May 2021 Kitchen Garden Guide

 Late autumn is my favourite time of year in the kitchen garden. The harvesting and preserving pressures are finished, seeds have been collected and stored, there has been some rain, everything is green, self-sown treasures are popping up everywhere, and the sowing and planting pressures of spring are months away. Now is the time to work on the soil, to reshape beds, to make compost, to prune, to protect tender plants and to sit on the verandah in the sun and watch the light as it changes day by day. Brassicas are flourishing, Chilean guavas and cape gooseberries can be picked by the handful as you pass by, grape leaves are turning and apples are abundant. Life is good, here in southern Tasmania.

Shorter days and frosty nights

Some plants (and people) love shortening days and freezing nights and  will thrive throughout winter. Such vegetables and herbs include alliums, such as garlic and garlic chives, onions, walking onions and potato onions and as well as brassicas and broad beans but also some surprising things, like lettuce and Asian greens. Two varieties of winter lettuce that readily self-sow in my garden, oakleaf and freckles, are coming up now. I prick some out and transplant to fill gaps elsewhere and some I leave to grow in situ, with no protection at all. Bok choy, mizuna, daikon radish, frilly mustard, chicory, endive and others also thrive in the cold, without any protection and even in a little shade. Winter is a beautiful time for the food gardener and forager.

Stinging Nettles

Nettles are abundant too, in cool, damp spots, making excellent soup, pesto, tea and a brew for the garden. In France, nettle tea is regularly used as a tonic for plants that lack vigour, where packets of dried nettles for that purpose can be found in garden centres. In your own garden, don a pair of washing up gloves and cut nettles with scissors, leaving enough to regrow. Put the whole lot, stems and all, into a bucket with a lid. Cover with water and leave for a couple of weeks. Dilute and water over anything that needs a lift. For yourself, pick as you need, check for insects, dirt and dead leaves then, with tongs, put the whole lot into a coffee plunger, so it is stuffed full. Pour over boiling water and leave to steep for at least 10 minutes. Press the plunger down and enjoy. Refresh once more before starting again. Pesto made with half fresh nettles, half parsley plus walnuts, garlic, olive oil and parmesan cheese is the perfect quick lunch, spread on toasted, home made sourdough or scooped up with carrot sticks, celery etc.

Nettle soup

Cook 1 onion in a pan until soft

Add lots of nettles (leaves roughly picked from stems), 1 large potato, 1 large carrot, 1 litre good, light stock and cook 15 mins or until the potato is well cooked.

Blend and add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with a dollop of yoghurt or a drizzle of olive oil or neither.

Seaweeds

Tasmania is surrounded by sea and yet we tend not to forage the shores and shallows for food. Did you know that our soils are low in magnesium and that this means your vegetables are too (unless care has been taken to add magnesium to the soil, usually by using dolomite lime or Epsom salts)? Magnesium is vitally important for our health. Magnesium can also be added to the soil simply by adding seaweeds to your compost or liquid feed. Magnesium can be added to your diet more directly by eating the seaweed yourself. All of the longest lived peoples of the world eat many different sea plants; think Okinawa (Japan) and Sicily.

Wakame (Undaria pinnatifida) is a common seaweed in Tasmanian waters but it is an introduced weed, probably arriving on the bottom of Asian ships and making a home from St. Helens to Dover. Search the internet for photos so you can identify it. I don’t know of any plants in our seas that are toxic but, the sad thing is, some of our coastline has been raped by industry plus land and sea farming which has left toxic residues in our once pristine waters.

The regulations for taking seaweeds from the beach, according to the DIPIPWE website, is for 100kgs / day. Seaweeds should never be taken directly from the sea.

Garlic

Garlic varieties are many and each has its own ideal planting time. I like to plant an early, a mid and a late season variety. May is mid season. Garlic is reasonably shallow rooted so a friable, well-drained 15cms of soil will do. Poke the best cloves you can find into the soil, about 15cm apart, cover over, water once then leave them alone. All the information you need can be found on the Tasmanian Gourmet Garlic facebook page and website.

