June 2022 Kitchen Garden Guide

 (The day after writing this piece I picked up an old Organic Gardener magazine from 2011 which featured an article by Tasmanian chook man Paul Healy. Most of how I feed my chooks came from the advice Paul used to give on the radio on Saturday mornings, just as he describes in this magazine article.)

Various things are happening in my garden which indicate that the plants know a thing or two about the season that I do not.  Firstly, self-sown miners lettuce and corn salad are both coming up at the same time. This is a treat because I love them both and usually have to wait until almost the end of winter for the corn salad to appear, which then grows quickly before running to seed. Another thing is that frost has not yet knocked off the yacon leaves, which are very large and generally have turned black by now, telling me it is time to harvest the tubers. The BOM forecast for the southern Tasmania winter says we are in for warmer than average days and nights during winter, with average rainfall. With this in mind, I will wait for a while longer before covering my lemon tree with fleece.

Sprouts and microgreens

Shorter days and low sun angle in Tasmania mean plant growth is very slow during winter. These also affect humans, mentally and physically. The best approach to maintaining your health and vitality at this time includes making every mouthful as nourishing as possible. It is time to grow sprouts and microgreens because those very first moments of a seed’s germination are packed full of enzymes and nutrients.

SPROUTS (grown in a jar or container, without soil or the need for sunlight) should be eaten when the growth is only a couple of mm long, not left to grow long. My favourites are: lentils, chickpeas, fenugreek, buckwheat, mung beans, all of which only take 2-3 days. Wash well before eating to wash off the phytates. Some people prefer to blanch them before eating, but I don’t.

MICROGREENS (sown thickly in a tray of soil and raised in a sunny window or greenhouse) are cut with scissors and eaten when they have their first true leaves after the initial 2 baby leaves. This may take 2 – 3 weeks. There is excellent information on the Green Harvest website. Anything with edible leaves will make delicious, nutritious microgreens for salads.

Keeping chooks laying during winter

There are some absolutely gorgeous looking chooks but I have chooks to lay eggs, to constantly turn my weeds, finished plants and autumn leaves into compost, to chat with and to add their bedding to my worm farm. So, I have hylines or isabrowns, which are chooks that have been bred to lay. I don’t have roosters. Every November I get 2 new, point of lay hylines because I know from experience that 2 older chooks will die during the year, from old age or raptor attack or something else (I rarely eat my chooks). Buying them in November ensures that they get laying as we come into summer and they will keep laying pretty much every day for at least 2 years. Having 2 young chooks seems to also keep the older chooks in a laying frame of mind longer!

They have all day access to Red Hen grains (the one without animal protein). In the late afternoon I give them a small amount of organic wheat and sunflower seeds that have been soaked in water for 24 hours. If I have some unused stock or milk or anything else, I use that but water is fine. Soaked grain is more nutritious (as in the sprouts above) and feeding them late in the day ensures that they go to bed with a full crop, which evidently keeps them warmer at night.

They have access to water, which has a clove of garlic in it, for their health and for worm control. I don’t refresh their water until is it running low. I don’t find it necessary to treat them for anything (parasites, mites etc). They love freshly picked greens and I give them some most days, on the ground, held down by a brick, so they can tear off what they need.

Their coop is deliberately airy, but dry. They have a big free range area under the fruit trees and often out in my front garden, away from my vegetables. Dust bathing is very important and the ground under the oak trees stays fairly dry, which is handy. I don’t fuss about with chook care! But I talk to them and touch them or pick up them every day so they are easy for me to handle if I need to trim their wings or deal with for any reason. New chooks, like new puppies, learn from the older ones so having calm, happy, older chooks is really important.

I have not bought eggs for 20 years or more and currently have 3 chooks.

 

Seeds to sow in June Sow in the garden: Broad beans Salad and spring onions Shallots Chives English spinach Radishes Sow in trays to plant out later: Brassicas Globe Artichokes Coriander Chervil Lettuce Rocket Asian greens Free seeds available at the Cygnet Seed Library (see facebook page)

Plant out Garlic Asparagus crowns Divide rhubarb Winter herbs: coriander, chervil etc Winter flowering annuals Globe artichokes Bulbs Asian greens Lettuce Spinach Winter Reading Herb: a cook’s companion by Mark Diacono…. An absolutely fabulous book about making the most of herbs, in every way   Eat Wild Tasmanian by Rees Campbell…. About growing and eating Tasmanian edible plants

 

Jobs for June -Prune deciduous trees except cherries and apricots -Feed and mulch the dripline of fruit trees with anything you have, including seaweed and good sprinklings of ash from the fire. -Collect seaweed (especially kelp) after winter storms and cover your asparagus patch with it. Brassicas also love it. Wonderful added to your compost too. -Walk in the forests and see the fungi

-Lacto-ferment root veg and sprout seeds to add vitality and nourishment to your body during winter. -Take time to read, write, walk, swim, breathe, cook and think. -Make a wonderful pesto with chervil and almonds / rocket and pistachios / parsley and walnuts. ---Make hempseed butter for hot toast and honey. -Check out my blogs for food and gardening inspiration…. Vegetable Vagabond and Gardeners Gastronomy

June 2015 Kitchen Garden Guide

 A garden in your kitchen

For health, variety, taste, texture and the pure joy of it, I love growing sprouts; especially during winter when nights draw in early and a trip to the vegetable garden for a late picking can be a dark, cold and wet experience.

