Land for veggies

Dirty data

2012-01-06T21:23:00.000+11:00

Soil samples drying for structural stability test

First, a quick warning. This is a fairly technical post, compared to previous posts, so if you're not so into soil science or water quality, skip this one and wait a few days. I'm working on another post with less data and more chat including photos of the amazing Punta Mona permaculture site in Costa Rica, which I visited in December, as well as landscaping developments on the Peninsula property and lots of spring and summer edibles propagating, planting and harvesting action.

In October and November, I was immersed in preparing a property plan for the Peninsula property as the major assignment in the postgrad subject, Property and Catchment Planning. This involved a raft of monitoring, including physical and chemical properties of soil, and various water quality tests.

Soil testing
I began with some desktop research into soil mapping in the area. The most recent mapping of soils of the Mornington Peninsula was conducted in 2002-2003 for the Victorian Department of Primary Industry and the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council.

Soil/landform mapping of the Mornington Peninsula, conducted by Ian Sargeant for the Victorian Department of Primary Industry and Mornington Peninsula Shire Council, 2002-2003

Soils occupying the slopes and lower parts of the south central portion of the Peninsula, where we are, are described as belonging to the Flinders Association mapping unit, while the plateau cappings and upper parts are the red volcanic soils of the Red Hill Association mapping unit. Flinders Association soils are classified (Australian Soil Classification) as Brown Dermosols with some Brown Ferrosols; those of the Red Hill Association as Red Ferrosols with Red Dermosols.

Both the Flinders Association and the Red Hill Association mapping unit soils overly deeply weathered Tertiary basalt - basaltic rocks extruded during the Tertiary period between 24 and 54 million years ago).

Physical and chemical properties typical of Dermosols, include:

plant available water capacity greater than 100 mm (may exceed 200 mm in deeper soils)
relatively good drainage due to well developed soil structure
little restriction to aeration
effective rooting depths are commonly 1.0 m
susceptible to surface slaking upon rapid wetting, resulting in hardsetting if organic matter is low
highly variable nutrient availability. Organic matter declines on cultivation
aluminium toxicity may become a problem if pH levels decline to below 5.5
good workability but a hardsetting surface will restrict workability in degraded soils. (From 2001 Australian federal government agricultural audit)

Onion grass (Romula rosea), a pasture weed, at site 4 in SE paddock, elevation 91m

I chose 6 sites for soil testing, representing different slope and drainage positions, and also different vegetation. For example, site 5 is in the woodlot, a block at the most elevated part of the property. Digging down to a depth of 25cm in that site revealed a soil profile much drier than anywhere else on the property, reflecting not only the increased water use by the trees in the woodlot but also the position of the site on the slope.

Site 6: soil profile to 25cm. Different horizons are represented (R to L): A 0-10, A2 10-15, B 15-20, B 20-25

I didn't find any evidence of Red Ferrosols. At each site I augured a hole to at least 30cm and inspected the soil profile to characterise the horizons. Other soil tests I did were: soil structural stability, field texture, salinity (Ecw and Ece) and drainage.

Soil profile
I found that soil profile characteristics were generally consistent with those given for Dermosols. The change of colour with depth (see how the colour lightens markedly at a depth of approximately 15cm at site 6 in the photo above) indicates the onset of a heavier clay profile, the B-horizon. The A-horizon will generally be the active root zone for most annual plants with maximum water availability and a soil structure that allows root penetration. The heavier clay of the B-horizon restricts root exploration and water availability.

The B-horizon began at approximately 20-30cm on most sites, but at site 2, at a low point on the property approximately 20m from the creekline, in tree belt of indigenous trees planted over 15 years ago by my parents, I couldn't find the B-horizon even digging down to 40cm. So in this area, there is over 40cm of topsoil - most likely a combination of the revegetation and the slope position. At this site, grass root density remained high until approximately 28cm depth. Drainage was also good with drainage of 20 ml occurring in under a minute. This contrasts to the wetter sites, such as site 3 where grass root density tapered off before 15 cm and drainage was 20 ml in 8 minutes.

Site 1: 2m above treeline, 85 m above sea level. Soil profile to 38cm: (L to R) B horizon (30-38cm), A2 (20-30cm), A1 (0-20cm). Note the difference in moisture between this site and site 6, above.

Structural stability
I conducted a rough structural stability test on soil from all 6 sites. Heavy soils are difficult to work (cloddy when dry, sticky when wet). Poorly structured soils are also often prone to erosion. These problem soils may need special management techniques for crop or pasture establishment.

The structural stability test involves taking a soil sample, air drying it then putting a pea-sized crumb from each horizon into a shallow dish with water (i.e. a jar lid). The dish is then left overnight. The next day cloudiness or milkiness around the base of the aggregate indicates a tendency to disperse. If particles are prone to slaking, this will occur almost immediately. The degree of dispersion will determine the 'stability type' of the soil, from Type 1 where slaking is complete (i.e. reduced to a small heap of grains, losing shape completely) indicating a soil prone to crusting, erosion and poor drainage, to Type 4 where the aggregate is fully stable.