Sow in the garden now	Plant in the garden now
Broad beans Bok Choy Mustard greens esp. frilly Miners’ lettuce Corn salad (mache) Shungiku (edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad and spring onions Coriander Chervil Stinging nettles (for teas and pestos all winter) Calendula	Perennial Leek bulbils including elephant garlic Garlic cloves Potato onions Seedlings of Asian veg. Flower bulbs Sow in trays to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli raab Red onions Sow to stay in the hothouse or outside in frost-free areas: Sugar snap peas, podding peas

May 2020 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

Millions of people all over the world have started growing food for the first time, which has even caused a shortage of seeds. People are cooking a lot more than ever before too. Families are sitting together for meals. School at home is including measuring ingredients, following recipes, planning menus, using up what is in the fridge in creative ways, as well as preparing garden beds, harvesting fruit and saving seeds. Isn’t this how life is meant to be? After all, food production, preparation and eating encompasses every school subject you can think of!

Making the most of chook yard design

Being at home, it is a good time to look at your garden and explore ways to make it more user friendly. This is where permaculture design can help and is worth researching.

You can harvest many products and gain many services from a well thought out chook yard, besides the obvious eggs. My chooks range under half a dozen fruit trees. Their kind services here include constant vigilance for coddlin moth and other pests that overwinter at the base of trees, everyday manuring, turning of the mulch and eradicating weeds and grasses that germinates there as well as cleaning up some (but not all) fallen fruit.

The product I appreciate most is their production of the most beautiful leaf soil from the fallen leaves of two large oak trees that overhang the chook yard. Thousands of oak leaves fall from now into winter and form a very thick layer of gorgeous dry leaves which is the playground for the chooks all winter. They constantly turn it, manure it and crush it, while the rain dampens it, resulting in a very fine, deliciously soft, quite acidic, leaf mold or leaf soil by mid spring. I rake it up and spread it around liberally wherever acid loving plants grow (such as blueberries and strawberries) and where I am going to plant acid loving plants such as tomatoes. Left for another year it can be used with worm castings and something light, like perlite, as a seed raising mix or added to potting mix.

(Last year I gathered lots and lots of the fallen oak leaves from one of the trees and put them into 3 large sacks. The resulting compost or leaf mold is now good enough to eat on your muesli, as Peter Cundall would say. I look forward to making good use of it.)

If you don’t have such a luxury, just cover the chook yard in any old hay, raked up autumn leaves, finished tomato plants etc. Peter Cundall recommends you throw around some lime under the hay. If you use dolomite, you will be adding magnesium and it is gentler on chook feet than other lime too, as they scratch about all winter. I use woodash.

In order to have a constant supply of greenery for chooks, it is a great idea to surround the perimeter of their yard, outside the fence, with things they like to eat. Plantings right up against the fence will poke leaves through or even over into the chook yard and allow the chooks a constant supply of your favourite vegetables without you having to do anything! Leaving some things to go to seed and fall into the chook yard will give them a good addition to their seed intake.

Useful leaf plants for this include chards, comfrey, parsley, nasturtiums etc. Useful seed plants include amaranth, small sunflower seeds, millet, wheat etc.  Useful fruits include strawberries and any soft fruit. For more info check online.

Cuttings

May is the perfect time for taking cuttings of deciduous plants like grape vines, glory vines and black and red currants as well as for rosemary, Chilean guavas and other evergreen edibles. Cut lengths of new grape vine growth to include 4 buds. Put into a damp, light, potting mix deep enough for 2 buds to go below the soil and two above. A cheap potting mix with no added nutrients is best. With rosemary and other evergreens, strip the leaves off the bottom 2/3 of a cutting and place into damp potting mix. You can put several in a pot. Cover with a plastic bag secure with a rubber band. Leave in a sheltered place and keep just damp, not wet, until spring. Check for root growth then and pot up to grow on further or leave longer. Some will take much longer than others, so be patient!

If this all sounds like too much hard work, grab yourself a bottle of linseed oil, mix it half with turps, sit in the sunshine and rub an oiled cloth over the handles of all your garden tools. Listen to the birds, breathe our clean air and be grateful for the safe place we find ourselves in.