Seeds are dormant; waiting patiently for the right conditions to burst into life. At that moment of germination, evolution has enabled extraordinary changes to occur inside the seed, similar to the transformation of a caterpillar to a butterfly. Energy stored by the seed is put to work, creating elements that were seemingly not there before, like the wings of the butterfly that were absent in the caterpillar. In seeds, enzymes are activated and go into production making root cells that, in the soil, reach down to attach the seed to the earth and extract nutrients to start the growth of the top of the plant.

All gardeners know how attractive the first shoots of our sown crops are to every animal and many insects; munching off newly emerged seedlings as they shoot out above the soil!! Sprouted seeds are equally good for us humans and every opportunity should be seized to eat home grown sprouts as soon as the first evidence of a shoot has appeared as this is the stage when the seed has created the most nutrients to see itself succeed in life.

Seeds brought into Australia have been irradiated and are dead. They are not food, have lost most of their nutrients and will never sprout. You must use organic seeds for sprouting or, at the very least, Australian-grown seeds.

I use a layered sprouter so I can add layers day by day, ensuring one tray of sprouts is always at hand for my lunch. My favourite things to sprout are chick peas, red lentils, green lentils, mung beans and fenugreek. I eat a tray of one of them every day, mixed with salad greens and my wonderful ginger carrot fermented pickle. Because of the protein, enzymes and vitamins in this lunch, I am energized for the afternoon and never feel drowsy. If I crave a hot lunch, I simply sprinkle the tray of sprouts over some soup when I serve it (so as not to overheat them and kill the enzymes, which are very heat sensitive).

I also sprout seeds such as rye, spelt, quinoa and barley for adding to my home made sourdough bread and for steaming in place of rice, for example, or adding to stews at the last minute.

Sprouts are a powerhouse of nutrition and a delight to have growing in your kitchen all year round. Don’t use them as a condiment to just add beauty to a dish, make them the main player and feel your body sing!

Outside in June

I adore the feel of really crisp air on my face; the white air we get here on a very frosty, early morning dash to bring in more firewood, that makes your cheeks glow and covers your hair in fine droplets.

Gardening in the cold is a challenge, as gloves get wet, fingers go numb and too much clothing makes jobs awkward. However, if the sun is out, even a very cold day becomes glorious and a few minutes pruning or doing other outdoor work warms your insides as nothing else can. It is a tonic. As you rest on your spade, close your eyes, face the sun and let the rays activate the capillaries beneath your eyelids.

It is a great time to prepare beds for spring by trampling down weeds and grasses, sprinkling a layer of lime, throwing over some vegetable scraps and sheep manure or Tasmanian blood and bone then covering thickly with wet paper or cardboard. On top of that go generous amounts of compost or grass clippings or even tree prunings that include a lot of leaves. Lastly, cover with thick but fluffed-up straw (best) or hay from a mostly weed-free source. Leave for 3 months, or longer if you like.

If you leave it for longer, pay attention to weeds emerging from the hay etc and also remove any now-denuded branches from the prunings. Plant well-grown seedlings directly into this, without digging it at all, in spring or sow big seeds like beans once frost is past. (Small seeds need a fine tilth to get going. Raking to a fine tilth is one of my favourite activities!).

 

Books for winter reading The Enzyme Factor (Hiromi Shinya). Amazingly useful info. Bitter (Jennifer McLagan) The history of bitter vegetables, herbs and drinks plus recipes and health information. How to Grow and Use Sprouts (Isabel Shipard) Growing Vegetables South of Australia  (Steve Solomon) May 2015 edition now out. Totally revised.

 

 

Winter herbs for health and flavour Do you love pesto and lament the end of fresh basil from your garden? Well I make a wonderful pesto with chervil and almonds / rocket and pistachios / parsley and walnuts. There are so many lovely herbs that either grow and thrive only in winter or continue to hold their colour and flavour even in winter. The former includes the slightly aniseed chervil, with its pretty, soft ferny leaves which I grow as a block and clip by the handful, with scissors. Also in this category is coriander with its robust flavour and growth habit. Rocket is a favourite at the Cygnet Community Garden. Parsley is a fabulous winter herb, readily self-sows and is useful all through winter in meals and as a wonderful source of vitamin C, in our climate where oranges are rare in our gardens.

 

 

Seeds to sow in June Sow in the garden: Broad beans Salad and spring onions Shallots Chives English spinach Radishes Plant out Garlic Asparagus crowns Divide rhubarb Winter herbs Winter flower annuals Globe artichokes Sunchokes Bulbs

Sow in trays: Brassicas Artichokes Coriander Chervil Lettuce Rocket Asian greens Jobs for June Prune deciduous trees for growth except cherries and apricots. (Prune for shaping after fruiting in late summer/ early autumn) Lime and mulch the dripline of fruit trees with anything you have, including seaweed. Collect seaweed (especially kelp) after winter storms and cover your asparagus patch with it. Brassicas also love it. Wonderful added to your compost too.