Site 6 soil showed more dispersion than soil at sites 1-5 and so I classified it as Type 3 ("moist aggregates, moderate dispersion") rather than Type 4 ("moist aggregates, slight dispersion")

Drainage

This is a simple crude test. Take a tin with both ends removed and firmly seat it on soil surface. Pour a given quantity of water into it (i.e. equivalent of 20mm depth) and measure that time it takes for this water to drain into the soil. The rate will vary with soil type and with the moisture status of the soil (i.e. drainage will be slower in soil that is already wet).

The drainage test indicated that drainage, and hence waterlogging, is not a problem. However, at site 3, the lowest point on the property, the B horizon was light grey with orange-yellow mottling. This colouring suggests a poorly drained soil in this area of the property. Planting trees that are sensitive to waterlogging in the root zone (i.e. avocadoes) would not be advisable in this area.

Field texture

This is my favourite test because it involves playing with soil. Basically you are exploring the plasticity or malleability of the soil, which involves assessing its cohesiveness, and are also feeling for texture (granularity). Soil texture is the relative proportion of sand, silt and clay in soil. Moisten and knead a small bolus of soil in the palm of your hand to form a ball and assess what grade you think it is according to the standard chart, based on how the ball holds together, whether it can be rolled into a ribbon as well as the feel of the soil particles.

I assessed soil at all sites to be clay loam (ball holds together, ribbon length 3.8-5 cm, feel is plastic and smooth to manipulate).

Site 4: field texture assessment. Ribbon of 6 cm.

pH (acidity)

I used a good old Barium sulphate colourmetric kit, developed by CSIRO and sold at Diggers. Not surprisingly on this property, which has history of grazing on 'improved pastures', all sites had low pH (5). I did an additional pH test on soil taken from directly underneath one of the nut trees on the swale. The soil immediately around these trees has received regular applications of compost, seasol and compost tea, as well as mulching. The pH on this soil was between 7-8, which is not surprising given the soil amendments applied.

Should grazing or horticulture be conducted in future on this property, acidification is likely to continue unless measures are taken arrest the decline in pH. Soil acidification can lower the agricultural productivity of soil in many ways, including reducing the availability of nutrients such as phosphate, or increasing the solubility of elements, such as aluminium, to toxic levels.

Contrast between pH of soil under the trees on the swale (dark sample at left) versus site 3 (two green samples at right).

Salinity
Salinity, a term used to describe salt content in soil and water, is a natural product of geological weathering: some rocks gradually release salts as they weather. While most of this released salt remains at low concentrations, some is stored in the soil profile and can be dissolved and relocated by precipitation or groundwater. It is left behind and accumulates as the water is drawn off: for example through evaporation. Primary salinity is the term given to this salinity that occurs from naturally occurring processes. It encompasses not only salinity from geological weathering but also cyclic salting (seawater droplets carried by wind over the landscape, then evaporate, depositing tiny salt particles onto the ground; or salt is deposited with rainfall).

Prior to European settlement, the hydrological system can be said to have been in balance: the rate at which water entered the groundwater system was balanced by the rate of water uptake by native vegetation and by slow percolation into the ground, terrestrial water bodies, and eventually the ocean. Groundwater discharge, as freshwater, mineral springs and occasionally highly saline springs, varied naturally as a part of that equilibrium, responding to seasonal and long-term changes in rainfall.

However, farming practices since European settlement have altered the hydrological balance, interfering with groundwater flow systems, mobilising stored salt and causing secondary salinity. Practices that contribute to secondary salinity include the clearing of deep-rooted perennial native vegetation and its replacement with shallow-rooted annual crops and pastures, and certain irrigation practices. Salinity reduces soil fertility and impacts negatively on soil structure and water relations, leading to increased erosion.

Although salinity mapping has been conducted by local authorities on the Peninsula, very little shallow watertable and discharge mapping has actually been completed on private non-urban land. So even though there are no salinity areas on the public record on the in my area, this doesn't mean that salinity is not a risk or that land management decisions in the area won't affect salinity in adjacent areas, at the catchment or sub-catchment level. on the Peninsula. Land uses and management practices in our area may well contribute to salinity elsewhere in the region, due to the interconnectivity of groundflow systems. Also, it should be remembered that the timescale on which salinity is affected by land use changes is in the order of decades.

Laboratory soil testing
In 2008, soil at 5 different sites on the property was tested for a range of chemical properties, listed below, by APAL laboratories. Back then, I asked the lab to provide a report tailored to growing of fruit and nut trees.

Properties tested:
•    Total exchange capacity (TEC)
•    Colloidal organic matter %
•    pH (water)
•    Anions: nitrogen, sulphate, phosphate (Olsen), phosphate recovery %
•    Cations: calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium (Na)
•    Chlorides
•    Salinity (EC 1:5) (dS/m)
•    Trace elements: cobalt, boron, iron, manganese, copper, zinc, molybdenum, aluminium
•    Base saturation % Ca:Mg ratio, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, other bases, exchangeable hydrogen

The report concluded that the fertility was generally low for the purposes of fruit and nut tree growing. The main issues found were low calcium and high magnesium, which, the report concluded “will be making the soil tight, sticky and difficult to work with.”

