Summer lettuces

Lettuce "Freckles"

Certain lettuce varieties can withstand the heat of an Australian summer better than others. My first choice is Eden Seeds' "Freckles" variety. This summer I am also trying a form of Mignonette from Yates called "Buttercrunch"which according to the packet "rarely runs to seed". Keeping  lettuce seeds in the fridge (not freezer) for two days before planting is reputed to lead to quicker germination. Plant lettuce seeds 3mm deep. Keep ground moist for one week until germination occurs. Harvest 8 weeks from sowing seed.   

Endive (Escarole)  flowers

Taking up quite a bit of space in my garden is one plant of a broad leaved form of Endive the French call "Escarole" that I am allowing to flower for the seed. Anita distributed seed to all the gardeners last Autumn and we had  a good supply of leafy greens over the winter from them. However Anita was most perplexed as to why the centers of the Escarole were not pale yellow as she remembers them in France. I have just read in Stephanie Alexander's garden cookbook that in France growers tie the outer leaves together and in the markets the plants are flattened to display the pale hearts of the endive which is the only part used in the salads, the outer leaves being fed to the chickens. In our innocence we have been eating the whole plant which although slightly bitter tasted quite palatable with a salad dressing. Next autumn, if I manage to collect seed, I will try the French method of cultivation. 

Carrots

By now I have  harvested most of the carrots planted in late winter. They are "All Seasons", a good variety for colder months. I have already planted two more successive rows of  "All Seasons" and will sow "Manchester Table" during the warmer months to harvest in autumn. Carrots are my favourite vegetable because they take up very little space and do particularly well in a raised garden bed with light, sandy soil. The stumpy French Nantes and round carrot varieties are good choices if you have clay soils or are planting carrots in pots. 

Growing Tips:  Carrots seeds require moisture for at least ten days after the seeds are sown. If you can't be there to water daily this can be a problem. To overcome it I cover the seeds with a thin layer of mixed palm peat and sieved soil, lightly water and place a ply-wood board over the top to keep the soil moisture from evaporating. I remove it after a week and then hand-water every day until the seedlings appear. They look like grass at first. A damp piece of hessian will also perform the same function as the board but allows the sunlight to reach the germinating seeds, which can be an advantage over the board because if you don't remove the board in time the carrot roots begin growing horizontally above the soil. Carrots don't need additional fertilizer, particularly nitrogen, which makes them fork and grow hairy. Carrots need to be thinned- I do this twice, once as soon as the ferny leaves are showing and again a month later. The remaining plants are about 10cm apart and can be selectively harvested throughout the season leaving increasingly bigger gaps between remaining plants; the bigger the space, the bigger the carrots. Split carrots are caused by uneven watering; don't allow the soil to become completely dry and then over-water. One of the great pleasures of gardening is pulling up a perfect carrot you have grown yourself!

Apple blossom time

Apple blossom

Apple trees in bloom

 Food Forest

The first thing I noticed when I arrived this morning is that the apple trees have suddenly burst into bloom. The apricot already has a large crop of green fruit. The nasturtiums under the fruit trees will soon carpet the ground providing a living mulch as well as adding colour and bestowing all the other benefits that nasturtiums provide in an orchard.

Decorative vegetables in Spring

Lettuce and Bull's Blood beetroot

Flowering brassicas and sage

Sugar snap peas

Kohl Rabi, potato, silver beet, garlic and carrots

Kohl Rabi leaves provide foliage contrast with other veggies

October 17th and we are well into spring. Today the weather was perfect and it was a pleasure to walk around the garden and admire all the lovely textures and colours as winter vegetables go to flower. Kohl Rabi doesn't produce much that is edible and takes up valuable space but I grow it mainly for its decorative foliage. It is harvested when the above-ground swollen stem is about the size of a tennis ball. It tastes very much like turnip and is best prepared by peeling, cutting into dice and adding to soup or chick pea casserole or curry. The leaves are edible but are tough except when very young.

Cabbage

So this is what it is all about; my first cabbage! It is so beautiful that I am not sure if I want to do a painting or eat it.

