garden has to be productive to supply the replacement cost of water in store-bought fruit and vegetables. Mulching and drip irrigation help water use efficiency.

So here (below) is the view from the deck outside the back door of fruit trees, easy-to-reach vegetables and herbs and the main rainwater tanks down on the back-right. This is the ‘kitchen garden’. Not visible – and off to the left – is the main production garden where ‘bulk crops’ are grown.

What is not so obvious is the large ‘sump’ area between the gardens in the foreground and the background. This is the area where we hang our washing to dry in the sun on a pull-out clothes line from a box on the left-most wall. Once this area was lawn, which always looked lousy unless freshly cut, and which had the highest maintenance cost of the whole garden, thanks to petrol driven mowers and trimmers needed to maintain it. Food output was zero. Now it’s been converted to kitchen garden, and all this middle area is covered deeply with wood chips from an old gum tree that died in the front yard. Here all the runoff from the concrete driveway ends, sinking once more into the earth and supplying the surrounding fruit trees throughout summer. The wood chips prevent evaporation, and is pleasant underfoot.

Autumn harvests and buckets of bean seed

2011-05-22T16:53:00.001+09:30

There’s only one week left before the official start of winter in southern Australia, as we ignore the dates of the solstice and equinox when apportioning our seasons down here. Instead, the year is chopped into four equal slices of three months, and so winter begins here on the first of June, and Spring on the first of September.

But the ‘break’ in the rains has yet to come, and the dry and warm conditions have meant that many summer crops have lingered on; tomatoes, basil, chillies, capsicums, pumpkins, cucumbers, parsley, coriander and turnips are still to be found out in the kitchen garden. A final tour of the garden before the expected change of weather finds the cook heading up to the house with dishes of produce.

The gardener can only watch her passing; the ‘Lazy Wife’ bean seeds have to be got off before they get damp in the forecast rain. Both green and dry bean seed pods go into the barrow, which is pushed into the shed to avoid the inclement weather. These will be sorted and shelled, with the dry bean seeds frozen overnight to kill off the ‘bean weevils’ that would otherwise eat the stored seed out from within. At the same time, the remnant bean plants have to be stripped off the trellises, and various other seed crops have to be gathered in and processed for next Spring – cucumbers; zucchinis, dwarf beans and fennel.

Over under our sunny north-facing family-room window, trays of seeds begin to accumulate; here they dry and get sorted, out of reach of rats and mice that would be pleased to dine off them if left lying about down the back shed.

Burgeoning diversity in the Aztec maize

2011-05-22T16:28:00.001+09:30

Last year’s Aztec maize saw only a few cobs saved for seed, and these had largely red, yellow and white seeds. Yet this original ‘corn’ plant – the forerunner of all the maize and sweet corns now propagated throughout the world - has all the genetic codes built in to produce a rainbow of colours when harvested, which happened here yesterday just before the rains began.

This year purples and browns have appeared. Now who would like some seeds? And what will the cook make of this product of the gardener's whim?

Radish salad

2011-05-22T16:05:00.001+09:30

I get to claim that I’ve been gardening for over fifty years on a mere technicality; as a small boy, my father let me use a patch of his garden to grow easy vegetables like beans and radishes. About every two hours, I would go down to the house and get Mum, urging her to come and look how big my radishes were, then dawdle back up the yard to give them a chance to grow just that much bigger before we’d arrive to inspect them.

Back then, all radishes were ‘French Breakfast’; small rose and white spheres about three centimetres across that seemed to live their whole life in the space of a few short weeks. After that they turned to wood. In more recent decades, I grew ‘White Icicle’ radishes, all of which met a similar fate of fossilisation if left too long between visits by the cook.

After much mucking about, I discovered Japanese ‘Daikon Radishes’, and the love affair between us has seen off all competitors. Not only are they huge (yes, that’s a dinner plate in the photo above!) but they are a pretty plant with the exquisite patience of the Japanese themselves; these radishes don’t seem to turn woody, and can be left in the ground for longish periods. Their only downside seems to be their size – they can take some digging out if left to go too deep!

A simple dish of radish salad is a fine peppery condiment to accompany all sorts of meals. Just peel a single radish with the potato peeler, grate it coarsely and add chopped chives (or any other oniony material) and add balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then serve.

A walk in the veggie garden

2011-05-16T11:42:00.000+09:30

Word of warning - if you like a neat garden, do not go any further! You will see plenty of grass and weeds, amongst the veggies.

One bed with cabbages, cauliflowers, turnips, parsnips, lettuces and *miner's lettuce as living mulch. *I let that go to seed every year and it comes up with a vengeance with the first rain. It's a pretty ground cover, and easy to rip up, if you need to plant something. It's lovely in salads, too.
A carrot patch. With plenty of miner's lettuce as weed suppressant.
The Egyptian Walking Onions, surrounded by lush grass.
Time to harvest the Golden Nuggets. They were really prolific this year.
The leek bed. I usually just cut the leeks, instead of ripping them out of the soil with their roots. They re-grow nicely. Also, I always let a few go to seed, ensuring self-sown leeks.The other half of the bed is taken up by Red Russian kale (self-sown), rapa, some other kale (too lazy to look up the variety name), and Komatsuna. All lovely greenery to ensure a healthy diet in Winter.Here is a view of the whole area. In front you can see the leek and greenery bed. Behind that the Golden Nuggets. To the right you can see the tomato beds. They are still laden with green and nearly ripe tomatoes. The first frost a few days ago hasn't managed to kill them.
The garlic is looking good!
So are the broad beans.And the grass in this veggie bed.

Roast chestnuts, boiled chestnuts and red cabbage dish

2011-05-15T08:20:00.001+09:30

Autumn is deepening here on the Adelaide Plains and night-time temperatures have fallen to around 10 degrees C. Loud bangs outside in the darkness signal yet more chestnuts falling onto the shed roof and bouncing onto the driveway from the magnificent Italian chestnut tree that overhangs our fence. Come morning, we roll these prickly ‘tennis-balls’ underfoot to release the chestnuts without getting spiked, and the chestnuts quietly build-up in the cook’s pockets and so find their way to the dish on the sink.

It’s the gardener’s job during the colder months to keep the home fire burning, bring up kindling and mallee logs, light and maintain the fire in the centre of our home, and to take out the ash.

But it’s not all work; a dozen chestnuts wrapped in silver-foil and dropped into the glowing ash of the fireplace make a hot TV snack better than any bar of chocolate. Peeling off the inner and outer skins of knife-scarred boiled chestnuts is another fireside job; these will be frozen and used in dips and soups as winter moves on.

Boiled chestnuts also make a tasty addition to a dish of thinly shredded raw red cabbage, honey, salt and grated Granny Smith apple that is let stand overnight. The next day the cook fries onion, cloves, juniper berries and bay leaves together, then adds the red cabbage and meat stock before simmering gently until tender. Only when this is all done are the boiled chestnuts added.

How to pickle eggplants (aubergines)

2011-05-01T07:39:00.001+09:30

After World War II Australia set up a large-scale program of migration to bring out some of the millions of displaced people of Europe. During this time in Australia there was a desperate shortage of labour and a growing belief that substantial population growth was essential for the country's future. Since then, some seven million people born overseas have made their home here.

My own Irish ancestors arrived in South Australia over 160 years ago during the Irish potato famine, and I can still recall the sense of ‘foreignness’ that we felt towards the largely Italian communities that settled around us on the eastern side of the Adelaide Plains. We rather admired the way they took over bricklaying, concreting and masonry jobs in the building industry, while laughing at the handkerchiefs tied around their heads, their poor but lilting English, and the strange foods their children had stuffed between enormous slices of crusty bread in their school sandwiches. We drank tea, not coffee! We’d never eaten pizza! We certainly would never eat pickled eggplants and capsicums!

Looking back now, I find myself with a real affection for these small nuggetty people who showed us how to grow fruit and vegetables in our own backyards, who made their own wine, pickled olives, made sausages, hand-rolled pasta, baked wood-fired bread and pizza, and who kept rabbits for eating and chickens for eggs. Most notable of all was their powerful sense of community and their rich connection between garden and table and family life. Their children have blended into the population, speak with Aussie accents, but can still be spotted among the polyglot suburban Australians by their dark hair and Italian names. Best of all, they have contributed to the Adelaide ‘coffee culture’; hardly anyone drinks tea socially anymore, and we think of pizza and bruschetta as ‘regular’ food.

