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All posts for the month February, 2013

One Tough Capsicum

Posted by gardenpathfood on February 13, 2013
Posted in: Autumn foods, Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Spring foods, Spring Jobs, Summer foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Winter Jobs, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

‘I had a little capsicum’,  and I still do.

This little capsicum has been in the garden for almost two years and spent most of last winter hibernating beneath a refrigerator box, but even then, it still produced the odd fruit. It has continued to fruit all through summer, just as it did all last summer.  It produces just enough to keep us going and since we eat them on salads and in stir fry and in casseroles, that it not a bad effort for the one little plant.Capsicum

And, it has produced babies with a little help.  I talked about that at http://wp.me/p2tNt0-32

The Gardening Australia website http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1866669.htm suggests that capsicums are indeed perennial, but usually we treat them as an annual. I sometimes wonder how much of what we assume as home gardeners comes from commercial agricultural practices and how much we need to relearn to be really effective home vegetable producers.  The garden is really your best teacher for this so just get in there and give it a go.

The capsicum is also an attractive little plant, so given that it is actually a perennial and that it has lovely glossy green leaves and can have bright green, red, yellow or orange fruit, it is a plant that you could easily use as an ornamental in a spot in which you can protect it  in winter.  That is, if you get frost as we do.They grow easily in a pot and this probably ideal as the plant can moved in and out of shelter in winter for an all year round boost to both your food dishes and your immune system.

Raw capsicum  contains high levels of Vitamin C and also  beta carotene which converts to Vitamin A, a great immune system boost.

Awesome Asparagus

Posted by gardenpathfood on February 1, 2013
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Spring foods, Spring Jobs, Summer foods, The plants in my garden, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

No, my asparagus does not normally look like this when I pick it.  Usually in the six to eight weeks in Spring  (here Spring is September to November) that we are picking asparagus, it usually looks like a bed of mulch with spikes sticking out of it. The trick is to eat enough so that you stay ahead of the spikes and it doesn’t get bushy like this.

Asparagus in January

Asparagus in January

This is December to August bush and it stays this way until I get out the weed eater (brushcutter) and cut it back to ground level in August.

From December to August it doesn’t get watered, it doesn’t get anything but a few weeds pulled.  In August we cut it back, throw a pile of compost, horse manure and mulch on top, water it heavily and wait for results.  Very, very tasty results whether it is eaten raw and fresh, chopped in a salad or cooked as a vegetable.

Asparagus is dead easy to grow, very hard to kill and the quickest and easiest vegetable to prepare for a meal.  What more could you want as the backbone for your garden?

Climate-wise, I grew it in sub-tropical inland Queensland as well as down here near the border with New south Wales.

The people at http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/asparagus.html list the many benefits of asparagus including ‘Asparagus is a very low calorie vegetable. 100 g fresh spears give only 20 calories. More calories will be burnt to digest than gained, the fact, which fits into the category of low calorie or negative-calorie vegetables,’ but to me asparagus is also one of the best and most satisfying vegetables you can grow.

And Double bonus!!!  We have just had floods, although my house remained high and dry, but the drenching rain has kick started the asparagus again and we have eaten it every night for the last two weeks.  Asparagus in January!!