Tuscan Kale

Tuscan Kale (Cavolo nero) is an easy vegetable to grow and I believe it is very nutritious. This week I began to harvest from my own three young plants. It tastes much better than I expected. I  fried a few shredded leaves (with the central stems removed) in some olive oil, garlic and chili flakes. Also tasty when drizzled with olive oil and crisped in the oven. 
Website with a recipe for kale chips: http://localfoods.about.com/od/chipsfriedsomebaked/r/Kale-Chips.htm

Green Harvest

Bok Choi

Ruby chard, Silver- beet, radishes and celery.

Over the past week everyone's vegetable plots put on tremendous growth. It has certainly been very cold and quite rainy but I wonder if some other factor is the cause; gradually lengthening days, the phase of the moon, time since germination?  I found an enormous caterpillar on one of the Bok Choi plants; looked like a cut worm. it had done considerable damage. We have made several delicious meals with this produce; quiche, stir fry and accompaniment to sausages. 

Hi there! As you can see, I am rugged up against the cold.

Mid-winter and the veggie garden is flourishing.The sprouting broccoli is starting to head, bok-choi, celery, cos lettuce and silver beet are all ready to pick. Carrots and garlic show signs of growth. Peas have failed, though. I have read that they do better planted late in the season in Victoria. I don't really have room in this garden for a pea crop anyway. This week there is not a lot to do except thin the carrots and plant some spinach seedlings.

Anita lends a hand

Anita has the plot next to mine and I have learned a lot from her French down-to-earth approach to growing, harvesting and eating vegetables. It's straight from plot to table: vegetables go directly into the soup pot or salad bowl when she goes home for lunch after a morning in the garden. I've learned lots from Anita, for instance to appreciate the humble radish: grow the milder French breakfast variety, eat the root sliced lengthways with a dip and  use the tops in a soup or stir fry-discarding the tops is a sin! In France turnips (navets) are picked small  and fried in butter or olive oil or baked. They are delicious eaten this way and the turnip tops are not wasted; eat them as you would spinach.
Anita has a different approach to recycling her spent plants:  instead of carrying them off to the compost heap, she digs a trench and buries them  mixed with with horse manure to feed the earthworms in her plot. She plants the next season's crops straight on top. Anita is full of energy and zest for living- a truly generous spirit and all-round great companion in the community garden. The picture shows Anita watering my garden, which she often does. 

Celery three weeks later

After two weeks of blanching with paper and plastic I inspected the celery and found several small snails and evidence of chewing. I released the plants but the following week the celery had flopped so I have now tied the stalks loosely with kitchen string. Time to harvest the weakest stalks to include in vegetable stock. As you can see, the celery stalks are too thin and green to pass muster in a shop or market but the taste and nutrients are probably better. Perhaps shop-bought celery is grown under more artificial conditions. 

Vegetable Soup: Add stock to lightly fried, finely chopped onion, celery, carrots and garlic then add a couple of handfuls of risoni (pasta the size of grains of rice). Simmer until the vegetables and risoni are soft to make a  quick, simple and nutritious soup.

Celery tied to stop it flopping

Over-zealous fertilizing brings unexpected result

Pride comes before a fall in this case, is true. I had two boxes of lovely healthy seedlings ready to give to friends. Why not add a little blood & bone to each pot to help them on their way? It was a lovely sunny day and one of the boxes was in the shade so I put it on the ground in a patch of sun and went inside to add a photo to this blog. 

Ten minutes later I stepped outside to a scene of havoc.I potted the seedlings up again. Most were saved but bent and battered, they were well and truly set back a week or two. It's liquid feeds (organic, of course) from now on.

Blanching celery

Celery wrapped to blanch and lettuces and carrots almost ready to harvest.

Mid May and unseasonably warm autumn weather for Melbourne.This year I am experimenting with blanching my four celery plants. I wrapped them loosely in recycled white deli paper (inner layer) and  plastic cut from potting mix bags (outer layer). I am not sure if wrapping is a good idea because it might also provide a home for the earwigs and weevils who have started chewing on the celery- or is it baby snails? In a couple of weeks I will unwrap one celery to inspect for damage and hopefully discover and eliminate the culprits.