One of the last remnants of these older post-war generation of Italian immigrants in our street is an old Italian lady who lives over the road; this is her recipe for pickling and preserving eggplants (aubergines), as passed along to my wife.

Peel the eggplants and slice them thickly.

Place them in layers in a stainless steel colander, which itself sits in a stainless steel dish of similar size to collect the fluid pressed out of the eggplants. Coat each layer generously with sea-salt.

Put another stainless-steel dish on top of this assemblage, and put a few heavy house-bricks into this dish to add pressure. Leave stand overnight.

Next, boil the eggplant slices in a pungent mix of 1 cup of water and 3 cups of white vinegar for a few minutes, then lay them out between clean sheets (folded over) to allow the slices to shed excess water.

Now mix thoroughly with olive oil, chillies, garlic and dried oregano. Lay the sliced eggplant flat in layers with the spices in between.

If this mix is not refrigerated, but stored instead in jars in the cellar, it needs to be covered with olive oil.

How to make Korean sauerkraut (Kimchi)

2011-04-23T17:28:00.001+09:30

It’s midway through autumn here on the Adelaide plains, and the garden is producing in abundance as the summer crops such as tomatoes finish up and greener vegetables start to flourish thanks to the occasional rain shower, cooler days and sunny weather. Among these leafy vegetables are the Chinese cabbages, the basic ingredient for the spicy Korean fermented vegetable called Kimchi. Our regular German sauerkraut recipe can be found here; Kimchi is made with more coarsely chopped Chinese cabbage rather than the finely-shredded German ‘filderspitzkraut’ of our traditional green sauerkraut.

The ingredients are all available from the kitchen garden and are simplicity itself for the cook to wander around and harvest. These consist of one head of Chinese cabbage (cored and chopped), a bunch of chopped spring onions, a cup of grated carrots, a grated Daikon (Japanese) radish (see photo on left), a tablespoon of freshly grated ginger, three cloves of peeled and crushed garlic, a half teaspoon of chilli flakes (we use fresh chilli, because that’s ready in the garden too), a tablespoon of sea salt and four tablespoons of whey. These prepared ingredients all get put into a large heavy duty pan and pounded with a wooden mallet to release the juices. The mixture is then placed in wide-mouthed glass jars and pressed down firmly with the pounder until the juices come to the top of the cabbage. The top of the vegetables should be a few centimetres below the top of the jar, which is closed up and left to start the lacto-fermentation process that will preserve this autumn produce for many months to come without refrigeration or freezing. Our recipe is based on that from the book ‘Nourishing Traditions’ by Sally Fallon.

Miner's Lettuce ...

2011-04-09T14:02:00.000+09:30

...is coming up everywhere in the garden! I usually let it go to seed at the end of its growing season. Then it pops up with a vengeance as soon as the first good autumn rains hit the soil. It's a pretty plant and delicious in salads (raw) and sautéed leafy veggies.

I love nettles!

2011-04-08T14:48:00.000+09:30

Aren't they just beautiful!?
And they are really tasty, too!

Today's lunch - Nettle Omelette:

Heat butter/oil, add some chopped garlic (and onion), bung in washed nettle leaves. Cover with lid until nettles are wilted.
Pour in some beaten eggs, seasoned with salt & pepper. Add chopped parsley, and some grated parmesan. Bung lid back on until the omelette is set.
Slide on to a plate, add a dash of home-made chilli sauce, if so desired. YUM!
Don't be put off by the 'hairy' nettles - they have lost their sting and it's fine to eat them.

Eat your nettles!

2011-04-04T11:51:00.001+09:30

They are good for you.

Grab a handful of stinging nettles (make sure you wear gloves!).
Wash them. I took them off the main stem.

Sauté in butter, garlic and onion. Throw in a potato cut into cubes, together with your nettles. Sweat a bit. Not you. The ingredients in the pan. Then pour in some good stock.

Cover, let simmer away.

Blend with whatever gadget you have handy.

The colour is not as vibrant green as I wanted it. But I blame the potato and cream that I poured in. And I could have put more nettles in, but I was hungry and wanted to get on with it.
If desired, serve with a bit of parmesan. Or a drizzle of good olive oil. Or whatever you desire.
It's delicious! Oh, and the nettles do lose their sting when cooked. :)

How to plant potatoes

2011-04-02T20:21:00.001+10:30

Harvesting the humble potato is one of the many joys of gardening; planting them is even simpler. In the middle is where all the work occurs – up to 80% of the potato tubers that form under the ground grow on the roots that form above the original ‘mother potato’. For this reason, ‘seed potatoes’ are planted in trenches, and the earth is gradually ‘hilled up’ around their branches as they grow. The deeper you can bury the original tuber, the more potatoes it can form on the branches that you bury above it. (Be careful not to bury the mother potato too deep – it needs to still be in the top-soil where it can produce roots freely, and the growing shoots should not expend all of the energy stored in the mother potato just trying to find daylight…)

Selecting potatoes to grow is easy; simply head down to the market or the fruit and vegetable store and seek out potatoes that have been grown locally and that you’d like to eat. A bit of prior research can help here; some potatoes roast well, others make great mashed potato, some hold together and peel well when boiled and some are best for hot chips/fries. They also come in different colours; red, white, yellow and (though seldom seen in shops) deep purple. This year I’m planting ‘Dutch Cream’ potatoes in an effort to find an approximate Australian variety to the yellow-fleshed boiling potatoes that I have enjoyed for decades at my mother-in-law’s table in Germany.

Potatoes grow vegetatively from the ‘eyes’ of existing potatoes; you will never find packets of ‘potato seeds’ on the seed racks, although potatoes do flower and even occasionally produce pods of sterile seeds, seemingly only to alert one to the fact that things are happening underground, and that harvest time is approaching.

The potato tuber contains all the food these early roots and shoots need to get going; one need only place one’s chosen ‘seed potatoes’ in a dark dry place in a brown paper bag or between hessian sacks to allow germination to begin. This germination period takes a week or two. Once the shoots and roots appear, the potatoes must be handled carefully so that these 2.5 cm long tips are not accidently knocked off. Large potatoes can be cut in two, though I prefer to start with smaller egg-sized potatoes and plant the whole tuber.

We can grow two crops of potatoes each year here on the Adelaide Plains, but my observation is that ‘when to plant’ is not something one should get too anxious about. Provided potatoes have enough (but not too much) water, they grow steadily during all seasons. However, potatoes are like weeds – once you have them, you can have them forever, as any tubers that you fail to harvest will produce another potato plant not long afterwards. These secondary plants are never much good, as potato diseases stay stubbornly in the soil, and the best potato crops are grown on soil where no other solanum crop (e.g. tomatoes and egg-plants as well as potatoes) have grown in the previous year. So pulling up ‘weed potatoes’ is one of the opportunistic jobs a gardener carries out as an aside to whatever else he is currently doing. (If the strays are not weeded out they will produce a crop of potatoes on the soil surface; exposure to sunlight causes the potato skin to start photosynthesising, creating a green area at the top of the tubers that is toxic to humans and animals).

And so, finally, to the planting… I grow my potatoes along drip-lines, because that’s how I water various crops from the 60,000 litres of rainwater collected the previous winter and distributed now in autumn when the price of ‘town water’ peaks after heavy summer usage. I hoe a trench about 10 cm deep along one side of this 8 litre-per-hour drip line and lay the sprouting seed potatoes in that with the shoots pointing upward. Tubers are spaced at about 25 cms or more apart, then the trench is backfilled with the loose and friable soil that was hoed out. This backfill is not tamped down, as this might damage the shoots – I just fill in and cover the tubers. Once these shoots pop out and form the leafy crown of the potato plant, I dig up soil from the opposite (vacant) side of the drip line to start the hilling process. The drip line will be pulled up before harvest lest it be damaged by my horseshoe-shaped potato hoe as I play hide and seek with these hidden treasures. Plant one potato, and there to replace it you will find up to a dozen!