Phosphorous and potassium were found to be significantly deficient. In the trace elements, boron, manganese and zinc were found to be deficient. Organic matter levels were found to be sufficient but it was thought that low calcium levels would “limit soil microbial activity”. The pH of soil sample 0-10cm was 5.4 (water); that of the 10-15cm depth was 5.

Recommendations for soil amendments included lime, rock phosphate, borax, zinc sulphate, manganese sulphate and sulphate of potash, and boron (foliar). Deep ripping in prospective tree lines was also recommended. Applications of manure were recommended to maintain organic matter levels.

Phosphate losses from this soil are likely to have occurred due to:
•    Removal of phosphate in pasture by grazing and cutting for hay.
•    Leaching losses. Plant-available phosphorous exists in soil in the form of phosphate anions, which as they are negatively charged are not retained on negatively charged clays
•    The low pH is a factor likely to have contributed to relatively high rates of loss by leaching in this soil. Phosphate anions in acid soils precipitate as insoluble compounds of iron and aluminium.

Aquatic environments and water resources

The new dam (there are 2 dams on the property) seen from the kitchen window of the new house. Pablo and Luna do not seem to be as interested in water quality as I am. The wild ducks that have taken up residence on the dam are, however, a constant source of fascination, and anxiety, for these two.

The western border of the property follows a tributary a local creek which flows to the south and towards Westernport bay. Over the past 20 years the tributary has either stopped flowing in the height of summer or flowed at a much reduced rate. Flow may also be affected by our upstream neighbour's practice of temporarily damming the tributary in dry times in order to irrigate his pastures (hmmmm).

From conversations with neighbours, I'm reasonably confident that this streamline is spring fed by at least two known springs: one approximately 2 km to the North West; another approximately 100 m to the NE. Both springs are reported to be ephemeral. In the past 6 months, with good rains, the owner of the property on which the second spring is located has advised that it has started running again after being dry for over 7 years. A drainage line on this neighbouring property is the conduit for water from this spring to enter the tributary on our property.

There are two small dams. The first with an approximate capacity of 1-1.5ML. Water is pumped upslope from this dam to:
• irrigate the small domestic orchard to the east of the original house, the two vegetable patches and the landscaping plantings around the new house
• irrigate the nut and avocado trees on the swale mound in the southern paddocks

fill 2 stock troughs

The second dam, built in 2009, has a capacity of 0.7-1 ML. It is connected to two flanking swales on contour. The swales don't connect with the creek. Water from this dam is not yet used for irrigation. The grey water system for the new house has been constructed so that it can be diverted to the swales but at present goes through the blackwater septic system. Tank overflow from the new house goes directly into the dam.

I did a day's training with Melbourne Water's Waterwatch Program. Karri, a local who has been water testing the Creek under the Waterwatch program with Landcare for years, also helped me with equipment and technique (thanks Karri!). We tested the creek and dam water for:

temperature
pH
electrical conductivity (a measure of salinity) (using a meter)
dissolved oxygen (colour-metric kit in combination with a Melbourne Water Waterwatch Program Dissolved Oxygen Monogram thatcalculates saturation as a function of water temperature and dissolvedoxygen in mg/L)
phosphate (colour-metric kit)
turbidity (turbidity tube in NTU units).

I also took some water samples and did some macroinvertebrate identification, using a Waterwatch Guide and some other internet resources. Each type of macroinvertebrate group has a grade from 1-10 based on its sensitivity to pollution. The higher the number, the more sensitive the animal is. The assessment technique provides an overall score by taking into consideration the sensitivity of the macroinvertebrates present and their abundance.

"Macroinvertebrates respond to the presence of longer term pollution or changes in water quality as compared to water quality testing which only assesses health, or presence of pollution for that point in time and is highly specific (test for pH, phosphorus etc). For instance, stonefly nymphs are very sensitive to organic pollution such as turbidity, if you have had reoccurring events that cause turbidity, but only sample turbidity once and an event hasn’t occurred that day, you may not know about the usually high turbidity. The absence of stoneflies in a waterway where they usually occur may help you determine that something more long term has been going on. For another example, a higher than normal presence of bloodworms and a drop in other species occurrence could indicate low dissolved oxygen levels as blood worms are very tolerant to low oxygen conditions." (From Victorian WaterWatch manual, biological parameters)

Basically, the type and numbers of different aquatic insects are an indication of water quality - you use a standard correlation chart that correlates types and numbers of particular insects with water quality.

Caddisfly in water sample from creek tributary. Caddisflies disguise themselves by living within claddings of reeds or other organic material like sticks. Caddisflies are very sensitive to pollution so good numbers indicate that water quality is good.

According to the macroinvertebrate survey, the water quality index of the creek and dam no. 1 is 'fair'. I assessed the water quality of dam no. 2 as 'poor'. This may be because the dam received water pumped out of the tank at the new house during the build. It may also be that this dam has relatively poor bank vegetation compared to dam no. 1, and hence little shade to protect shallow-water organisms from the effects of high temperatures.