Books, websites, courses and facebook pages

Books:

Paradise and Plenty by Mary Keen…. The inside workings of the legendary, productive garden at Lord Rothschild's private house, Eythrope in Buckinghamshire, England

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe…. How first Australians farmed and managed the land as recorded by all the explorers of the day.

Around the World in 80 plants by Stephen Barstow…. A compendium of 80 perennial, edible plants from around the world, with stories and recipes. Amazing!

Online:

For Tasmanian relevant, food gardening articles, videos, courses and more check out the “Milkwood” website.

Join a local facebook page such as Food Gardeners Tasmania, Tasmanian Fungi, Preserving Folk, Cygnet Seed Library, Tasmanian Bushtucker, Crop Swap and others from further afield such as Wild food and Hedgewitchery, Earth Homes, Huws Nursery, Garden Art, Junk and Antiques and so many more!

Sow in the garden now	Plant in the garden now
Broad beans Bok Choy Mustard greens esp. frilly Miners’ lettuce Corn salad (mache) Shungiku (edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad and spring onions Coriander Chervil Stinging nettles (for teas and pestos all winter)	Perennial Leek bulbils including elephant garlic Garlic cloves Seedlings of Asian veg. Flower bulbs Sow in the hothouse to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli raab Red onions Sow to stay in the hothouse or outside in frost-free areas: Sugar snap peas, podding peas

2019 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

Hooray for rain; the sound of it on a tin roof at night, the approach of it across the hills and waterways, the feel of it on my face when I pop out to feed the chooks and the comfort it brings to gardeners and their gardens, from the worms and microbes to towering trees. Rain in autumn means everything is going to be ok.

Autumn is a wonderful time for harvesting mushrooms, kale, French sorrel, salad leaves, early broccoli, rainbow chard, bok choy, wasabi greens, the last of our summer vegetables, the first of the edible, winter weeds and a myriad of fabulous apples, pears and quinces. Many kitchens are bulging at the seams with preserves. Bring on winter and cosy nights by the fire with some home-made cassis and quince paste served with a delicious, local cheese.

The many moods of compost making

I recently attended two fabulous and innovative sessions which included information on making the most of compost preparation. One of these was at Government House in Hobart where the compost maker, Jimmy, took us through current thinking which challenges the aerobic, or lasagne, heap we are all familiar with. Fermenting, which is anaerobic, as a way of preserving food and increasing its available nutrients is on everyone’s lips, so to speak. But fermenting is also useful for improving the diversity and numbers of microbes in our compost. Here are his guidelines.

Gather your ingredients as usual. Green (leaves etc), brown (hay, dry leaves etc), high nitrogen (fresh manure/ seed meal).

Spread all green material in a thin layer, spraying with fine mist of low concentration compost microbes (available locally). Then spread all the brown/carbon thinly on top and spray another fine mist on as much material as you can, but without wetting it too much. The material is actually fairly dry on the whole but seeded up with microbes across as wide a surface area as possible. The microbes inhabit and colonise that film of moisture on the organic matter as he understands it, and the greater the concentration and diversity of microbes the greater the water retention will be, it will create and hold on to moisture as the fermentation happens.

Then spread horse or other manure and he also adds some neutrog seamungus. If they have some food scraps from the bokashi bin in the kitchen he will throw them on too. This is only small volume but could do way more if they get more from kitchen.

 

The ratio he works to is normally 3 Brown (carbon): 2 Green: 1 High Nitrogen - the idea being a higher carbon makes the biology of the compost more fungal dominated.

 

He sometimes ends up with more like a 3:3:1 which is good too - probably tips the compost to a more bacterial dominance. 

 

Once all material is spread out thinly (300mm ish deep) and sprayed/inoculated, I push it all together in a heap so it's all mixed thoroughly. Compress it down as much as you can, cover it with a tarp and secure it down. It can be turned anytime after a couple of weeks. At first turn I spread the pile out and re-apply EM in 50% less concentration. 

