Gardening in public…

I know I keep going on about it, but Carol and I have done an amazing job with the Cygnet Library garden. I spent a couple of hours there on Saturday, weeding, spreading a bit of mulch, planting some new things and watering and I felt like I was 10’ tall. I am so proud of it.

Every plant was chosen for several reasons – first it had to be edible, next it had to cope with VERY shallow soil and lastly, it had to be pretty. And I am pleased to say that, so far, they all score 10/10. Another reason was…. it had to be cheap or free!

We only had a budget of $150 and we spent every cent of that on plants, fertilizer, signage etc. Now we are running on empty but the Cygnet library-goers are regularly donating to a box I put on the counter inside and that is all I now have to keep the garden up to scratch.

It is completely different gardening on a narrow strip of ground between the library and the carpark, compared to in my private acre. I really quite like seeing people constantly coming and going, cars driving in then out and every now and then someone coming over for a chat. Today a German tourist came and sat on the bench and used the free wi-fi provided by the library. We were both pleasantly surprised that it was available even though the library was closed.

A local came and said hello and I picked her a lettuce and some herbs. You see, the garden is for everyone; not much use growing herbs and food if no-one eats it. I wrote a new sign on plastic milk bottle that I put upside down on a stake. It tells you what is ready to pick and encourages everyone to join in. Right now you can pick a few broad beans, some lettuce, kale flowers, all sorts of herbs including marjoram, thyme, rosemary and Vietnamese mint plus edible flowers like marigolds.

The red cabbage is forming a heart now and the black currants are ripening well. Don’t tell anyone but I ate 2 deliciously ripe ones today. I planted out a caraway plant and lots of garlic and plain chives which will clump up and flower later in summer – autumn. I am always looking at the garden with an eye to what will be finishing soon and choosing a few more things to put in to take their place when the time comes. This is how the donations are used.

I am hoping to take this theme up and down the streets of Cygnet, wherever I can get permission to add food to a piece of ground, no matter how small. I have already asked at the Commonwealth Bank and look forward to the reply when the bank opens again!

Happy food gardening!

Hughsli again…. well why not? He is my son!

He works on the preserves and bars and cereals for days, weeks even, then as the weekend draws closer he launches into fresh dips, salads and chocolates. Then he gets up at 3am every Saturday and Sunday (market days) and finishes baking the most amazing cakes, tarts, croissants and breads.

He was so kind; asking me to spend a day in kitchen with him, knowing how much I would love that. Evidently I talked too much (what mother who misses her son, doesn’t talk too much when with him?) and once I made a mistake with resetting the scales but, for my first go at being very accurate AND doing what I am told, I thought I did alright. But get up at 3am the next morning, I did not!

I arrived at the Farmers’ Market much later and saw the joy on his face, heard the jokes with his customers and thought of my many wonderful visits to similar markets in France…..

France….. a cheese man….

Adelaide….. Hugh, his own man…..

Just take a wander through some of the range he took to the market that day, for The House of Hughsli stall….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out Hughsli on Facebook.

Vegetable Vagabond on TV

Do you remember Tino Carnevale and the Gardening Australia team came and filmed at my place back in October?

Well the screening is going to be this coming Sat. May 4th, 6.30pm, ABC1.

I am sooooo nervous! I wonder what they will have made of all those hours of footage they took. Will they make me look like a pathetic old woman who’s crazy about seeds or worse….. only show the fluffy, light bits and not the nitty gritty discussion we had about the demise of the earth’s biodiversity and hence humanity, if we don’t save seeds?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was pretty hard work and there were lots of instructions but soon I forgot I was wired for sound because Tino and I had so much in common…… I bet they don’t show all the food I fed them in my kitchen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wonder if they will show some footage from on top of my hill, where you can see the whole of Cygnet….

 

One thing is for sure, my herb and vegetable gardens looked fantastic, thanks to all my great friends who rallied around, the weekend before, and tidied it all up for me… I wonder how I can get them to come back and do that again soon!!?

Sharon and Scott’s Garden

Our April SeedSaveUs get together was like being in a dream, where the setting and the food gardens combined to produce a paradise that a dozen or so avid gardeners drooled over and investigated, right down to the last worm.