Biodiversity monitoring

I also did a survey of existing native and introduced plant species, a big task but helped by pasture and weed identification studies that I've already done as part of my degree. In addition to introduced pasture grasses such as Cocksfoot (Dactylis glomerata), Yorkshire fog (Holcus lantana), we also have some more insidious weeds such as Curly dock (Rumex crispus), and of course Blackberry (Rubus fruticosis).

Curled Dock (Rumex crispus) on the property. Curled Dock is a tap rooted perennial, 50-150 cm high, commonly found in seasonally to semi-permanently wet areas

So what's this all for?

Well, it informs the development of a property plan. Some info about the first cab off the rank - native sandalwood agroforestry - is coming up in the next post. Stay tuned.

Marie Antoinette

Optimism

2011-09-23T22:23:00.000+10:00

French tarragon responds to spring after its winter dormancy

I know spring is nigh because my French tarragon has kicked into gear.

Here are a couple more reasons to be optimistic. The UN has begun advocating policies to support smallholder agriculture as a way to address world hunger. A recent report by the FAO's (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations), 'Policymaker's guide to the sustainable intensification of smallholder crop production', talks about a 'new paradigm of agriculture', 'sustainable crop production intensification (SCPI)', described as:

a productive agriculture that conserves and enhances natural resources. It uses an ecosystem approach that draws on nature’s contribution to crop growth – soil organic matter, water flow regulation, pollination and natural predation of pests – and applies appropriate external inputs at the right time, in the right amount. SCPI represents a major shift from the homogeneous model of crop production to knowledge-intensive, often location-specific, farming systems.

Huzzah!

And the UN Environment Program has just released An Ecosystems Services Approach to Water and Food Security. Name says it all really - great stuff.

That's two good reasons to celebrate right there.

Which fetta is betta?
After much humming and hawing, I finally succumbed to temptation and bought myself a cheese press. My rickety bamboo-steamer-with-large-rock edifice did the job OK on my first few batches of kefir fetta, but the resulting cheese was prone to disintegration once I took it out of the steamer after pressing and placed it in brine.

My old makeshift cheese press: bamboo steamer with rock

Kefir fetta pressed with bamboo steamer press, brine and kefir whey solution (water 100%, salt 10%, kefir whey 12%). I cut the cheese up into small pieces because the round fell apart upon being put into the brine.

My new press, the Seesy Cheese Press, is pretty simple to use and simple in construction - if you've got some construction nous you could probably make one at home with parts from the hardware store.Pressing time is reduced, and the fetta holds its form much better. Oh, and it looks more profesh.

Kefir fetta being pressed in my new Seesy Press. No, that's not bird droppings in jar lids in the background, its a soil structural stability test (very technical as you can see).

Round of kefir fetta pressed in the Seesy Press. Bewdiful!

There is not much to Kefir fetta, once you've got your Kefir yoghurt (labneh). I've written about the labneh making in an earlier post. To make the kefir fetta you just wrap the labneh in a clean cheesecloth bandage (I use dressmaking muslin from Spotlight) and then press it. After pressing, take it out and put it in a solution of 100% water, 10% salt, and 12% kefir whey. Kefir whey is the liquid that drains out when you're hanging your labneh. It should keep for up to two weeks in that brine. You can play around the proportions of salt and whey - 10% salt is quite salty. However, too little salt and you might find that the cheese won't keep as long.

Next on the kefir list is kefir sour cream and kefir cultured butter, recipes courtesy of Dominic Anfiteatro's kefir website. Today I bought a log of Myrtleford salted cultured butter just to see what it tastes like and for eventual comparison purposes. I think I'll finally get to use the beautiful wooden butter churn my partner bought me years ago which even has the two butter paddles for patting the butter into a block.

I also did some kefir economics recently. Organic fetta costs approx. $3.78/100g from the supermarket/healthfood shop. It costs me $1.40/100g to make organic kefir (from organic, unhomogenised milk). That's a saving of 63% In my kefir multipurposing quest, I've started to use the labneh in cooking in recipes that call for cream or sour cream. It has to be stabilised first, a fairly quick and easy process that requires an egg white and cornflour (or some other thickening flour like potato flour). Here's a simple explanation of how to do it.

Eating from the patches

Water chestnuts - tops browning off

In early August, I pulled the water chestnuts out of the bathtub where they'd been growing happily in pots, with the soil weighed down by small stones. I let the tops brown off and then in late August, harvested the chestnuts. I've actually never cooked with water chestnuts before, but remembering that sang choi bow has water chestnuts led me to one of my favourite recipe sites, Veggie Num Num and a recipe for a vegetarian version.

As regular readers will know, I'm a make-do kind of cook so I ditched the expensive shitake mushrooms. The result was nonethless tasty and the water chestnuts gave the fresh crunchiness that makes this dish pop.

To make the dish a meal, I went out into the garden and grabbed a handful of herbs, including coriander, parsley and watercress, and made some herb pancakes. These are best eaten with sweet chilli sauce. The herb pancakes are too easy, and can be frozen for 'ron. Make a simple dough with water, flour and salt, and let it sit in a warm place for a while. Roll the dough out into a long rectangle and sprinkle with chopped herbs. Roll the dough up like a Swiss Roll, then chop thin slices of the roll and fry them in peanut oil. If you don't have peanut oil another light oil would do - olive oil won't work.