Turbo tomato puree (the full saga!)

2011-03-27T13:31:00.001+10:30

The cook has arrived safely in the Fatherland to look out for the ‘oldies’ for a while, leaving the gardener behind as caretaker of her Australian domain. With the tomatoes still producing at the rate of a few bucketfuls per week, and autumn plantings in full swing out in the garden, desperate measures are required to ram these tomatoes through the understaffed bottling department. Not only that, the tomato press has been leant out to our middle son, so all the technology and expertise built up by the gardener as ‘cook’s helper’ has been decimated in two swift moves…

Fortunately, not all things German have taken the Qantas flight to the other side of the world; the Thermomix has been left on the kitchen benchtop, where it holds pride of place at the heart of the cook’s domain. Perhaps it was a measure of the cook’s desperation at this untimely desertion in the middle of harvest, but her last words before boarding her flight were something about ‘halve the tomatoes, leave the skins on and use the Thermomix to puree them’. Strewth! – despite three engineering degrees and 36 years at the high-tech coalface, the gardener has never before been entrusted with the charge of this sacred artefact and so many inscrutable buttons. Nevertheless, with the addition of some freshly-picked basil, here’s how it went…

Now what, you say?

Stir? freeze? bottle? boil?

Dunno! – I’d better send the cook an SMS and ask – she knows I can’t remember more than three instructions at a time…

Some hours later

Dawn has awoken the cook; nine and a half hours ahead on the opposite side of the globe, the gardener is starting to fade, as is the late afternoon sunlight over the kitchen garden. Instructions filter through – add chopped onion, sea salt, garlic, cook slowly, bottle or find someone with freezer space…

Every large saucepan from the cupboard is now sauce-coated and out on the workbench; this calls for a trip to the cellar to fetch a serious pan; there’s about 15 litres of tomato puree here from one bucket of tomatoes. Slow cooking overnight reduces this volume slightly by boiling off excess water and thickening the puree. It also serves to keep the sauce near boiling point overnight, and stops it starting to ferment before I can find a solution to the bottling business.

Another sunrise over Australia, and its Monday; a working day – but not in the garden. Luckily for me, cooks outnumber gardeners ten-to-one in modern life; I call a friend who’s been keen to get some home-grown tomatoes to make sauce with, and tell her that the back door’s open and the sauce is already made and piping-hot on the stove. She runs around, buys new jars, sterilizers them and fills them with sauce. There’s so much left over that she turns some of it into a lasagne for my number one son and I that evening. I get half-a-dozen bottles of sauce; these will go to my third son and his wife for their newly-wed larder.

But the saga doesn’t end there; Sunday lunch in the middle of this process was all a bit rushed, and so our barbequed kangaroo was supplemented by some hot chips from the local chicken shop. Behind the counter was a young Chinese lady we have come to know who lives in a pokey little flat, without a garden, down the end of our street. I offer to drop off a bag of fresh vegetables – tomatoes, eggplant, chives, chillies, Chinese cabbage and so forth. Somehow, I fit that in too, and then forget about it. Monday evening finds her knocking on the door with a roast chicken from the shop; she and her flatmate have been thrilled to have fresh vegetables to include in their own cooking.

So then, our bachelor supper on Tuesday night will be chicken cacciatore. I have the sauce and the chicken, home-grown olives, and all the ingredients for a fresh salad just outside the back door…

Autumn vegetables

2011-03-26T16:07:00.001+10:30

Slowly I seem to be getting on top of things in the veggie garden.

The last of the winter veggie beds is weeded and nearly fully planted. There are cabbages, cauliflowers, brusselsprouts, lettuces, silverbeet, komatsuna, spring onions, salad burnet, wild rocket, potato onions, garlic chives and parsley. Still to be sown - more carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, mizuna, mustard, fenugreek, etc.
The garlic that I planted 12 days ago has started to shoot. I only have a few more cloves to plant, then I'm done.
The first snow peas have germinated. Let's hope the snails, slaters and millipedes don't destroy them.
It's an exciting time in the garden. Lots of planting and sowing. And hopefully soon there will be a glut of vegetables. Life is good! :)

How to bottle tomato puree/sauce

2011-03-20T14:19:00.001+10:30

The balmy days of autumn have come at last to the Adelaide Plains, the sun shines on the gardener’s work from a gentle clear blue sky and months of effort are beginning to bear fruit as crops reach fruition and the harvest begins.

There are some 13 garden beds in this large kitchen garden, each one a little different to the others. Global financial disasters prompt others to move their funds into secure stocks and bonds; around here, we invest instead in truckloads of commercial organic compost. After years of effort, we’ve built up a rich black friable soil from the underlying red clay; this provides us with nutritious fruit, herbs and vegetables, exercise, a closeness to nature and a sense of purpose and connectedness with our food supply. These days we fence the chooks out and the garden in, and the tomato and eggplant bed above hosts about 36 producing tomato vines that are staked and interspersed with basil plants. Each week now sees a few more bucketfuls of tomatoes brought up to the house for bottling and storage.

From top left, clockwise, are ‘Amish Paste’, ‘Red Oxheart’, ‘Burpee’s Delicious’, ‘Mortgage Lifter’, ‘Tommy Toe’ (red cherry tomatoes) and ‘Golden Sunrise’ yellow cherry tomatoes. All of these will be used for bottling sauce and purees for winter consumption, as we have plenty of tomatoes left over for eating fresh.

The best tomatoes are selected and tomato seed is saved from them for next year’s crop.

All the remaining tomatoes are cut in half and brought to boil gently in large pots, then excess fluid is drained off through muslin cloth into pots and stainless-steel buckets and put aside by the cook for other purposes. The main mixture is allowed to cool before hand-pressing into puree.

These new Italian plastic tomato presses are inexpensive (AUD$50), stronger and lighter than earlier metal machines used by our Italian neighbours. We set ours up outside on a stainless-steel tray, and squeeze the mixture through two to three times to thicken up the puree and minimize wastage.

The net result is a bucketful of tomato puree that now needs to be bottled; we use a soup ladle and small plastic funnel to feed this thick sauce into old sterilized beer bottles and jars saved for the purpose, and capable of taking a tightly-fitted lid that will allow the mixture to be boiled for 20 to 30 minutes without spilling over. A fresh basil leave is placed in the top of each jar to add flavour. (Left over basil is used for making basil pesto).

Bottles, capping machines, large pots and buckets; all these household items represent a long-term investment in our kitchen and garden – just like the compost mentioned earlier, but not subject to the vagaries of world-wide economic markets.

‘Lazy Wife’ beans

2011-03-14T02:29:00.001+10:30

I used to muck about with all sorts of bush beans in the kitchen garden but found that these dwarf bean varieties seemed lower to the ground with each passing year. While quicker than climbing beans to produce a crop, their single flush of beans overwhelmed the cook and plunged us shortly thereafter into a ‘bean drought’.

Climbing beans, on the other hand, tended to grow up our 4m tall bamboo tripods out of reach of the cook, and created a different type of drought that brought down curses upon the gardener’s head and nostalgia for the short bush beans of an earlier era. (OK, she never swears! That’s my job too…)

All these bean irritants have receded in our kitchen garden since I have concentrated on growing and saving on a single climbing bean variety called ‘Lazy Wife’ bean. The original packet I purchased over a decade ago from a heritage seed company called them ‘German Lazy Housewife Beans’. This was clearly a typo introduced by some Australian seed packet printer, as numerous trips to the Fatherland over the past thirty years have indicated the complete impossibility of the simultaneous occurrence of the words ‘German’ and ‘lazy’ in the same sentence. It would seem that the original seed came from Germany, and the ‘lazy’ bit crept in because this large flattish bean crops almost continuously for months on end and is largely stringless, saving much labour for busy housewives. The Digger’s Club used to make a claim that only a single bean reached Australia over a century ago, and that our current bean stocks were all grown on from this single seed. Eden Seeds in NSW describe this bean as follows: -

Original stringless bean from 1810, thought to have come from Germany, named because of ease of preparation, delicious flavour, heavy bearer over a long period, not much string even when old, round pods to 20cm. 80 days.