It seems to me that this fruit and veg garden is powered not only by enthusiasm and knowledge but by alpaca poo too. How convenient that alpacas poo in neat piles so collecting it in a wheelbarrow, to make a new compost heap, is a breeze.

Sharon dyed some of the alpaca wool, using totally natural dyes made from  various native plants, after it had been spun and turned into skeins. These are for sale, so if you’d like her to send you some, leave a comment below and I will put you in touch.

 

Scott runs the compost zone and makes enough rich compost to feed the 800 sq. m. garden, plus he uses Steve Solomon’s recipe to make a COF mixture (complete, organic fertiliser) and the system is obviously working.

Sharon’s favourite tomato from the Botanic Gardens selection was Aunt Gertie’s Gold, an enormous and very flavoursome tomato which is still producing its bountiful crop.

As usual the table was laden with goodies brought and shared by the members, including magnificent cakes, a delicious garden veg frittata, fresh sourdough bread and olives, South African rusk (a kind of spiced biscuit, with a texture a bit like violet crumble), apples freshly juiced that morning, a beautiful quiche and more…..

We shared seeds, plants and produce, all of which I forgot to photograph in my excitement to look through them all and hear the stories about them!

A family new to Tasmania joined us today and I look forward to getting to know them better and helping them get started on their adventures in food growing.

Vari’s is closing

To the people of eastern Adelaide, those few words will bring sadness and many happy memories. Frank’s wonderful little Italian grocery shop is packed from floor to the rafters with home made and imported everyday Italian ingredients and foods, all at reasonable prices. Frank arrived in Australia in 1955 and started working in his (late) sister’s shop in 1960 and has worked there ever since, taking it over some years ago.

I started going there in the 1980’s when I lived nearby. It was through Frank that I tasted many Italian things for the first time and every time I went I would buy something I’d never heard of before. He would scoop them out of enormous jars or climb on a wooden ladder and unhook a ribbon tying a bag or bundle of something from the rafters. No space was unused and all the smells of Italy wafted in and out the door….. and now it will all end as rents rise …..and instead, glitzy girls will probably sell plastic ice cream or waifs’ clothing or ipods and earphones.

"I'd just like to thank all the past and present customers and Norwood traders for their support," Mr Vari, 75, says.

"Everybody's been good to me and have made us last so long.

"Everyone from 53 years ago to now, I'd like to thank you with all my heart."

Thanks Frank. Live long and happy, with your family. We won’t forget you.

You can read more here.

Kitchen Garden Day around the world

 

How wonderful it was to be involved in something so positive and so rewarding as sharing the joy of growing our food with so many people, from such varied cultures.

Roger from Kitchen Gardeners International has put together a lovely slide show which you can watch here ….. 

 World Kitchen Garden Day 2012

Nala Pakana hosts SeedSaveUs

My passengers arrived on time. I bundled up my various packets of seeds for sharing, grabbed my basket of food and we set off for Nala Pakana, a property not all that far from my place, for our June SeedSaveUs get together.

It is Tasmania and mid winter so the back of the car was filled with jackets and scarves while feet were shod in warm socks and thick soled shoes. Theresa said turn off at the sign and its a bit more than 3 kms up Scarrs Road to her house in the forest. Well, my car is a city car and I was not prepared for the rough track, having to steer from one side to the other to avoid ditches and rocks. However, we arrived safely, just as another shower of rain raced across the landscape and the strong winds forecast blew us toward Theresa’s haven.

Inside it was warm and cosy. One by one everyone blew in, removing their coats and boots in the dry entrance room, depositing food on the table and finding a space to nestle down with baskets of plants and seeds to be shared later. The house looks like it evolved out of the forest, as every part of it was hand made from the forest and surroundings, before Theresa bought it.

 

About 30 people came this day; several I had not met before, all laden with things to share and stories to tell of growing food. I especially loved the bean seeds Eva brought which had originated from an Italian man who had brought them with him from Italy more than 50 years before and had grown and saved every year since.

  Theresa is an amazing woman, so keen to help people find the best of themselves and live happy and healthy lives.