Vegetarian sang choi bow with herb pancakes

Apart from potatoes, which always seem to pop up during weeding of the Peninsula patches, I've been harvesting some good looking beetroots. I've invented a tasty beetroot and fetta salad that can incorporate young broad beans when they're in season.

Beetroots from the Peninsula patches

Ingredients: beetroot, fetta, onion (preferably spanish but you could use white or spring onions if that's what you've got), young broad beans (if in season, if not, you can leave them out), mint. Olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.

Method: Put the beetroots into a dish with some water - there's no need to cover them, just have them sitting in the water - and microwave them for 10-15 mins or until soft. Slice them thinly. Shell your broadies and boil them until just tender but careful not to overcook them - a floury broad bean is a bad thing. To keep them tender, you can pop them in ice cold water. Thinly slice your onions. Chop up your mint roughly. Combine beetroot, broad beans, mint and onions in a salad bowl. Crumble the fetta over the top. Dress with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

This year, I haven't bothered harvesting all the jeruslaem artichokes on the Peninsula patches. Instead I've left them in the ground until I need them. Much easier than defrosting and handling frozen ones! I like to eat them raw - sliced thinly and dressed with olive oil, lemon, salt and pepper. Or I put them into risottos, like the one simmering on the stove below, which also incorporates kale from the Peninsula patch.

Jeruslem artichoke, kale and mushroom risotto

A work colleague told me about Ecocucina, a fabulous blog about cooking with scraps. Sounds dire, but its far from it. The author is a professional chef. How does fennel mousse with sesame seed and linseed grab them gourmet bones of yours?

Swale loveliness

On the swale, the pruned tagasastes have turned on a riot of flowers, attracting many many bees.

Avocado flanked by flowering tagasastes on the west wing of the swale

West wing swale

And here's the mulberry, mulched with prunings from a tree wormwood.

Spring approaches and there is so much to do. A compost tea application is definitely on the list, as is mulching the garlic and onions, which are going strong.

Garlic on the peninsula patch - jerusalem artichokes to the rearMarie Antoinette

Taming the tamarillos

2011-07-01T23:29:00.000+10:00

Aaaaaaaaah . . . I've come up for air after the end of first semester. Doing a fourth-year agricultural science subject, soil management, meant learning basic stats on the fly - an ugly proposition. But dogged determination, and some crazy late nights, got me through and I'm glad I persevered. I understand a heap more about nitrogen and carbon cycling, soil structure and its relationship to tillage practices, soil acidification processes, and the role of organic matter in soils. I'm also closer to being able to interpret soil tests and make recommendations based on them.

Preserving the neighbourly spirit

Tamarillo tree, inner city patch, May 2011.

I managed to find time to pick the tamarillos off our tree in the inner city - and my partner made chutney, a LOT of chutney, out of 'em. The process involved boiling them first to split the skins for peeling.

Tamarillos, skin split after boiling

It seems home preserving was in the air, because the day after, there was a knock on our door and I opened it to find a neighbour bearing gifts: preserved olives and lemon butter. The olives he had picked a couple of weeks earlier from the olive tree in our front garden tree, at my invitation, and the lemon butter he'd made with lemons from his backyard tree. Little did he know that lemon butter is my absolute favourite breakfast spread - it was one of the first things I learnt how to make on my own as a child. Of course he got some chutney.

Lemon butter and olives in brine - neighbourly spirit is a fine thing.

Gordon and Gwen Ford's garden

When a friend invited me to accompany her on a visit to this garden in Eltham, on the north eastern fringes of the city, I jumped at the chance. Gordon Ford was a pioneering Australian landscape gardener whose naturalistic bush-like gardens are both monumental and intimate.

Gordon and Gwen Ford's garden, Eltham

His wife Gwen now maintains the garden and is adding her own stamp to it. I loved every nook and cranny of it.

Pond outside Gwen Ford's house, Eltham

Outdoor oven, Gordon and Gwen Ford's garden, Eltham

Bamboo happiness

A nursery worker at Red Cloud Bamboo shows off a stand of (I think) Bambus Oldhamii.

Back in February, I made at trip to speciality nursery Red Cloud Bamboo to pick up a couple of clumping (i.e. non-running) species for the peninsula property. The long term plan is to grow a (very) small grove there - uses would include garden stakes, fencing, and furniture. The shoots of the two species I bought, Ghost bamboo (Dendrocalamus minor amoneous) and Oldhamii (Bambusa oldhamii) are also edible. Lots of useful info on bamboo silviculture in Australia, including in particular the effect of thinning regimes on shoot and culm production, can be found in this publication by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research: Silvicultural management of bamboo in the Philippines and Australia for shoots and timber.

Australia actually has a native bamboo species, Bambusa arnhemica, that grows wild in the top end. A small number of Australian growers produce edible shoots for the restaurant and gourmet market but not of the native variety (see, for example, www.earthcare.com.au/contact.htm).

