This summer has been so hot and dry I've had trouble keeping the tomatoes alive, and the pumpkins and eggplants have struggled along. The faithful zucchinis and squashes have kept us eating veg most of the week (especially the VERY prolific Tromboncino) and cucumbers failed to even get far off the ground. What a year. The upside to the hot, dry conditions is the avalanche of chillies filling the kitchen.
We've been eating some of them fresh, and leaving some in a basket in the hot sunroom to dry out. Matt even made a giant batch of curry paste to freeze for our favourite red curry. I think that's been the most successful dish of the summer: 'garden curry' with eggplant, zucchini and pumpkin, chillies, basil and galangal, all from the garden. Delicious! It's based on the red curry recipe from 'Cooking with Poo' (yes, that's the real title I promise, you can check it out here http://www.handicrafts.org.au/contents/en-us/d63.html). There are some great recipes in it, but this is my favourite.
We're growing 3 different chillies this year, the mildest being the jalapenos, next the long red chillies, and finally my all time favourite the Purple Dragon. It has gorgeous purple, white and green variegated leaves, with purple flowers that turn into purple fruits, and turn red as they ripen. They look beautiful all year round, and this one is 2 years old now. It is super-hot though, and I usually only use 1 or 2 of the tiny little gems in a meal. I have had to apologise to my dear sister for not warning her well enough, resulting in a ruined thai beef salad... but I'm sure she will forgive me!
Today though, I'm wearing my warm pyjamas and a jumper. It has finally been raining, and it's such a divine sound on the roof. Hopefully it's just in time to get some corn and the last of the tomatoes before it cools down, and then I'll have to get cracking planting some winter veg seeds.
This Summer has included a new vegetable adventure; growing beans for drying to use in the future. I'm picturing beany soups and stews, maybe some delicious nachos or salads. We will see what we can come up with!
For now I'm just enjoying the colour and shine, they are truly beautiful. There are Red Kidney and Borlotti beans as well as Cherokee Wax and French Flageolet. I've just been waiting until the bean pods go papery and then picking them, drying the beans themselves on a plate for a few days and then into the jar they go. To the bean mix I've also added the chickpeas and some broad beans that missed being picked and dried out.
The chickpeas have been really interesting to grow, with lovely soft feathery leaves and sweet little white pea-flowers. The strange thing about them is the 'wet' feeling that you get if you brush your hand against them. The hairy covering on the leaves and stems seems to trap moisture, which may be a survival mechanism as they originate in the middle east. What a little beauty!
Summer has certainly arrived, and we're harvesting yellow squash, mixed zucchini and mini golden nugget pumpkins for our dinners! Yummo!
Yesterday I spent the afternoon taking photos of my weeds. Not because I want to show off my neglected areas, but because I'm making dinner. I've recently been reacquainted with my local library, and on the top of my book pile is The Weed Forager's Handbook by Adam Grubb and Annie Raser-Rowland.
I've been inspired to take a second look at the plants I usually pull up and throw out. There are a few reasons for this.
1. I've just finished my university module on weed science, and the first lesson is that a weed is simply a plant growing where you don't want it; the definition is centred on people and their ideas of plants. When you can use something, it stops being a weed.
2. I'm big on reducing my waste around the house, and recycle as much as possible. Weeds usually shouldn't go in the compost, otherwise you end up spreading their seeds back on the garden, and so they are put in my rubbish bin and carted away for landfill. That seems a bit silly to me.
3. Some of these plants are highly nutritious and even better for you than many of the other greens we pay good dollars for, or make space for in the veggie patch.
4. They grow, well, like weeds! this means food for very little effort.
So I embarked on an adventure yesterday- making my favourite fetta and silverbeet quiche supplemented with as many edible weeds as I could find in my garden. And there were more than I expected! The book outlines top 20 useful weeds, their benefits and any notes of caution. As a trained horticulturist, I sure know my weeds! But if you are unsure of any identification, it's best to leave them. Following the first rule of weed foraging, I picked some greens thinking they were probably Fat Hen, but didn't use them because I just couldn't be sure. If anyone can confirm for me, I will include them next time.
Beside this, I found dandelions, milk thistle, oxalis, purslane, angled onion, and amaranthus.
I cooked these up with a few good handfuls of silverbeet from the garden, mixed them with eggs, fetta and a bit of sour cream, filled a half baked shortcrust pastry shell and popped it all in the oven.
The onion weed was a great onion substitute, and the other greens added a nice depth of flavour to the silverbeet.
If you are interested in eating some of the weeds near your place, I do recommend the book as a great place to start. Nutritional and identification information is very helpful, and handy tips for which parts are the tastiest, and how to best use them. I don't use many chemicals in my garden, but also be aware of any pesticides etc. your weeds may have been exposed to.