Outside we met Choco the goat, Audrey and Henry the geese and 2 talkative dogs. Theresa told us how well corrugated iron works to keep out possums, wallabies and other wildlife, while providing shelter from the wind, reflective heat and light for cold sensitive plants and a surface to cover with art!

The teepee is gorgeous and the golden light inside adds to the feeling of warmth and comfort it gives. Theresa wants to run all kinds of workshops and yoga classes in it when it is finished….. and that is another story!

Golden Valley Farm

When Alex and Gina bought this land a few years ago it was nothing but a paddock; no house, no garden. Now it is the most picturesque of market gardens, nestled in Golden Valley, only a short drive from the Cygnet main street. Alex built the house himself then began building himself a future and an income, from scratch and with very little money.

 

Today the small business is not even 2 years old and yet it feels so right. Alex thinks about how to get by with hardly any inputs in order to maximise what he gets out. Its all organic and worked by hand, because he sees his apple orchard neighbour up the road spending his days sitting on a tractor, dressed in plastic from head to toe and breathing through a massive mask and Alex says that is not for him.

Alex has fine tuned the use of various hoes and he walks his garden beds daily, hoe in hand, swiftly and easily removing even the tiniest weed, constantly sharpening the blade. Everything is planted with the hand held hoe in mind and the paths are the width of a larger hoe. Alex looks healthy and vibrant and loves his work.

  Being new to food gardening he seeks knowledge from near and far but he also experiments with growing times and methods, avoiding the use of plastic poly tunnels and other aids that would complicate things at this stage.

 

 

His rebuilt, old shed has been made into a potting shed by replacing the north-facing walls with windows from the tip shop and half of the roof is glass too. This is my kind of potting shed and I am green with envy..... but I have a plan!

Dotted about the garden are large buckets, each with a stick nailed to an old tin, inside, and watering cans. Into the buckets goes seaweed, collected on one of his delivery runs, and water from his dam. A dash of this seaweed liquid is added to a watering can which is filled up with water. New seedlings are given this tonic once they are a couple of weeks out of the ground, and it helps get them quickly established. A thorough addition of dolomtie, gypsum and garden lime are regularly added as well as home made compost blended with rotted rabbit manure, from a local source.

From the very beginning he has used no chemicals. The paddock has systematically been covered in "sheets" of hay bales, laid side by side and end to end for 2 months or more. Once removed, he tills the section with a small, hand tiller. Here in the photo are 2 sections, one being done with hay and the other with plastic. The hay will have added to the soil life when the bales are removed, whereas the plastic will have killed much of the microbial life in the top 2 cms. It is a lot of work to keep shifting the hay bales and they get very heavy and begin to decompose when the weather is wet, so he reluctantly decided to trial the plastic. A third option he is trialing is woollen carpet but it too has problems.

After hearing all Alex had to say and looking over his beautiful land some of us sat and had a picnic in perfect weather, in a perfect setting.

You will find Alex outside the Cygnet market, 1st and 3rd Sundays from 10 - 2, selling his fabulous vegetables and being a charming fellow!

Foraging for Food Walk

All night it poured with rain. All through breakfast it continued. I was sure there would be cancellations. I checked my emails and listened for the phone.... then they started to arrive; early, happy, laden with home-made food and drinks to share. Before long the clouds lifted and as we stood in my lawn, while Jilli gave us her introduction to the world of weeds and herbs through human history, I thought to myself how wonderful it is here.... how lovely the people are..... how they turn up prepared for any weather...how generous they are..... how lucky I am to have Jilli as a neighbour.

We set off to Jilli's and spent a good hour and a half delighting in her amazing knowledge of English edibles which now run rampant in our gardens. Jilli's garden follows the same creek as flows through my garden and on the banks of it she has naturalized what we generally call weeds but are, in fact, the staple foods of the peasants of England for thousands of years. Here we all are, walking beside the trickling stream and looking for the little orange markers Jilli had used to mark the plants we were learning about.....

Telling the difference between Dandelion and....	Cat's Ear, for example....
Jilli's newest composting method is this  woven design from Suweto.	Then back at my place for a shared lunch....

