Dog drool and water chestnuts

Posted by gardenpathfood on December 2, 2012
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Food, Spring foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Winter Jobs, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

I love the look of water chestnuts in the garden.

There is a period of a couple of weeks in May when the spikes start to die off that they look a little bit untidy, but the exciting thing then is that they are almost ready to harvest, so it doesn’t matter.

Water Chestnuts in December

Water Chestnuts in December

I completely forgot to blog when I harvested the bulbs in June but the year goes something like this:

In June/July you plonk some soil/sand/compost in a couple of tubs and then put in some bulbs which you can buy commercially, but this year I replanted from the bulbs I had harvested. Unlike garlic, you can replant the small bulbs and expect to get reasonable chestnuts.

For these two tubs I only need about 6 bulbs total, but somehow this year I must have left a few in the soil because I definitely have more than 6 plants.

Then, put about a 2 cm covering of soil on top and fill the tubs with water to cover the surface by a couple of centimeters. I keep the tubs topped up, which is not hard in winter, until the shoots start to come through as soon as it starts to warm up in September or October. (This is more difficult than it sounds as both the cat and dog prefer the water in the water chestnuts to their own nice clean bucket.)

After that, I keep them moist and let the rain top them up, and although I never really let them dry out ,  they don’t mind a little bit of exposure.  I am very careful in extremely hot weather not to let them dry out completely.

They look wonderful for 8 months of the year, as you see and I will hope to harvest several kilos of lovely, crisp,  fresh bulbs in early June. I keep these in a container in the crisper and use them as I need them.

The taste and texture of fresh water chestnut is as different from the tinned variety, as fresh asparagus is from tinned. They are a completely different food experience.

Onion Breath

Posted by gardenpathfood on November 17, 2012
Posted in: Autumn foods, Autumn jobs, Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Spring foods, Summer foods, The plants in my garden, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

November bounty

Onions are very good for you and have been used by many cultures for their health benefits and apparently they are the world’s biggest horticultural crop, after tomatoes.

According to this website:

http://www.vegetarian-nutrition.info/updates/onions.php

health benefits include relief from asthma, coughs, colds, cardiovascular problems and stomach cancer.

So, I will happily be putting my little red onions on my sandwiches, in my salads and anywhere else I can use them.  There are lots in the garden and since I planted them a bit close, I am picking out the bigger ones now to allow the others to grow.

This collection of garden produce above (and the red throat emperor caught by my husband) became Emperor with red onion and tarragon in white wine sauce.

I have only just discovered Tarragon. I didn’t realise what it was that I love so much in the occasional dish we had eaten out, but now I do know, I will be using a lot more of it.

There have been a mile of strawberries this season and this year they have a particularly sweet, toffee smell. We  have them for breakfast every morning, but we have had so many that this lot teamed up with maple syrup and home- made ice-cream for dessert.  I love strawberry season!!

Phoenix rising

Posted by gardenpathfood on October 17, 2012
Posted in: Autumn foods, Autumn jobs, Eating Seasons, Food, Spring foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

Like a phoenix rising…well not from the ashes but I do decapitate them.

Commercially leeks are usually plucked out roots and all but I cut them off with a sharp knife just slightly below ground level, and they regrow. Normally I let those go to seed to produce babies somewhere in the garden.

Although my leeks, particularly the regrown ones are not as long as commercial leeks (look at the climate I live in), each one I cut usually provides the two of us us with all we need for an additional steamed vegetable.  Instead of letting this one go to seed, I will see if we can cOctober Gardenut it and go for a third use.

I love the look of leeks and onions in the garden.  They provide structure, colour and texture.

Even pure vegetable gardens can be amazingly  decorative and look so different at the change of season but I also love the look of edible plants in the decorative garden.  See my next post.

Parsley, Parsley everywhere

Posted by gardenpathfood on October 9, 2012
Posted in: Autumn foods, Eating Seasons, Food, Health, Links to other sites, Recipes, Spring foods, Spring Jobs, Summer foods, Summer Jobs, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

I’m told that you never let parsley go to seed, so every now and again it needs to be cut back, especially in spring.

Tabbouleh using quinoa

So, fighting off the mating brown snakes in the garden, I did that and then decided to make tabbouleh with the cuttings.

I’m not a great fan of tabbouleh usually, especially the commercial variety but I found this recipe  at http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/4827/quinoa-tabbouleh.aspx

and it is really good.  It uses quinoa instead of burghul and quite a lot of lemon juice.