 

He finds that one turn at 3-4 weeks then another in another 3-4 then take off cover and in a couple of weeks its ready to go and full of worms.

How I pickle olives:

So many people have asked me so here is the answer….

3 kg black olives, firm but black all over (I have never done it with green)

3 Tbl salt

12 Tbl olive oil

600mls white / cider vinegar

1.25 litres water ( boiled and cooled)

optional : 1 clove garlic / jar

1 small red chilli (or less)/ jar

dried oregano or other herbs

 

After picking, wash then slit each olive on 1 or 2 sides (depending on how big the olives are. If small, omit this step). Place in a large, ceramic bowl and cover with ordinary tap water. Try an olive, so you know what you are starting with. It will be shockingly bitter!

Change the water daily for 10 - 14 days, until you can bite into one and not spit it out in disgust! It should still have flavour but not be unbearably bitter nor bland. Strain.

Sterilise some jars (I find 3kg olives makes about 12 medium jars). Place olives into jars. Putting in some / all / none of the optional  ingredients as you go. (I usually don't use any now because I prefer the real olive flavour)

Mix the boiled water, vinegar, salt and olive oil in a bowl. Pour into the jars making sure you cover the olives completely. Put on well-fitting lids.

Wait at least 2 weeks before starting to eat. You will find the flavour changes with time - some people prefer them with the 'fresh' taste you get after 2 weeks, others prefer the more mellow flavour after 6 months or more.

They should be stored in a cupboard but when you open a jar put it in the fridge if your kitchen is hot. I always put open jars in the fridge in summer or they go mouldy, but I never do in winter as I eat them pretty fast and I don't use huge jars.

 

 

Sow in the garden now	Plant in the garden now
Broad beans Bok Choy Mustard greens esp. frilly Miners’ lettuce Corn salad (mache) Shungiku (edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad and spring onions Coriander Chervil  Stinging nettles (for teas and pestos all winter)	Leek bulbils Garlic cloves Seedlings of Asian veg. Flower bulbs Sow in the hothouse to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli raab Red onions Sow to stay in the hothouse or outside in frost-free areas: Sugar snap peas

2018 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

As the heat of the Tasmanian sun reduces a little this time of year we have been enjoying day after day of perfect weather for gardening. I have been gathering some more edible, Tasmanian plants for my garden including a prostrate form of Podocarpus lawrencei, the mountain plum pine, which has the lovely red berries I saw when walking in the Hartz mountains recently. I have also planted a few unusual herbs, including vanilla grass (Hierochloe odorata), which tastes and smells remarkably like vanilla.

The arc of the sun is distinctly lower and the days shorter so, although it is warm, plants will be increasingly slower to grow…. except the weeds! Many people in Europe still forage, not just for mushrooms, but for winter herbs and greens and roots which are native to their lands. Many of them grow wild in our gardens but we silly Australians pull them out, calling them weeds and give them to the chooks, who happily devour them because they are not so prejudiced! There is an excellent Australian book called The Weed Foragers’ Handbook, which I highly recommend. Soon, you will be eating from the garden without planting anything at all!

Autumn is a wonderful time for harvesting mushrooms, kale, French sorrel, salad leaves, early broccoli, rainbow chard, the last of our summer vegetables, the first of the winter weeds and a myriad of fabulous apples, pears and quinces. Many kitchens are bulging at the seams with preserves. Bring on winter and cosy nights by the fire with some home-made cassis and quince paste served with a delicious, local cheese

Garlic

Plant out hard neck varieties in May and even June. In spring they will produce tall, curly, green stems called scapes, which are fabulously delicious. I leave some to grow scapes but most I cut off so more energy goes into growing the bulbs. These will be ready to harvest in January or even February and have a hard stem, right down into the garlic head. In a wet summer, these survive better than the softnecks as they are less prone to rot because of the way they grow tight around the hard neck.

Check out Tasmanian Gourmet Garlic website and Facebook page for excellent, local information about growing garlic.