What’s changed in our kitchen garden is that I no longer fence the chickens in and the garden out, but now fence the garden in and the chickens out. These permanent fences use heavy duty galvanized mesh that’s perfect for cucumbers, peas and of course, climbing beans. Climbing beans reach the top of this fence, wave their growing tips in the air for a week, then form an interwoven cap to the fence that restricts their height and makes the cook’s job easy at harvest time.

The gardener has his own reasons to be grateful for the stringless qualities of this old heritage bean variety; extra points with the cook can be earned in the evenings by topping, tailing and cutting up basketfuls of these beans for freezing or lacto-fermenting.

Tomatoes with flavour

2011-03-08T03:00:00.001+10:30

One of the great pleasures of kitchen gardening is access to tomatoes with taste. This is a pleasure that creeps up on one; months of careful work sowing seeds, raising and planting out seedlings, staking and endless tying and pruning of tomato vines suddenly bears fruit. Tomatoes redden and soften, then suddenly there is a glut and tomato bottling for sauces looms over the household.

Big ones, little ones, red ones, yellow ones – some of these tomatoes are eaten straight off the vine and never make the journey up to the kitchen. The smaller tomatoes are Golden Sunrise and Tommy Toe, with the bigger beefsteak tomatoes being Mortgage Lifter, Burpee’s Delicious and Oxheart (the cook’s favourite). Growing different varieties simultaneously hedges the gardener’s bets against failure. I’ve learnt not to be too greedy when planting out – tomatoes are the most labour-intensive of all the kitchen gardener’s crops. This year, aided by a mild summer, I’ve brought 36 vines through into the autumn harvest; they all stand taller than me, and I’m a big bloke!

And so, the gardener’s reward arrives. A simple moment of intense pleasure – a supper of tomato-on-toast with a little olive oil, herb salt and ground pepper, with a few basil leaves on the side for piquancy. Life’s good!

Eating a Sweet Siberian

2011-03-07T13:50:00.000+10:30

Watermelon!This variety does not take too long to produce fruit. 80-85 days. It does not produce gigantic fruit. So, it is ideal if you don't want a monster of a melon clogging up your fridge. Or if you don't have an army to feed.

Bright green skin and yellow-fleshed. Very juicy, very sweet!

More on how to pickle cucumbers

2011-03-06T13:08:00.001+10:30

While kitchen gardens produce fruit and vegetables, mature gardens also produce seeds. While many varieties of seeds are grown for planting out as next year’s crops, a more subtle reason for harvesting large quantities of particular seeds is to use them directly in the kitchen for culinary flavouring.

Once cucumbers suitable for pickling have been grown and harvested, they can be bottled in wide-mouthed jars, either whole or sliced, in salt water (16g per litre of pure water) and (optionally) a tablespoon of whey per jar (from natural yogurt) . Then the seeds are added for flavour – coriander, dill, mustard and fennel. Cover with raspberry or vine leaves and weigh these down with glass marbles to keep the cucumbers submerged. Store in a cool dark place for eating over the following year until the next crop of cucumbers is ready for harvest.

When gardeners and cooks get together

2011-03-03T09:08:00.000+10:30

There will be plenty of produce from the garden that ends up on the table.
All kinds of salads and side dishes, accompaniments, main dishes, herbal concoctions, laughter.The table ended up too small for all the bowls and platters, so we had to have a sideboard laden with dishes, too. Sorry, no picture of the sideboard.

Cucumbers for pickling and salads

2011-03-01T21:15:00.001+10:30

Some of last year’s pickled cucumbers (made from Lebanese slicing cucumbers) were less-than-ordinary; if you are going to go to the trouble of bottling your summer crop for winter consumption, then growing the right sort of cucumber in the first place is a good start.

Yet sliced cucumbers are an important part of our summer salads, so a cucumber that can do double-duty for slicing AND bottling is something worth looking out for...

The cucumber shown in the photo below is called ‘Muncher Burpless’, grown from non-hybrid, old traditional open-pollinated seeds from Eden Seeds in Lower Beechmont in Queensland. The same length as the teaspoon below them, these small cucumbers have a slightly thicker and rougher skin than standard salad cucumbers.

Here’s what the packet says:

Cucumber: Summer salad vegetable, known to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Likes rich well drained soil, though not heavily fertilised. Keep moist. Shallow roots damaged with cultivation. Sow after frost.

Muncher Burpless – tender burpless slicing variety, 17cm long, smooth bitterness-free green skin, can be used for pickles also. Resistance to mosaic virus. 65 days.

We are harvesting these cucumbers daily, and have bottled the surplus. Being small, there is no need to peel or slice them before putting them into wide-mouthed pickling jars. When peeled and used in salads, the taste is indeed smooth and free of bitterness, just as the packet proclaims.

Sowing winter vegetables

2011-02-18T11:59:00.001+10:30

It still amazes me, how organised a gardener has to be. Here we are, in the middle of summer, and I have had to sow all my winter vegetables.
We have to get all our vegetables planted out in March*. Any later than that and the seedlings sit in the cold soil, shiver, complain and do nothing. They just don't grow.It's a risky business, though. We might still get a heat wave. And if that happens after I've planted out the tender little seedlings, well, they'll be cactus. So, I sow more than I need. Just in case.
*I am talking about our particular place in the Adelaide Hills. Autumn hits earlier here, than in the city. Every place is different. :)

In March, the soil is still warm and the seedlings are off to a good start. They can grow to a reasonable size, before the cold weather hits.

Now I'll better get the winter beds organised. Always a bit awkward when we haven't even started our proper summer harvest yet. Oh, the joys of gardening! :)

Purple Dragon Carrots

2011-02-15T11:16:00.000+10:30

These are our all-time favourite carrots. After years of failure, I have finally 'mastered' the growing of carrots. All it takes is a ton of perseverance. If at first you don't succeed, sow, sow again. And again. And again.
These are tender, sweet and tasty. They are bright orange inside.
I grow carrots now (nearly) all year round. When the first batch has germinated (this can take up to 3 weeks!), I try to sow another small batch. The best and biggest carrot is often left in the ground for seed saving. The flowers are incredibly pretty and great for attracting heaps of different insects.

How to save carrot seed

2011-02-14T20:48:00.001+10:30

So few modern folk seem to recognize the fern-like foliage of carrots in a garden setting that I always get a kick out of going that one step further and showing off carrot flowers.

There is no other flower in the vegetable gardener’s armoury exuding such a sweet and creamy scent, nor so beloved of all manner of flying insects that gather to savour its rich yet delicate nectar.

Like many vegetables, carrots only attain great stature in their old age, shooting up to over a metre tall as they flush out the ‘umbrils’ that ultimately bear the seeds when the flower heads die off.

If carrot blooms were lenses, they would start out convex, run through ‘flat’ than turn concave as they dry up. Very often all stages of the flower-to-seed process can be seen in the same clump of carrots.

When the seed heads have dried out completely, snip them off and put them in a bucket. Rubbing the seed heads between gloved palms releases the seed and separates it from the flower stalks, which can be thrown away, allowing the seeds to be ‘winnowed’ by gently blowing on them in a shallow dish.

Freshly collected carrot seeds have ‘beards’ all around them; these aren’t seen in commercially-supplied carrot seed because they get rubbed off during seed processing. In nature, these ‘carrot beards’ are said to help the carrot seed dig its way into the earth, helping germination.

How to save lettuce seed

2011-02-02T08:23:00.001+10:30

If the backbone of winter vegetable production from the kitchen garden is broccoli, then that of the summer garden is a steady supply of lettuces for use in our daily salads. For this reason, I grow lettuces near the house; it’s then only a short walk for the cook to gather the ingredients together to whip up a salad. Other handy vegetables nearby are salad tomatoes, a favourite cucumber plant, chives, rocket, parsley, coriander and basil, celery, beetroot, dwarf beans and red salad onions. All these vegetables are cosseted in the richest soil I have, hand-watered from our big rainwater tanks (our lowest salinity water) and kept at maximum freshness and tenderness by the gardener at all times. Such is the simple road to happiness for a man who would rather toil for an extra hour in the sweltering sun than face the perils of the kitchen stove himself.