Parsley has a lot of health benefits including being full of anti-oxidents but you can find them out for yourself by visiting http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/parsley.html

Wholefoods in October

Posted by gardenpathfood on October 7, 2012
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Food, Recipes, Spring foods, The plants in my garden. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Today’s Haul

This was the basis for our dinner tonight.  All of these things are most definitely in season at home at the moment.  As my husbands says ‘Something that cooks up as dark and fresh looking as the silverbeet, has to be good for you.’

I usually add a tiny bit of fresh lemon juice to the kale and silverbeet after cooking since I like the tang that it adds.

This lovely fresh asparagus requires nothing of course and can be eaten raw in salads or very lightly steamed with the other greens.

We usually eat the leeks lightly steamed but I know a lot of people only eat them in casseroles.  We love them just as they are as a vegetable in their own right.

What do you do with leeks?

Kang Kong

Posted by gardenpathfood on October 6, 2012
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Links to other sites, Spring foods, Winter Jobs, Work Season. Tagged: , , , . 3 Comments

I have a water trough left over from the days of owning horses and it has just occurred to me that I can use it to grow some edible water plants.

I already grow water chestnuts in the pretty feed tubs we had for the horses so what else can I grow?

Fortunately I came across this great site (see below).  I’m thinking that Iwill give Kang kong or water spinach a go and maybe buy some little fish to keep the mozzies away. Not that I have any problems with mozzies in the water chestnuts.

http://permaculturepathways.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/get-started-growing-food-part-6-edible.html

These guys are based in Eudlo on the Sunshine Coast, whereas I am in Western Queensland but the water chestnuts do pretty well here so I don’t see why the spinach won’t. I’ll let you know when I get it going.

And maybe some more water chestnuts would be good since the more I have, the more we seem to eat.

This will be my next project.

Spring has sprung

Posted by gardenpathfood on September 23, 2012
Posted in: Spring Jobs, The plants in my garden, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

It looks like the frosts are over are spring has arrived in a big rush.  It was 34 degrees yesterday and we’ve had our first thunderstorm of the season.

In one month we’ve gone from a frozen solar hot water system to thunderstorms and sunburn.

The good thing about this time of year is that the babies are out in the garden in full force.

The water chestnuts are poking their heads above water, the watermelon are up, and those tomatoes and capsicums I’ve nursed all through winter are well and truly producing.  Best things of all of course, are the strawberries and asparagus.

Those capsicum seeds that I sprouted in the worm farm have become two leaf plants in the garden and look quite sturdy, while the choko vine is already 1/2 metre tall.

Now, the greatest problem will be keeping the water up to the little plants.  They don’t need very much but they  need it fairly often as evaporation is pretty high and usually we are out of the habit of watering the garden as regularly as it suddenly requires.

I am off to build some little shade structures to try to stop my lettuce, spinach and cabbage going to seed quite so quickly, to transplant some very large tomatoes in to the garden from the pots they’ve been sheltering in all winter and to plant some corn.

The Love of Gardening

Posted by gardenpathfood on September 23, 2012
Posted in: Quotes. Leave a comment

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies.
Gertrude Jekyll
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/gertrude_jekyll.html#GsziALPo6uml4B9z.99

Gertrude Jekyll was an influential 20th Century landscape gardener

Organic Amish compost

Posted by gardenpathfood on September 6, 2012
Posted in: Soil, Spring Jobs, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , . Leave a comment

You may not think it very exciting, but I have a whole trailer load of organic compost.

We went to a Charity auction last Saturday night and an opportunity to visit our local organic wheat farm to pick up a load of compost was irresistible, so we bought the trailer load.

You have to admire people who put their whole earning capacity on the line to improve their farming practices and these guys do it with such grace and enthusiasm.

The compost is made using wheat straw and any other organic material such as lot feed manure, chook manure and whatever else can be obtained but is mixed and composted according to strict guidelines. In fact, the person advising this farm is an Amish man from America and it is an Amish method of composting. It is quite impressive to see 800 tonnes of compost sitting there, waiting to be spread when you know the painstaking work and testing that has gone into its production.

The aim of the compost, at this large scale, or any other is to kick start and sustain the microbial life of the soil, which improves its water holding capacity and ability to support your plants.

Good compost improves the structure of any soil from clays to sandy loams. In clays it helps to create air spaces and increase water absorbtion (reducing runoff), while the course particles in sandy soils are unified allowing the soil to retain moisture and nutrients longer rather than leaching quickly.