Energy

Energy is everywhere and now is the time to think about how to make your life attuned to capturing and storing it. In a handful of seeds is the energy to start a whole season’s food. In a bale of hay is the energy from a year’s pasture growth, ready to decompose and feed the microbes in your soil, which in turn feed your food garden. In a jar of fermented pickles are the fruits of a plant’s labour and millions of bacteria all working to provide your gut with life and energy. In a brick fireplace is stored the energy from the heat of firewood; trees that have grown for many years, capturing energy enough to warm us all winter. In water is the energy of life, without which nothing on earth can live.

Which is the opposite of wasting energy - by driving cars out of your zone to get food, by draining your land instead of harnessing the water, by burning piles of prunings instead of making hugels or mulch, by throwing away your food scraps instead of making compost or worm farms, by buying food brought in from other lands, by using up oil reserves (eg in cling film, disposable bags, foam trays) we should be saving for important uses like saving lives.

Shop locally, really locally, starting in your backyard and those of your neighbours and friends. Participate in local Crop Swaps. Go to your most local market and small, ethical shops. Eat what is there! Read books like The Food Clock by Fast Ed Halmagyi to help bring the joy of the seasons into your kitchen, your life and the future of humanity!

Cuttings and division

Now is the perfect time for softwood cuttings of deciduous plants like grape vines, glory vines and black currants as well as for rosemary, Chilean guavas and other evergreen edibles. Cut lengths of new grape vine growth to include 4 buds. Put into a damp, light, potting mix deep enough for 2 buds to go below the soil and two above. A cheap potting mix with no added nutrients is best. With rosemary and other evergreens, strip the leaves off the bottom 2/3 of a cutting and place into potting mix. You can put several in a pot. Cover with a plastic bag secure with a rubber band. Leave in a sheltered place and keep just damp, not wet, until spring. Check for root growth and pot up to grow on further or leave longer. Don’t let them get too hot or dry out.

I have been dividing clumps of French sorrel, which is a beautiful, lemony leaf that grows all year and is delicious in salads and commonly in soup, in France. Here’s a recipe search tip…. Translate an ingredient (eg sorrel) into the language of the cuisine where it is commonly used (ie French, in this case, oseille). Then type oseille recette into the search bar and voila! You have dozens of genuine French recipes for using sorrel, which can then easily be translated into English!

Sow in the garden now	Plant in the garden now
Broad beans Bok Choy Mustard greens esp. frilly Miners’ lettuce Corn salad (mache) Shungiku (edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad and spring onions Coriander Chervil	Leek bulbils Garlic cloves Seedlings of Asian veg. Flower bulbs Sow in the hothouse to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli raab Red onions Sow to stay in the hothouse or outside in frost-free areas: Sugar snap peas

May 2016 Kitchen Garden Guide

 

Land weeds

Hooray, hooray, at my place there have been more than 30mm of rain this week. It is just a little of what we need but it means our winter kitchen gardens can now start to grow, and that means the weeds too! Many of the weeds make excellent winter greens, especially when young. After all, they are here in Tasmania because someone brought them here, to eat, in the first place, then they got away.

Many people in Europe still forage, not just for mushrooms, but for winter herbs and greens and roots which are native to their lands. Many of them grow wild in our gardens but we silly Australians pull them out, calling them weeds and give them to the chooks, who happily devour them because they are not so prejudiced! There is an excellent Australian book called The Weed Foragers’ Handbook, which I highly recommend. Soon, you will be eating from the garden without planting anything at all!

Luckily, the cooler weather also heralds the end of the cabbage moth laying eggs on our brassicas. If you have not planted brassicas yet, it is now too late as the plants will not have big enough leaves to grow through winter. When spring comes, they will bolt to seed and you won’t get a crop.

Autumn is a wonderful time for harvesting mushrooms, kale, French sorrel, salad leaves, early broccoli, rainbow chard, the last of our summer vegetables, the first of the winter weeds and a myriad of fabulous apples, pears and quinces. Many kitchens are bulging at the seams with preserves. Bring on winter and cosy nights by the fire with some home-made cassis and quince paste served with a delicious, local cheese! I will be using my bottled tomatoes all year and smiling every time.