Further down the garden are the production beds, growing far larger crops that are used less often; climbing and dried beans, zucchinis, pumpkins, corn, potatoes, silver beet and sunflowers for the chickens, kale, serious numbers of tomatoes for bottling, eggplants, capsicums and so forth. Here’s where the chickens roam, keeping slugs, bugs, weeds and snails at bay while providing fresh rich eggs for our evening supper or Sunday breakfast.

Lettuce, then, is consumed at an alarming rate, particularly when our growing family comes around for a meal.This is where seed-saving pays off; I produce so much lettuce seed that I can afford to broadcast it far and wide as Mother Nature would, and take my losses on germination or bird damage. I can also afford to give it away to fellow gardeners by the handful, bringing a light to their eyes at such bounty.

Growing lettuce is a cyclical business, and goes on here year round, as we can produce lettuce even during the frostiest of times in our mild Mediterranean climate upon the Adelaide Plains. New seeds are planted into trays of potting mix (or good friable soil) each time a tray of lettuce seedlings moves off to the garden. This happens every four to six weeks. I normally bury these trays to their lips in among the growing lettuces; that makes them feel at home, and keeps them cool and watered. The surface of the soil is simply scraped back to about one centimetre (half inch) depth, lettuce seed sprinkled over it like salt on a good steak, then the soil scraped back over the top and patted down and watered (with rainwater). This whole process takes about five minutes, including fetching and returning my tin of mixed lettuce seed from and to the shed.

A single lettuce plant, left to run to seed, will produce hundreds of seeds, all viable for some years to come. Like cabbage and broccoli, all those leaves on a lettuce plant are in fact one above the other on a short stalk. All of a sudden, this stalk elongates and stands a metre or more high, with the leaves all along it and lots of flower heads all over the top. Once this flower stalk and head dry out (the yellow petals disappear, to be replaced by white fluff), simply cut the stalk off the plant, and bang it about inside a large garbage bin to release the seed. Wait a few days, as all sorts of tiny insects and flies need time to brush themselves off and walk off. Then simply tin the lettuce seeds. It’s that easy.

How to save broccoli seeds

2011-01-24T03:42:00.001+10:30

Broccoli is the mainstay of our vegetable dishes throughout winter, and so saving broccoli seed for the following year is an important chore each summer. While this is a simple enough task, plants saved for seed production do take up extra space in the garden through springtime when the major summer crops are all jostling for garden space. All one needs to do is to leave the best broccoli plants unpicked, as it is the immature flower head itself that we have been eating. Two things happen as broccoli goes to seed; small yellow flowers break out all over the broccoli head, then the head itself shoots up to several metres tall, attracting bees and other pollinators with a rich supply of nectar.

There are two styles of broccoli plant; those that produce a single large head then shut down, and ‘sprouting broccoli’ that produces many small florets that reshoot over and over again after picking. It is the latter type that we favour, as they produce for longer and the small heads are easy to harvest and to prepare. After experimenting with various varieties, we have settled on ‘purple sprouting broccoli’ as best suited to our soil type, climate and palate.

After flowering and pollination finish, broccoli – like most members of the brassica family – form long dried pods resembling upright miniature peas called ‘siliques’ that house about a dozen individual seeds. These are arrayed along the stalks that stand above the original plant. Once the seeds inside the siliques have turned from green to brown, cut off the stalks and lay them on the ground or hang them by their heels in the shed to dry further. When the whole shoot is no longer green but hard and woody, place the heads over a bucket and simply don your heavy-duty leather gardening gloves and rub the seed heads between your two hands to release the small spherical seeds from the siliques. These will fall to the bottom of the bucket. The dry stalks are picked out and returned to the garden as mulch, or thrown onto the shredding heap.

Pour the seed into a small shallow dish, then blow gently on it (while standing outside in the breeze and gently swirling the dish) to remove all the small bits of dried twigs and rubbish. Put the cleaned seed into a jar, label it, then add it to your seed collection.

Egyptian Walking Onion

2011-01-21T13:32:00.004+10:30

Also known as Tree Onions, Perennial Onions, etc.This is a groovy kind of plant to have in the garden. I received bulblets from a gardening friend in Tassie.

Plant the bulblets about 1-2cm deep in the soil. Water, watch. They grow like 'normal' onions at first. Then they develop bulblets at the end of their stalks.
When this set of bulbets gets heavier, they will bend over, then take root in the soil. Hence the 'walking onion'. This way you will have little onions all over the garden (if you let them) and forever.
If that's not groovy, what is?!

How to make sauerkraut and cortido (Latin American sauerkraut)

2011-01-09T17:54:00.001+10:30

It’s cabbage-picking time at last; after six months of tender care, this takes only minutes for the gardener, while generating hours of work for the cook.

We preserve most of our cabbages as ‘sauerkraut’ (literally, in German, ‘sour cabbage’) or its spicier Latin American cousin – cortido. This preserving happens via a process called ‘lacto-fermentation’ that allows vegetables (such as cabbage, green tomatoes, capsicums, cucumbers, beets, turnips, herbs, eggplant, onion, pumpkin and carrot) to be preserved for long periods without the use of freezers or canning machines. Lactic acid is a natural preservative that inhibits putrefying bacteria that are found on the surface of all living things.

Sauerkraut has been known in Europe since Roman times, though the Chinese were fermenting cabbage 6000 years ago. Sauerkraut is a great source of Vitamin C and who knows what else; the Roman emperor Tiberius was reputed to carry a barrel of sauerkraut with him during his long voyages to the Middle East because the Romans knew the lactic acid it contained protected them from intestinal infections [from the book ‘Nourishing Traditions’ by Sally Fallon].

The lacto-fermentation process uses whey from raw milk rather than vinegar as the preservative.

Once the cabbages are picked and the tough outer leaves peeled away, the sweet and tender inner core is grated (in this household) very finely using a German ‘cabbage slicer’ (Krautreibe) held inside a stainless-steel bucket. Our wooden slicer was likely given to the cook’s mother on her wedding day, which makes it almost sixty years old – and its still sharp, just like my mother-in-law!

For regular sauerkraut (on the right, below), we add sea salt, whey (from cheese making, yogurt or sour milk), and optional chopped herbs such as society garlic, spring onions and chives. For cortido (on the left, below), add instead of herbs grated carrot, finely sliced onions, dried oregano and red pepper flakes.

And now comes the hard part (the gardener’s contribution to the process); the ingredients are pounded in the bottom of the bucket using a wooden pounder to break down the cell walls of the cabbage and release the juices. This takes 10-15 minutes per bucketful – the juices can be seen at the bottom of the bucket.

The resultant mix is squeezed down into wide-mouthed jars, to allow the juices to cover the mix to the top of the jar. These jars of sauerkraut are then stored in our cellar (or somewhere else that is cool but not cold), and will be good for the next year while a new crop of cabbage is grown.

We grow a traditional German cabbage – called ‘Filderspitzkraut’ (‘pointy field cabbage’) – for making sauerkraut; this is a large conical cabbage weighing in at a colossal 5-10 kg. I’m quietly distributing seeds for this special cabbage to other seed-savers, who then go on to embarrass me by producing even larger specimens than my own!

Red Dutch cabbage – grown during summer rather than winter – can also be used to make sauerkraut.

Glorious garlic

2010-12-28T14:06:00.001+10:30

If I had only a small patch of soil to grow things in, I’d grow garlic!

Measured by weight, good quality garlic (as distinct from the tasteless white imported garlic) costs more than the best fillet steak, clocking in at over $30/kg at certain times of the year.

Yet once a gardener can manage to surreptitiously lift a few bulbs of garlic from the cook’s precious horde, one can double or triple that weight each year while still retaining enough of the very largest and best-formed bulbs to grow on in the following winter and spring.

Garlic grows easily on the Adelaide Plains, often without the benefit of much irrigation, as it does most of its growing through the winter and spring rainfall periods.

Garlic is typically planted on the shortest day of the year (21st June) and harvested when the foliage has died back on the longest day of the year (21st December). It stores well for about six months if hung in a dry cool and dark place.

