water chestnuts

All posts tagged water chestnuts

Chestnut Season again

Posted by gardenpathfood on June 15, 2014
Posted in: Soil, Spring foods, Summer foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods, Winter Jobs, Work Season. Tagged: , , , , , , . Leave a comment

1406Jun ChestnutsJune means water chestnuts and this last year I tried something new. I used my old horse trough to hold the buckets with the soil, topping the trough up much less often than I need to with individual buckets.  I’m not sure whether it was that or that I used a course potting mix to blend with the soil I already had from the year before, but I got a higher proportion of nice, large chestnuts. Less peeling for more crunch.

By the way the other produce in the photo is from the garden as well- mandarins, tomatoes, limes, passionfruit and lemons. It happened to be on the bench so I lined it up together.

We have only just finished using the chestnuts from last year, they remained fresh and crisp in sealed containers in the crisper of the fridge for a whole year but this year we will be eating more of them. I have discovered they are also good in salads, adding sweetness and crunch.  Since my husband is one of the few men who prefer salad to vegetables, he will be very happy.

That Old Chestnut- how to grow new Water Chestnuts from old

Posted by gardenpathfood on August 23, 2013
Posted in: Food, Spring foods, The plants in my garden, Winter Jobs. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

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Yep, I know, I haven’t put anything on here for quite a while but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy.

What you see above is the progression of the Water Chestnuts.

  1. When the tall reed like plants die off in winter (that’s about mid-June here), you put a tarpaulin out on the ground and bring over your tub of dead plants.
  2. Tip them out on to the tarp so the pile is upside down then start sorting through it. Rubber gloves are good here.
  3. Then pop the dirt back in the tub as you sort, and some of the small chestnuts you missed will probably go back in. You will be left with a lovely pile of the larger chestnuts. See that pile of lovely chestnuts in the middle photo.
  4. Pick out a couple of the smaller chestnuts and push them back in to the soil in the pot.
  5. Put a little of the old reeds on top for a little bit of protection, fill the tub with water and keep it topped up about an inch deep until the new shoots appear in about September (although as you see from the photos below, my chestnuts in the horse trough in the full sun shot a lot earlier.  That is all there is to it.  I got about 3 kilos from 2 of these  small tubs and I store them in a lunchbox in the crisper of the fridge checking every time I use some in case there are rotting ones. So far so good.  What I have will probably last us until Christmas for stir fries.

The photograph on the right shows the emerging spikes in mid-August.

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Beanie Babies escape Jack Frost

Posted by gardenpathfood on June 8, 2013
Posted in: Background Information, Eating Seasons, Food, The plants in my garden, Winter Foods. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

It’s been a very warm winter so far and that is the only way I can account for the fact that I still have bulk tomatoes and that there are bean babies coming up in the garden.  You might have noticed that we have been eating butter beans for about 5 months now and in spite of it theoretically being winter, we are still getting a small crop. Beanie BabiesWhen the crop was very heavy, I must have let a few stay on the vine and during a recent dry spell, I found a lot of dried pods with great seeds in them so I have stored them for next summer but….some must have escaped my eagle eye and…we have babies under the frost covers.

For those who didn’t notice that we have been eating butter beans, I am starting some new pages which will record what we are eating/harvesting and what major activities I am undertaking for that month. Look for the page ‘This Month’s Harvest’.

So, the photo below shows the foods which I have been harvesting in this month, although I have forgotten the lemons and limes.  I’ll put them in next months’s photos just so you know.   

June Harvest

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.

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.

Five Minute Inspiration

Posted by gardenpathfood on June 1, 2012
Posted in: Eating Seasons, Food, Recipes, Winter Foods. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

We had mackerel for dinner, the last of last year’s catch. Since it is not my favourite fish and it was not real fresh, I was finding it hard to be inspired by it.

A five minute walk in the garden gave me an answer.

Chinese cabbage, capsicum, spring onion and water chestnut added up to some sort of stir fry and plenty of opportunity to disguise the mackerel a little and increase the fresh vegetable content.

Not bad at all.