Seaweeds

Tasmania is surrounded by sea and yet we tend not to forage the shores and shallows for food. Did you know that our soils are low in magnesium and that this means your vegetables are too (unless care has been taken to add magnesium to the soil, usually by using dolomite lime or Epsom salts)? Magnesium is vitally important for our health. Magnesium can also be added to the soil simply by adding seaweeds to your compost or liquid feed. Magnesium can be added to your diet more directly by eating the seaweed yourself. All of the longest lived peoples of the world eat many different sea plants; think Okinawa (Japan) and Sicily.

Wakame (Undaria pinnatifida) is a common seaweed in Tasmanian waters but it is an introduced weed, probably arriving on the bottom of Asian ships and making a home from St. Helens to Dover. You can harvest it (or buy it) to your heart’s content because you are helping to control its spread. Red Lettuce or Grateloupia turuturu  is another introduced seaweed to the Tasmanian coast. This one is nutritious and a colourful addition to your meal. Search the internet for photos so you can identify them. I don’t know of any plants in our seas that are toxic but, the sad thing is, some of our coastline has been raped by industry plus land and sea farming which has left toxic residues in our once pristine waters.

Making the most of chook yard design

You can harvest many products and gain many services from a well thought out chook yard, besides the obvious eggs. My chooks range under half a dozen fruit trees. Their kind services here include constant vigilance for coddlin moth and other pests that overwinter at the base of trees, everyday manuring, turning of the mulch and eradicating of weeds and grass that germinates there as well as cleaning up some (but not all) fallen fruit.

The product I appreciate most is their production of the most beautiful leaf soil from the fallen leaves of two large oak trees that overhang the chook yard. Thousands of oak leaves fall from now into winter and form a very thick layer of gorgeous dry leaves which is the playground for the chooks all winter. They constantly turn it, manure it and crush it, while the rain dampens it, resulting in a very fine, deliciously soft, quite acidic, leaf mould or leaf soil by mid spring. I rake it up and spread it around liberally wherever acid loving plants grow (such as blueberries and strawberries) and where I am going to plant acid loving plants such as tomatoes. Left for another year it can be used with sand as a seed raising mix or added to potting mix, but all this waiting is far too complex for me to organise!

If you don’t have such a luxury, just cover the chook yard in any old hay, raked up autumn leaves, finished tomato plants etc. Peter Cundall recommends you throw around some lime under the hay. If you use dolomite, you will be adding magnesium and it is gentler on chook feet than other lime too, as they scratch about all winter.

In order to have a constant supply of greenery for chooks, it is a great idea to surround the perimeter of their yard with things they like to eat. This is easy to do if you have designed this idea into your food production system in the first place and placed the chook yard within the vegetable garden boundary, like a small box inside a larger box, thus making the outer perimeter of the chook yard, the inner perimeter of the vegetable garden. Plantings right up against the fence will poke leaves through and even over into the chook yard and allow the chooks a constant supply of your favourite vegetables without you having to do anything! Leaving some things to go to seed and fall into the chook yard will give them a good addition to their seed intake.

This design also allows you to let them range, from time to time, in a temporarily fenced section of the vegetable garden simply by opening one of a serious of gate options. They will eat the grass, remove weed seeds, manure it and turn it to a fine tilth. Then you simply close the gate, rake it over and start sowing or planting!

Sow in the garden now	Plant Now
Broad beans Bok Choy Mustard greens esp. frilly Miners’ lettuce Corn salad (mache) Shungiku (edible, Japanese Chrysanthemum) Radishes Salad and spring onions Coriander Chervil Sow in the hothouse to plant out: Lettuces Kales Broccoli raab Sow to stay in the hothouse or frost-free area: Sugar snap peas	Leek bulbils Garlic cloves Large seedlings of Asian veg. Flower bulbs Plant and grow in the hothouse: Celery (loves it there over winter), 1 or 2 of lots of things, so you can pick a few things when it is raining in the garden…. lettuce, parsley, viet. mint, lemon grass, chervil, frilly kale (small variety) for salads, shungiku, sugar snap peas….