Six months ago, I started with a dish of 16 bulbs (link here, scroll down), splitting them into about ten cloves each, where each clove develops into a whole new bulb. I estimate that I’ve harvested about 200 bulbs from that initial batch, though my stock has already been depleted; a small bag of garlic makes a wonderful Christmas gift from gardeners to cooks.

Harvesting potatoes

2010-12-22T09:06:00.001+10:30

We plant and harvest potatoes all year round. There are always some potatoes chitting somewhere, to be planted next. Or the next lot is ready for harvesting. This ensures a good supply of fresh, very tasty, organically grown potatoes.

Berry Gnome does not only enjoy growing berries, but also a variety of potatoes. Here is the 'miscellaneous' bed. Mainly Kennebec and some Pontiac.The chooks are eagerly watching - there might be a tasty treat for them somewhere.
The containers are overflowing with big potatoes.
A very happy Berry Gnome bandicooting underneath a potato plant that is still producing heavily.That should keep us going for a while. :)

Home-made ice-cream

2010-12-14T11:41:00.005+10:30

...with rapadura sugar. The rapadura gives a lovely caramel flavour.

The best thing about home-made ice-cream - it is super delicious, very easy to make and you determine which ingredients go into the mixture.
So, freshly laid eggs from our free-ranging chooks. Raw cream from a place just around the corner. Plus the not so local, but organic rapadura sugar.

No need for anything else, really.

3 whole eggs
2 egg yolks (next time I will use 4 whole eggs and no extra yolks)
3/4 cup rapadura sugar (or 1 cup, if you like it sweeter)
420 ml cream

Put eggs and sugar into a heatproof bowl and place over a saucepan with simmering water.
Whisk eggs until the mixture is heated through.
Take off the saucepan, then whisk until the mixture is very frothy and thick-ish.

Whip cream until soft peaks form.
Fold the egg/sugar mixture gently into cream.
Pour into a container of your choice. Lick spoon. Lick bowl.
Cover container. Freeze. Eat.

Harvesting garlic...

2010-12-07T11:39:00.006+10:30

... must be one of the most satisfying jobs this time of the year.

The weeding, sowing, planting, pruning, shredding and mulching seems to be never-ending. There is still so much more to do. Luckily, there is the garlic we planted in March, and the foliage is finally starting to dry up a bit.

Ahhh... not even half-way through the first garlic bed and it is looking very good.
Lovely! Let's dry them a little bit - while you have a cup of tea, or so.

All bundled up and drying on a rack.

There are some real rippers in the bunches!

These will be stored in a safe spot, to be planted next season. It does seem a shame to plant out the biggest heads (and not eat them!), but you will be rewarded with tons of big cloves.
There are a few small heads of garlic (Not taking a picture of them!), as I planted them a bit close together at one end of the bed. Lesson learned! Space them apart, so that all of them can grow big and fat.

The secret to a bumper crop? Good soil (I usually plant into a garden bed where we had potatoes the previous season), plant the fattest cloves of garlic you can find, space them well apart, water them well the first few weeks after planting. Then sit back and relax. :)

How to cook broad beans…

2010-12-05T04:11:00.001+10:30

Broad beans (Vicia fava) – or ‘fava’ beans as they are sometimes called – are a big meaty bean grown over winter here on the Adelaide Plains, and provide good nutritious accompaniments or light meals in their own right during Spring when other pickings from the garden are at their leanest. Before the explorers brought green beans back from the Americas, broad beans were the only bean known to Europeans and folk from the Middle East, where it had been cultivated since pre-historic times.

This past winter I’ve grown two different varieties of broad beans; one for eating (Early Long Pod) and one for seed propagation (Aquadulce). As broad beans are partially self-pollinated and partly cross-pollinated, there’s some small chance that I’ve crossed the two varieties, but may yet be saved from that small embarrassment by the different time of flowering of these two varieties.

Broad beans are grown in blocks and fenced with stakes and strings to help them present a broad shoulder to the gully winds that blow during Spring and which threaten to bend the heavily-laden plants in two.

I cut broad beans from their plants with a sturdy pair of pizza scissors for the same reason; pulling on them only breaks the self-standing plant in two. The larger bottom beans are left on the plants for later podding and drying for next year’s seed.

Once I’ve got a bucketful of young tender beans, its back up to the outside veranda, where the pod can easily be split down the side with a sharp knife, and the big beautiful beans flipped out into a large dish ready for presentation to the waiting cook.

Thinly-sliced onion and crushed garlic are then cooked on low heat in butter and a little olive oil until the onion is almost soft, then the broad beans are added with another dob of butter and a pinch of salt at the end. Don’t over-cook broad beans – just let them warm up and soften a bit. Sometimes we finish them with grated parmesan cheese to lift the flavour and quell a little of the bitterness.

Rare seeds from an old gardener

2010-11-23T22:08:00.001+10:30

The old blokes in my neighbourhood have been quietly passing on one by one this past decade, leaving me with the sinking feeling that I’ll soon be the last gardener left standing in the district. ‘Urban in-fill’ is the current euphemism for turning once-productive kitchen gardens into houses packed cheek-by-jowl onto the old quarter-acre blocks that once represented the Australian Dream; one’s own home with fruit trees, chooks, vegetables, compost heap, rain water tank and wood-heap in the backyard, with a patch of lawn at the front for the kids to play on.

Nowadays, modern folk drive all sorts of distances to ‘work-out’ in gymnasiums or ‘tan-up’ in solariums – all under cover – where once the simple pleasures of bending and lifting, twisting, kneeling, pulling, reaching, climbing and carrying stuff around our gardens fulfilled all those needs out in the fresh air and sunshine. No gym fees back then. Instead, our kitchen gardens returned nutritious food and a healthy lifestyle, neighbourly connections and a place to show the grandchildren at first hand how nature works her daily miracles.

Kitchen gardeners have traditionally been the custodians of our old heritage open-pollinated non-hybrid vegetable seeds – seeds that have been passed along from generation to generation. And so I’ve been quietly adding the last seed collections of these older chaps to my own, growing them on year after year to keep these locally-adapted and tasty varieties alive.

From a rather vociferous Sicilian chap down the corner has come my collection of broad beans, which produce huge pods over 25 cms long on short plants – I suspect this variety are what the heritage seed companies call ‘Aqua Dulce’, which dates back to about 1844.

The widow of the old Italian man over the road let me fossick around in the ancient rusty shed down the back of his garden, and I took over his seed collection and grow on his zucchinis and ‘Rapa’ – a bitter broccoli that tastes just fine when stirred into pasta.

Some of the old Aussies in the district fought in the Second World War, and came home as young men to start gardens and raise families. Two of these old Diggers probably fought my German wife’s uncle, who was part of Rommel’s Afrika Korps in North Africa.

Basle – just a few doors down – was a sergeant in the Australian Transport Division, and his seed collection consisted of packets of Yates Seeds that are still available down the local hardware store. Nothing too exciting there.

But then there’s Bert – the subject of this small yarn – who died in March this year aged 101. Bert was one of the famous Rats of Tobruk – the beleaguered Australian forces who defended the Allied toe-hold in North Africa at Tobruk in Libya for nine long months during the darkest days of WWII, preventing the German panzers from gaining access to vital re-supply routes by sea across the Mediterranean.

Bert lived in a 1910-era cottage surrounded by an industrial estate that I walk through on my way to work each day. Bert was as fit as a Mallee bull right up past his one hundredth birthday, and could often be seen walking down to the local shops or trimming the fruit trees around his house. Bert’s son – himself in his sixties – knew of my interest in heritage vegetables, and turned up at my office last week with Bert’s remnant seed collection, stashed away in old tins and jars of the sort beloved of seed-savers.

Bert was the last of his kind around here; one can only imagine what view he might have formed of the modern folk around him, especially the ‘boom-boom’ coming from the converted warehouse opposite his front yard where all the young Mum’s leap out of their cars to leap up and down inside to the window-rattling exhortations of some young chap whose main mode of communication seems to whooping and yelling. (I should know – I walk past twice a day, every working day!)

Bert’s gone now, but his seeds remain. Most intriguing of all are those in an old jar that once held Jalapeno stuffed olives, and bearing a pencilled scrap of paper cryptically marked “Johns Bush Pump 86”.