Jilli had made stinging nettle soup, using the large, English nettles from her garden but I have the smaller, Tasmanian nettles in mine. The soup went so fast that this is all that was left on the hotplate of the gas BBQ for a photo!

I made a dip which started out being chickweed pesto but, oh lalala, I had an embarrassing number of disasters while making it and thought it was ruined..... but people loved it and even asked for the recipe!

Amanda is a blogger who came all the way from Hobart and brought this fabulous elderflower cordial (quite different to Deb's divine nectar but equally as delicious), amongst other things. She has a great blog called Gourmet Gatherer. Since she is new to blogging, do call in on her and say hello. I was lucky to get this photo of Fern and John with the cordial because it too disappeared in no time!

We finished the afternoon with coffee and Judy's soft and perfect scones.

Jilli provided us with handouts for the weeds we happily now call friends, and even recipes to make sure we enjoy them in our everyday lives as well as a comprehensive reading list.

 

This kind of knowledge is invaluable for we Australians who have no tradition of eating from our own wild places, having scoffed for too long, over the last 2 centuries, at the Aboriginal people who knew the land and Australia's own wild edibles. We must now learn to eat weeds from other countries, gathered in our own gardens, and to find what knowledge we can about edible Tasmanian plants.... including a native elderberry and a raspberry found in the forests.

A Chance Meeting....

I was at a market with Hugh; I bought some vegetables and some olive oil from a bloke and we exchanged a few remarks.... he was busy but I told him I was taking the oil back to Tasmania.... I gave his wife my business card and then we moved on..... Next day, an email invited us to visit Patlin Gardens and a friendship was begun.

Pat and Lina grow vegetables organically, but uncertified, between rows of olive trees at Angle Vale. Pat understands health, of himself and of his soil and plants. He said he used to use chemicals when he lived somewhere else and they made him sick so for many years now he has kept away from them and vitality oozes from his skin. There is passion in his voice. He has a lovely smile and a quick wit.

We spend hours wandering his 20 acres, chatting, understanding each other and I learn so, so much from him.... I learn a lot about olives.... varieties, growing them, eating some of them fresh from the tree.... and about the olive oil making process. I learn about zucchinis, of all things, and which to grow for the flowers and which to grow for the flesh....I learn about growing garlic for year round flavour.... I learn about sowing for a continuous supply. I learn an awful lot about growing for a weekly market, where it is no good having vegetables ripen mid-week and I grow to admire this man and his strength to do all this because he wants people to be healthy.

He cuts open a yellow beetroot and tells us about the way he talks to people at the market to try to get them to try new things and get them to feel the goodness in his vegetables and to understand about eating good food. I ask millions of questions but every time he shows me an unusual vegetable he looks at me quizzically..... and every time I know what the vegetable is, even if it is in its infancy, and I think he is surprised and we share some mutual admiration.

In the front yard are other fruit trees, all with understories of herbs and salad greens. This is how we should all be growing our food; maximising space, using herbs as pest control, as well as planting as diversely as possible.

 

 

  They let the oregano flower then pick it and dry it, tying into bunches for the market. There are boxes of the bunches in the shed, along with boxes of their first garlic harvest, and the smell is intoxicating.

 

 

Inside the house, Lina has been preparing orders for her chilli sauce and olive tapenade. We are invited to sit down and share some olives and beer and it is a wonderful thing.... anyone who can get me to like beer must have magic in their veins!

I cannot explain well enough how privileged Hugh and I felt at the generosity these market gardeners offered to complete strangers. I am bringing back 20 litres of Pat's olive oil and plan on dealing with Pat and Lina from now on, with The Garden Shed and Pantry olive oil supplies and, hopefully, their pickled olives too, if Tasmanian quarantine allows. They hope to visit Tasmania and I have asked them to stay anytime.

If you are at the Showgrounds Farmers' Market, do say hello to Pat and Lina at their Patlin Gardens stall and do mention you are a friend of mine. You can safely eat everything they grow and know it is grown with a passion for health, between rows of olive trees, just to the north of Adelaide. Their business card says.... there are seasons for a reason.... and on the back, there are reasons for the seasons....you won't find out of season produce or food grown using plastic at this market stall.