Bamboo grove at Red Cloud Bamboo.

Bambusa oldhamii in the inner-city patch

More kefir adventures
After mould developed on my first batch of quick-method Kefir-parmesan, I tried another, and this time it seems to have worked. I've produced reasonably tasty hard, parmesan-like cheese, following Dominic Anfiteatro's excellent instructions in the booklet he gives you when you buy kefir off him. Because I wanted to see whether it would work before embarking on the more involved process of making a proper round of hard kefir cheese, I used his quick-and-dirty method, which involves cutting the as-yet-non-matured cheese up into little cubes and setting it out to air dry. This avoids the need to seal the cheese in wax for maturation.

Kefir parmesan maturing on day 1 (total maturation time approximately 7 days)

I think I'll try my hand at Dominic's recipe for Kefir fetta next. Maybe I'm putting off making a proper round of hard cheese because I know it will be the start of an obsession akin to my sour-dough craze.

Peninsula goings on
On the peninsula, the main activity over the past month has been pruning the nut trees on the swale, and pruning back the nurse trees around them. The latter has been a big job as the Tagasastes in particular are fast growing and threaten to shade out the nut and avocado trees. But on the upside they produce lots of mulch, which means less wheelbarrowing of mulch in from elsewhere.

My partner and I also brewed up and applied a late (May) batch of aerated compost tea. We brewed up enough for both a foliar spray and soil application. Pest damage to trees so far is minimal - some feeding on leaves but not significant; no sign of overwintering pest mites such as Bryobia (Bryobia rubrioculus), or Coddling moth (Cydia pomonella) cocooning. But I did spot a Painted apple moth (Teia anartoides) on one of the almonds last weekend, which gave me a fright.

In late June I planted out garlic bulbs, sowed some onion seed, and sowed field peas in the beds that grew corn over the summer. Corn is a nitrogen-hungry crop so hopefully the peas will put some nitrogen back into the soil.

Salt pig from Stonehouse gallery, Warrandyte

At the 'Canvas and Clay' exhibition opening of my partner's talented mum Sue at Stonehouse gallery in Warrandyte (Sue did the canvases), I couldn't resist buying this handmade oversize salt pig for the kitchen in the new house. Here it is with its big maw open, ready for some sweaty cooking hands. Everyone needs a salt pig, honest.

Marie Antoinette

No quibbles with kibble

2011-05-27T23:53:00.000+10:00

Microlaena stipoides seeding on peninsula property

On the peninsula, my partner, my dad and I have tried our first larger scale Microlaena stipoides (Weeping grass) seeding. I've been collecting seed from the indigenous variety that exists on the property. This year, with all the rain and mild weather, the existing Microlaena has really taken off and is now abundant in parts of the property. It's been seeding variably so I've been able to harvest regularly.

We chose a strip adjacent to the back of the dam and ripped planting lines in it at a shallow depth, using a (single-tine) ripper attached to the back of the trusty small tractor. We made two passes for each planting line to try to open the furrow up. Then my partner and I went over the 4 lines manually with picks to open it up more. Then we just dropped the seed in by hand, very thickly, and covered it with a very light layer of mulch (chip from local native trees). We sowed it thick because I want to try to avoid using herbicide, and because my existing seed-production patch, which has been successful, was sown thickly.

Microlaena stipoides seeds sown in a furrow, peninsula property

There are 3 varieties in the lines: the indigenous variety collected on the property; Griffin, harvested from a patch I established using seed purchased from Australian Native Seeds; and Ovens, purchased from Aust. Native Seeds this year.

Nibbling on kibble

Using my new National hand mill to produce wheat kibble

Continuing a tradition of giving me archaic presents that may or may not be useful, but are always beautiful, my partner bought me this hand-operated grinder. We tried it on some wheat and it produced beautiful cracked wheat on the first pass. Eventually after 3 passes, we got some coarse flour but that was a fairly slow and tedious process. Methinks the cracked wheat is the go - I incorporated it into a wholemeal sourdough and it adds some great texture.

Kibble is the name given to cracked grains, hence 'kibbled bread'. Burghul, for example, which is the main ingredient in tabbouleh, is cracked wheat. Typically, the kibble is soaked for a few hours before being incorporated into a recipe. You can kibble rye, spelt, buckwheat etc.

Kefir goodness continues

My love affair with Kefir continues. I'm now making kefir-style cottage cheese following the instructions on Dominic's Anfiteatro's site. Its very easy and delicious and has a very similar taste and texture to normal cottage cheese. I add little salt to it as the finishing touch.

Kefir-style cottage cheese draining in my sink

Recently I visited La Latteria, a new cheesery in inner-city Melbourne, and apart from walking away with homemade cheeses and whole (unhomogenised) locally (Craigeburn) produced milk, I chatted to the lady behind the counter, who helps to make the cheeses sold in the shop. I asked her about how she makes ricotta, and it turns out that the process is kind of the inverse of the kefir method. At La Latteria, they heat the whey and add milk until it curds begin to form. With kefir-style cottage cheese, you heat the milk and slowly add very ripe milk kefir until it curdles. Although a brief spot of internetting reveals that there are 101 ways to make ricotta.