There’s only one way to find out what those seeds are – I’m off to plant them!

Elderflowers

2010-11-16T12:12:00.001+10:30

This is one of my favourite trees. Our variegated elder tree.
One of our sheep seems to like it, too.
The flowers are beautiful, abundant and very fragrant. We made elderflower wine last year for the first time and it was an absolute hit.
We have already started a new batch, but will probably do several. I will also dry some flowers for teas - as it is supposed to be very good for when you have a cold or flu. Also good to fight hay fever.

Maybe after all that wine making and drying for teas, we still have some flowers left on the tree and they can mature to berries? I have never tasted anything made from elderberries, so would be keen to experiment. Jam? Wine? Drying for medicinal purposes?

Birds, bed-bases and bulbs

2010-11-16T03:29:00.001+10:30

Springtime for the kitchen gardener is the most hectic time of the year, and particularly so here in southern Australia where Spring and the approach of Christmas coincide to muddle social pressures into the life of the harried gardener. ‘Spring-cleaning’ makes sense in the cook’s particularly European tradition, where sunshine and warmer weather bring on a frenzy of activity in the house, and things that have lain dormant inside get kicked outside into a warmer clime to make way for the new.

My one relief from all this activity is to rise early before the cook is astir, and to sit outside overlooking the garden each morning to watch the dawn chorus. Dawn is the busiest time of the day for all those small birds foraging through the kitchen garden in front of me, and the changing patterns of the clouds in the sky over the garden never fail to bring me some peace.

Except for that bloody bed-base down there on the left, leaning up against the chook-yard fence!

It sticks in my eye with all the irritation of a burr under a horse’s saddle, and I’ve finally been forced to dispose of it.

So I’ve turned it into a growing frame for my wife’s favourite cucumbers, located as near to the kitchen door as I can get it! True, it looks a bit junk-yardish at the moment, but in a few months time it will be covered in a a wall of cucumbers, and our summer salads will be blessed by the cook’s smile…

Other useful things salvaged from this bed-base include the felt underlay – perfect for starting carrot seeds – and swatches of cotton waste from the corners; I leave these lying around for the birds to find as they hunt for nest-building material. Only the synthetic covering goes out in the rubbish.

While vegetable gardens lack the floral elegance of more formal cottage gardens, vegetables flower also – especially in a seed-saver’s garden - and many of these small flowers are irresistible to birds and bees, such as those of the broccoli and lettuces to be seen in bloom below.

And all those wonderful garlic plants in the foreground? It was only six months ago that they were bulbs, planted out into the cooling soil of mid-autumn, and now finishing up to add flavour to the cook’s welcome meals for months to come…

Clockwise from top-left: Flowers of Italian parsley, purple-sprouting broccoli, bitter lettuce and chives.

Saving Manzana chilli seed

2010-11-08T21:26:00.001+10:30

Chillies and capsicums (‘peppers’ in the USA) belong to the Solanaceae family, along with tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes.

While the most common types of chillies belong to the Capsicum frutescens genera, ‘Manzana’ chillies (Capsicum pubescens) are an altogether different beast, having purple (not white) flowers and black (not cream) wrinkled seeds. Manzana chilli leaves are covered with a light fuzz, as its Latin name indicates (Reference: Seed Savers Handbook).

Of all the chillies one can grow on the Adelaide Plains – and I’ve grown over a dozen different varieties – Manzana chillies have become my favourite. As a perennial, one bush is all one generally needs if you’re an Aussie, and this one bush will provide chillies pretty much all year round, especially in spring when other annual chillies are still just seedlings. Manzana chillies are hot but not deadly (3 out of 5), and the bushes survive the heat and poor watering with ease. This single bush (below) has been under-watered to the point of neglect, but keeps on hanging in there year after year. It needs staking and regular pruning to keep it looking respectable.

Saving chilli seed is a dangerous business best carried out in a ventilated fire-proof bunker in full protective clothing, face mask and breathing apparatus! Don’t touch your face and eyes while saving chilli seed, as the burning sensation that follows is right up there with the pain more often associated with knee capping and having your finger-nails pulled out with pliers. Wear rubber gloves, at least. I should.

To save the seed, chop up the chillies and place them with water in a blender, where they are minced up at the slowest speed, allowing the seed to settle to the bottom (with a bit of help). Sieve the debris if necessary, then pour the seeds out onto an absorbent paper towel and let dry in the shade before storing.

What bean is that?

2010-10-31T19:03:00.001+10:30

Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) have the most colourful and rewarding of seeds, which probably explains why gardeners have been growing them on now for over 6000 years. Given this length of time since beans were domesticated in the temperate regions of South America (Peru), it is no wonder that hundreds of varieties of beans exist today.

In general, what kitchen gardeners call ‘beans’ are either the French bean, eaten when tender and green, or the dried Kidney beans stored for later use in soups and stews. So this range of beans excludes such ‘beans’ as Broad beans (Vicia fava), Guada beans (Trichosanthes anguina), Lima beans (Phaseolus lunatus [P. limensis]), Runner beans (Phaseolus coccineus), Snake beans (Vigna unguiculata var. sesquipedalis), Soya beans (Glycine max), Winged beans (Psophocarpis tetragonolobus) and Yam beans (Pachyrrhizus erosus).

French beans and Kidney beans are further divided into dwarf (or bush) beans and climbing (or pole) beans. Climbing beans needed richer soil than dwarf beans, but produce over longer periods. Climbing beans are grown on stakes or trellises, whereas dwarf beans are self-standing as a small bush.

My own interest in beans was fired many years ago by Bill Hankin’s collection, shown during a talk Bill gave in Adelaide to home gardeners back in about 2003. Bill’s bean seed collection consists of some 72 bean seeds, which sounds like a lot, but which represents just a fraction of the hundreds of varieties known. Still, it was with great pleasure that I was able to look over this collection at close quarters for myself, as Bill lent me the lot to show off in public at our local seed-savers display in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens today.

Some of the beans in Bill’s collection have been attacked by bean weevils, which lay their eggs under the skin of the bean while they are still in the pod, and which hatch out in the stored beans and bore small holes through the beans, destroying their fertility. (The solution to weevils is to seal the beans in an jam jar and place them in the freezer for 48 hours to kill the eggs. The jar has to be airtight to prevent the seeds dehydrating in the freezer, which will kill the bean).

All of the beans in the collection have faded somewhat with time and are likely no longer viable, as bean seeds cannot usually be stored beyond three years, and those in this collection are over eight years old. Nevertheless, here they are (below) in close up, to help identify the shape and colour of various beans collected by Bill from heritage growers and commercial seeds companies over many years and grown on before the thrill of it all wore off, and Bill just put the remainder into this collection.

Top from left: Rattlesnake pole bean, Macedonian butter bean, Bert Goodwin’s bush bean.

Bottom from left: Nardi Zebra bean, Ukrainian butter pole bean, Magpie bush bean.