I have purposely held off posting for 24 hours to ensure there were no ill effects, and I'm happy to report that I'm still alive and well! Next time I reckon I'll try a weed salad, maybe with some edible flowers for decoration...
I mentioned in May that I'm awed by seeds and their ability to transform from a small, hard and seemingly lifeless object into a growing, living plant. I also mentioned in August that I'd been collecting flowers from Acacias along the roadside on the way to work, and identifying them. It's a good thing I did, because now it's wattle seed season! My eye keeps catching them as I go whizzing by, and I can't resist collecting them to turn them into hundreds of baby plants! Of course I leave plenty behind to germinate naturally, and I am getting used to the strange looks from the other commuters.This week's collection includes Acacia amblygona, Acacia spectabilis, Hakea salicifolia and Senna artemesioides ssp filifolia. There is also a bag of Acacia decora pods to empty, so I better get to it!
I can never resist trying something new and exotic in my garden, so there's a lot of trial and error happening at our place. The real benefit of that is that I can share some of what does or doesn't work for me! For anyone just starting out growing veggies or whose choice is limited by space, here are my picks for the easiest veg to grow, so that you can make the most of your patch of earth with little effort.
Peas & beans
If you have a little piece of ground and something to climb up, these are hands down the easiest veg to grow, and super productive too. Best grown from seed, just poke them a centimetre or 2 under the ground, water and wait. They say if you soak the seeds in water overnight before planting you will get better germination, but I'm not one to plan far enough ahead to manage it, and the little fellas always come up! Snow peas especially cost a fortune to buy fresh, but they are so easy I can't believe everyone doesn't grow them. PS. Grow peas in cold months, beans in hot ones. PPS. These don't even need much fertiliser- they are legumes and take Nitrogen from the air and put it in the soil. Very clever.
Silverbeet
A great option for spinach lovers that live in warm or dry areas, as English spinach needs cool moist areas to grow nicely. Silverbeet has loads of flavour and is incredibly good for you, I tend to chop it up and add it to just about anything I'm cooking. These days you can find varieties that have different coloured stems, in white, yellow, orange, pink and red, and some of the leaves colour up as well. I find the rainbow mixes just gorgeous in the garden, as well as delicious. The plants are quite long lasting- I grow a new row every 6 months but they can last a year or more if you water them every now and then, and cut the leaves from the outside as you need them.
Cherry tomatoes
Most tomatoes are easy to grow and the flavour is well worth the effort, but the smaller fruiting ones are so hardy they often pop up on their own. Easy to eat too, you can just munch on them while watering the garden, throw them in a salad or roast them whole. Because the fruit is smaller, they don't need staking and often escape the dreaded fruit fly. Kids love to collect and eat them too, so try enticing a fussy eater into the garden with you and see what happens!
Beetroot
A very under-rated vegetable, beetroots are a staple in the garden at our place, and grow almost year-round. I just put them in the ground, and 2 or 3 months later their round tops are bursting out of the soil, asking to be eaten.The beets themselves are wonderful pickled or roasted, and the leaves can be cooked up like spinach when you pull up the roots. There are a few different colours of these available too, and I think the white ones are the sweetest.
Corn
Sweetness and flavour are great incentives to grow your own, as the sugar starts to turn into starch straight after picking. Corn is wind pollinated, so it's best to grow it in blocks rather than rows, to make sure you get full cobs. Other than that, just poke the seed into the ground and watch it grow. They are ready when the cobs feel full and the kernels are yellow if you peek under the husk.
Cucumber
In summer we go through so many cucumbers in salads, wraps and sandwiches. I like to grow the Lebanese cucumbers because the size is convenient, but there are all sorts of shapes and sizes around if you look. They can be a bit rampant if grown on the ground, so they are best given a strong trellis to climb. If you are in a cool moist area they can be a bit prone to mildew, but it's not usually a problem here. You can spray the vine with a milk mixture to keep mildew at bay if you need a safe remedy. If you don't have something for them to climb, zucchini grow on the ground and are just as simple. Just make sure you pick them while they are small, otherwise you will find zucchinis as big as your arm hiding in your veggie patch!
If you don't have much time to devote to your garden or don't know where to start, try some of these. There are so many options available and I can't help wanting to try them all, but in my experience they are the easiest to grow and the most rewarding with plenty of produce. I'm still trying some new plants this summer, and have some chickpeas and mini pumpkins growing, plus some unusual varieties of the old favourite tomatoes, eggplants, zucchini and squash. I will let you know how they go!