Celery wrapped and tied with straw bale twine

Food Forest

The first week of May in the Food Forest: The best of the summer bounty from the food forest is finished and the sunflowers are just sticks in the ground but there are still a few cherry tomatoes left for parents to forage with their little ones. Under Mum's watchful guidance, this is the best way to learn about food. Pictured is a first encounter with a yellow cherry tomato; it tasted good unlike those green ones that naturally were instantly spat out.

 

Three reasons to buy from farmer's markets

Seasonal fresh produce from Flemington Upmarket

Aren't these beautiful? Bought today from the Flemington Upmarket from the farmer who grew them at Werribee which is only 30 km away so very few food miles involved. I doubt if I can emulate that quality in my veggie plots; the red Werribee soil must be very special and the climate just right for brassicas.The cabbage only cost a dollar; that doesn't seem fair does it? Tonight I cooked a delicious meal from a recipe in the "River Cottage Veg Everyday" cookbook using some of the broccoli and half the cabbage. The vegetables must have been picked last night, they were so fresh.

Garlic

ANZAC Day and  the weather in Melbourne is perfect; sunny and 21 C. The large garlic bulb I saved from last's year's tiny crop of 3 plants is sprouting, telling me the time has come to plant garlic again. I chose the four biggest cloves for my Farnham St. plot; no room for more. I haven't quite decided what to do with the remainder so I am storing them in the shed in damp coconut peat for a few days. I think I might plant the smallest cloves in a pot and harvest the green shoots for winter salads. Pat is preparing a communal garlic bed under the Lemon Scented gum tree so the rest might end up there. I'll wait and see where they are most needed. The purple garlic in the middle is left over from organic garlic I bought for our other garden; more about that in a later blog post. I have just come back from measuring that garden to the last inch, literally, as I have scaled  graph paper marked out in inches. I can tell you, translating the measurements using my metre ruler into a foot x foot  planting grid gave my brain a good work-out. Whilst walking the dogs today Thomas and I saw an Egret, a rabbit and a fox; I don't know if that is a good thing as foxes hunt rabbits but also native water birds.Perhaps it will all balance itself out.

Coffee Cup Pots

I bought some silver beet and broccoli seedlings in punnets from the Kensington Garden Center and planted them in my plot at Farnham Street last Monday. I had leftover seedlings to give away but I ran out of plastic pots and was too impatient to start making paper pots; besides I was standing in the rain so I looked about for the nearest receptacles-discarded take-away coffee cups. I punched some drainage holes in their bottoms, filled them with home-made potting mix and watered in with some added seaweed emulsion. The seedlings have already started to put on growth in just 48 hours! The little cauliflower on the right was rescued from my plot after being eaten by a snail but even it is has grown a bit. I think I might have found the perfect seedling pot. This blog post must seem very ordinary compared with arriving in New York for the first time. I hope you have somewhere safe to pitch your tent tonight.

Carrots

Carrots: According to the Moon Planting Chart, yesterday and today are opportune to plant root vegetables; the moon is in its waning gibbous phase following the full moon on April 15th. An old Italian gardener first told me about moon planting. His wisdom was passed on from generation to generation to generation but I couldn't hold it all in my head so my thoughtful daughter gave me a moon planting chart.
I was also keen to try a practical idea I have read about for evenly spacing carrot seeds.I have been waiting to find the perfect seed dispenser and I must admit I bought "Clive of India" curry powder in a simple cardboard cylinder with a dispensing hole in the plastic lid, with carrot planting in mind. It's easy to remove the lid and drop in a mix of carrot seeds, sand and radish seeds then evenly pour it into shallow prepared drills and fill in with 6mm of sieved soil or compost. The next step is to gently water (use a watering can with the rose attached) and to place a thin piece of wood over the seeded area so the germinating seeds don't dry out. Carrot seeds take 10-21 days to germinate. Planting with radishes has the advantage of clearly marking the row of germinating carrots that can look so like tiny grass weeds. The nifty thing about radish plants is that they are ready to harvest long before the carrots, leaving, hopefully, the correct spacings between the carrot plants.