Top from left: Honduran Landrace bean, Yin Yang pole bean, Scarlet Beauty (runner) bean

Bottom from left: Deb’s Greek dry bean, Pearl climbing bean, Macedonian pole bean

Top from left: Honey Key bean, Vermont Cranberry bean, Macedonian Twiner bean

Bottom from left: Ah Chow bean, Tarahumara Laja bean, Croatian bush bean

Top from left: BOG (Brisbane Organic Growers) Half Runner bean, Hawkesbury Wonder, Sun… (illegible)

Bottom from left: Green Flax bush bean, Krasner Barlotti bean, Swedish Brown bean

Top from left: Garcia Twiner bean, Staley’s Star bean (Bill Hankin believes that this bean is extinct now), Lemon Yellow Twiner bean

Bottom from left: Maine Yellow Eye bean, Purple Queen bush bean, Bellotti Twiner bean

Top from left: Lohrey’s Special pole bean, Spanish climbing bean, Penguin bush bean

Bottom from left: Yugoslavian Purple Twiner bean, Zera climbing bean, Goodwin’s Purple bush bean

Top from left: Wondergold climbing bean, Yigevano Fire Tongue bean, Windsor Longpod bean

Bottom from left: Hayes Brown bush bean, Admire bush bean, Redlands Pioneer bush bean

Top from left: Yates Romano bush bean, Sunray bush bean, Baker bean

Bottom from left: Victory Green bush bean, Coco Bicolor bean, Zagreb Soldier bean

Top from left: Low’s Champion bush bean, Black Runner bean, Tan Yugoslavian Twiner bean

Bottom from left: Scottish pole bean, Jacob’s Cattle bush bean, Black African Wax bush bean

Top from left: Tasmanian Heirloom pole bean, Anderson’s Purple King bean, Macedonian bush bean

Bottom from left: Painted Lady Runner bean, Hutterite Soup bean, Dutch Brown bean

Top from left: (illegible) bean, Preston bush bean, Agate Pinto bean

Bottom from left: Dragon Langerie bean, Cuban Black (USA) bean, Westralia climbing bean

Top from left: Scarlet Emperor runner bean, Spanish Red climber bean, Lazy Housewife pole bean

Bottom from left: Kentucky Wonder Brown pole bean, Cherokee Wax bush bean, Anderson’s Wonder bean

Corn salad, Lamb’s Lettuce or Feldsalat

2010-10-24T20:23:00.001+10:30

Corn salad (Valerianella locusta) is a tiny but tender lettuce grown from autumn through winter here on the temperate Adelaide Plains. We are still harvesting ours, but expect the warmer weather to cause it to bolt to seed. This is fine with me; corn salad self-seeds year after year, especially in rocky crevices in retaining walls.

I suspect that corn salad is not well-known among Australian gardeners unless they have some relationship to Europe. In our house, with its mix of Australian and German cuisine, the cook plagued the gardener often and longingly with tales of the Feldsalat (literally, field salad) that she had enjoyed during German winters – often the only green salad vegetable available over there, thanks to its cold-tolerance.

As peace and the cook’s happiness are every gardener’s dream, I went to some trouble to bring some Feldsalat seed back to Australia. [Imported seed must be in sealed coloured commercial seed packets having the Latin name upon it to be able to get past quarantine authorities at the airport].

Then I discovered the English name for this small plant – Corn Salad or Lamb’s Lettuce. In France it is known as Mache or Doucette.

Corn salad seed is available from heritage seed companies such as Eden Seeds in Queensland. According to their seed packet, it ‘looks like a small loose-leaf lettuce, is used in salads or cooked like spinach, and is high in vitamin C’.

And why is it called ‘corn salad’?

Well, according to the Seed Savers Handbook, ‘corn salad derives the name from its natural occurrence in fields of wheat, once called “corn” in England. It grows wild over southern Europe and western Asia’.

As Spring moves along we are eating salads made from plants grown during winter; corn salad, snow peas and nasturtium flowers.

A walk in the spring garden...continued

2010-10-22T13:50:00.004+10:30

Are you interested in seeing more of our overgrown garden? Okay, let's go!

The bronze fennel is nice and bushy. It will grow taller and go to seed at the end of summer. Lots of very fragrant seeds to be harvested!
A really great vegetable that we have grown for the first time, but will now become a regular in our winter garden - purple sprouting broccoli. It develops small, individual florets and you pick as many as you need. And then new ones will develop along the stem. Brilliant stuff! (Unfortunately, you can't see the florets will in this photo.)
Globe artichokes. Stunning foliage! Soon we'll be eating artichoke hearts. Yum, yum.
Our cherries are flowering madly. We are hoping to eat our own cherries this season. Here we have 'Sunburst'. Still a young tree but with lots of flowers.Granny Smith. She's a grand old lady and keeps producing delicious apples every year. The grass is very high around her, but hopefully we'll be able to slot in a brushcutting session soon.That's it, folks! Unless you are interested in walking around a bit more in our garden.

A walk in the spring garden

2010-10-19T13:49:00.003+10:30

Spring is such an exciting season! There are tons of trees & plants flowering, seeds are germinating left, right & centre, the hills and paddocks are lusciously green, the garden is overgrown with grass and weeds, but soon there will be a little order in this chaos.

The garlic is doing extremely well. Some stems are unbelievably thick. All going well, the harvest should be good.The leek bed is still filled with thick-stemmed leeks and self-sown leek seedlings. I shall eat the grown-ups and thin out the babies.
The red currants are doing their thing again. Tons of flowers and fruit setting. Red currant jelly for all these roasts and sauces...
The white strawberries are flowering and have already set lots of fruit. These are very small berries but packed with flavour.
The new row of peas is doing well. Hopefully they'll give us lots of sweet, tender peas.There is so much more going on, but that's enough for today. I shall take you on another walk very soon. Hope all of you are having a wonderful spring! :)

Rain, warmth and mulch

2010-10-14T20:57:00.001+10:30

Somewhere in mid-Spring every gardener waits on tenterhooks for the convergence of three events – rain, warmth and mulch day.

By now, six weeks into Spring, the last of the winter rainfall is starting to evaporate from the bare soil. Here in Adelaide, where we’ve often had to live through three to four months of no rainfall in summer, draconian water restrictions and weeks of temperatures above 40 degrees, saving this precious rainfall in the soil is critical to growing healthy crops.

Yet we also need the soil itself to warm up enough to allow active root growth below our vegetable crops - therefore we have to hold off mulching so that the sunshine too can soak into the soil.

The net result of all these tradeoffs is that backyard gardeners watch the sky as avidly as any farmer, hanging out for one of those mid-Spring rainfall events that top up a warm soil with fresh pure rain water. Only after that can we whip on a deep layer of pea-straw or barley-straw mulch to prevent that last gift of soil moisture from evaporating.

The key to managing this birthing of a Spring garden is to watch the weather forecasts for Adelaide on the Internet, and to track rainfall across Australia generated by the Bureaus of Meteorology radar maps.

And of course, one should be ready with a big stockpile of straw for mulching…

While water and mulch are the two biggest expenses in managing a kitchen garden, these are the same dollars that the cook saves by doing her green-grocery shopping in the backyard rather than the local shops.

At the end of each autumn, this old mulch is raked up and composted, ready to enrich future crops - nothing is wasted in an organic garden.

Compost (‘Vinegar’) Flies

2010-10-10T21:17:00.001+10:30

Spring has sprung, and the compost bins are warming up, encouraging romance among the vinegar flies, known to many of us as ‘compost flies’.

These little black flies – somewhat smaller than a match head – are harmless to humans, and only become annoying when they find their way into the house in large numbers, hanging about whatever fruit is going off, especially lemons and other citrus.

It seems to be impossible to keep the little fellas locked down in the compost bins – even the smallest holes or imperfection in the lid seal allows them to wander in and out, much to the joy of Willie-Wagtails and New Holland Honeyeaters, who hang about on the bin lid and dance into the air for a quick snack ‘on the wing’.

At the height of the breeding season, every trip to the Gedye Bin results in a face-full of vinegar flies when the lid is opened.

We slow the little blighters down by throwing in a few shovelfuls of soil, then laying branches of wormwood over this to discourage them further from their rotting lunch of mouldy lemons, which choose this time of year to rain down in abundance.

Wormwood is a pretty – if somewhat smelly – soft silvery-green bush traditionally grown around fowl runs in Australia to discourage various ticks and mites from visiting the hens. It’s drought-hardy and makes a robust hedge, and is supposed to discourage other weeds in the vicinity via exudations from its roots.

And does wormwood repel vinegar flies? I don’t really know, but even if it doesn’t save me from a face full of flies, it always looks attractive after a little pruning, and adds some organic matter to the compost bin along the way.

Inside the house, we’ve discovered a sure-way method for sweeping up all the vinegar flies that blacken walls and bench tops; we lay sticky fly traps over small dishes of cider and ‘stout’ beer whose heavenly aroma lures the flies to a sticky death.

Just hanging the sticky fly trap somewhere in the room is a waste of time; the flies ignore it.

Miner's lettuce

2010-10-06T18:01:00.003+10:30

This little beauty is starting to flower, too.
It is great to have this plant in the garden. I let it go to seed in spring and with the first good rain in autumn it starts popping up everywhere.
Great ground cover, but most importantly, great addition to salads! Just what you need in winter.