She also explained to me why whole (unhomogenised) milk converts more efficiently to cottage cheese than homogenised milk, and produces a creamier cheese. I think I need to get myself this book on the microbiology of dairy - so many more questions would be answered! This accords with my experiences with kefir cottage cheese: if I use homogenised milk I end up with only a small amount of cottage cheese, and whole lot of milky whey and clear whey. When I use unhomogenised milk, I get a lot more cheese for the same amount of milk.

I love the whole ethos of La Latteria. I bought my whole milk in a large glass bottle, which is returnable and gives you a discount on your refill. Nice.

Inner-city patching
In preparation for the move to the peninusla, I've been slowly decomissioning the inner-city patches, which will become a low-maintenance native garden. We're going to keep one garden bed for perennial herbs. I've started the plantings for the native garden with some Myoporum parvifolium (creeping boobialla) from the fantabulous St Kilda Indigenous Nursery Cooperative which has just had a big sale.

Japanese eggplants from the inner-city patch

The beans turned on a big end-of-season harvest, as did the Japanese eggplants (Solanum melongena, var. Ichiban). Dad pickled some of these using a Claudia Roden recipe from her Book of Middle Eastern Food. It only took a week for them to mature, and they were so yummy. And I took my first step into pickling, doing a salt pickle of the lebanese cucumber harvest using this recipe from the website of the author of Wild Fermentation, a much referenced book on the topic. The only mildly difficult thing about the process was working out how to weigh the cucumbers down so that they were all fully submerged in the brine. The pickles were delish, especially eaten atop some Kefir labneh on sourdough.

Pickled cucumbers on kefir labneh, atop sourdough

In the city, I've been propagating some plants from seed collected on the Peninsula property, to plant out on the back of the dam there. Success with Acacia vertcillata (Prickly Moses), but no luck with Dianella tasmanica or Indigofera australis, despite following the dormancy-breaking seed treatments recommended by Murray Ralph. After failing to raise the Dianella from seed, I tried just dividing some of the clumps growing near the creekline on the Peninsula and that seems to have worked.

Acacia verticillata seedlings, propagated from seed collected on the Peninsula property

And finally, because there aren't enough rapping scientists in the world, because I'm partial to a spot of David Williamson baiting, and because how can you resist the line "The greenhouse effect is just a theory, sucker. Yeah, so is gravity, float away, motherfucker", check this most wondrous clip out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiYZxOlCN10

Vampires begone

2011-01-29T23:06:00.000+11:00

Braided garlic grown on the Peninsula patch. My partner made two of these braids with help from this handy video. That'll keep those pesky bloodsucking gothic types away from our place this year.

A hazel with Tagasaste and Acacia melanoxylon prunings at the base

Apart from garlic harvesting, there has been work to do on the swale. I've been pruning the nurse trees (Tagasastes, Acacia melanoxylon) that are planted around the nut (almond, hazel, and pecan) and avocado trees. The pruning is mainly to let more sunlight in, especially important for sun lovers like pecans and avocados, and it also provides mulch to keep the weeds away from the bases of the trees and adds organic matter to the soil.

It's interesting to see the difference in form and growth stage of the Tagasastes that have been browsed by wallabies. They are bushier and more compact. And, and unlike the un-browsed Tagasastes, they haven't seeded. This means that their feed value is higher: because they've been kept in the the vegetative phase, the leaf matter is more palatable and nutritious. The ratio of leaf to woody material is also higher. For more information on management of Tagasaste for grazing purposes see this farmnote by WA Dept of Ag

All aboard the trailer train.

Moving mulch with wheelbarrows is not fun - its just not. And we've been doing a lot of it lately, trying to keep the indigenous plantings on the back of the dam weed free. So my partner built this ingenious trailer train. I'm so happy, I'm humming a little trailer train song . . .

Flavours from the patches

Artichokes on the Peninsula patch

Oh the joys of summer produce from the patches - so many flavours and so many possibilities. I follow a loose rule of 'making do' - with what is coming out of the ground, and what's in my pantry and in fridge - substitution is the key.

Artichoke hearts and sorrel and gruyere tart

My father prepared these artichoke hearts following a recipe from my aunt, who learnt it while travelling overseas in Italy. The sorrel in the tart is from the Peninsula patch and the tart is a lovely rich treat. Here's the recipe. Don't skimp on the cream and gruyere.

101 (minus 95) ways with Pesto

Basil harvest always leads to pesto. This batch includes parsley, coriander, garlic and lemons from the patches, with walnuts from a Healsville farmer's market. Pesto is so easy and so forgiving. In its most basic form its just blended basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, and lemon. But you can substitute and add ad infinitum. When I don't have enough basil, I use parsley, chervil, watercress, coriander and have even used (lightly steamed) warrigal greens. Any nuts will do. I made a great pesto with salted cashews once. And any strong hard cheese will substitute for parmesan, including tasty, provolone, and pecorino.

