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.