Pesto gives a tangy kick to so many dishes. Here are a few of my favourite non-standard uses:

add a couple of spoons to zuchini soup at the last minute, or for that matter pretty much any vegetable soup
on pizza (smear it over the base instead of brushing with oil)
smear it on lamb chops or steak
add it to salad dressing
add it to bolognese sauce - this is kind of like adding sweet chilli sauce - it lifts the bolognese out of the nursery food doldrums

Zucchini and potato soup is excellent with a few dollops of pesto added at the last minute.

Harvest from the inner-city patch

The staff of life

Sourdough loaf - made according to Dan Lepard's recipe for Mill Loaf (white, wholemeal, and rye flour).

Since buying Dan Lepard's gorgeous book, The Handmade Loaf, I've been experimenting with bread again.

This is expensive flour, but it is stoneground, biodynamic, and from Victoria - that's pretty good credentials.

Olive and walnut sourdough (white, rye and wholemeal flour)

More inspiration has come from this lovely blog on fermentation. I love the commitment to low-tech, low energy techniques - no thermometers or special kits or other fancy equipment. Instead an understanding of the principles of fermentation is used to refine the techniques, particularly the timing.

And I can't resist posting this photo of my Greek neighbour Elsie's amazing Christmas pastries. How beautiful are these?

Adventures with kefir

2011-01-19T23:37:00.011+11:00

Kefir-leban (or Kefir labneh)

Back in 2006 while on a permaculture design course in Gippsland, I visited the biodynamic dairy farm of Ron and Bev Smith at Fish Creek. The class was offered a taste of kefir milk and I've never forgotten the taste. Finally this summer I got round to buying kefir grains from Australia's own kefir guru, Dominic Anfiteatro.

Kefir starter culture - although described as kefir grains, I reckon it looks more like stringy cottage cheese or little cauliflower florets.

Dominic mails out the kefir culture in a small sealed plastic package with milk. The first step is to strain it and put it in fresh milk in a ratio of about 1:7 (kefir:milk) by volume. The lid must be left slightly ajar as the fermentation process produces carbon dioxide.

Kefir culturing in milk at room temperature.

After 24 hours culturing at room temperature, you strain out the kefir culture and drink the cultured milk. Even though I like the milk, I'm most excited about kefir yoghurt, which Dominc calls kefir-leban, after the middle eastern labneh. So I hung the cultured milk in a piece of cloth (I cut up an old sheet) for 24 hours to drain. And lo and behold, I had labneh.

Its hard to describe the taste of kefir labneh - it is 'peakier' than normal yoghurt or labneh, but that is offset by a unique freshness and texture. Labneh can be made by hanging normal yoghurt as well - I like this stuff better.

One of the most gratifying things about the process is how straightforward it is. You don't need to sterilise equipment, just keep everything reasonably clean, including your hands. This is, in general terms, because the organisms in the starter culture compete so effectively for resources relative to the spoilage organisms.

You can use any type of milk: homogenised and pasteurised, unhomogenised and you can even use low-fat milk or any of the other 'enhanced' milks on the market, although I would recommend you keep it as unprocessed as possible and go for organic and/or biodynamic unhomogenised milk, or if you can get it (lucky you), truly fresh straight from the cow/sheep/goat.

The kefir culture is like sourdough in that it needs to be fed regularly. When you're not culturing a product, you store it in milk in the fridge. If you want to take a break from culturing it, the starter culture apparently lasts in the same milk in the fridge for over a month. As you continue to culture the kefir to make products, it increases in volume, and therefore so does your end product. When you think you have too much for your needs you can store it according to Dom's instructions or give some away to friends.

Like sourdough, kefir culture is a mixture of yeast and bacteria and like sourdough the particular species vary by location. A section on the microbiolog of kefir and lactose digestion is included below.

Kefir labneh with herbs (chives, parsley, tarragon, watercress). If you stir vigorously with a fork, you can make the texture like cream cheese.

I've only just scratched the surface of what can be done with kefir labneh. In addition to the herby cream cheese concotion above, I've also put it in a veggie curry as a thickener, added honey to it for a sweet snack, smeared it on sandwiches and toast instead of butter and, my favourite so far, added homemade horseradish (see June 2009 post) to it and served it on steak. Dominic's site includes recipes for all sorts of goodies, including soft and hard cheeses. Think I might try a soft cheese next.

Homemade horseradish: dig around the roots of your horseradish plant, cut off a piece of root, wash, grate, add vinegar, enjoy.

Much of the non-scientific literature about kefir refers to its reputation as suitable for people who have trouble digesting lactose. I did some research on this and found that the scientific literature is clear that lactose digestion is improved from fermented dairy products in general, such as yoghurt, as compared to milk. While it seems clear that kefir is equally as effective as yoghurt in terms of aiding lactose digestion, the evidence for it being better than yoghurt is probably inconclusive.

A microbiological diversion
For those of you with an interest in the microbiology of kefir and lactose digestion, here is the lowdown. An article on kefir in the Journal of the American Dietetic association describes its composition and fermentation action as follows:

"These grains are mass of bacteria, yeasts, polysaccharides, and other products of bacterial metabolism, together with curds of milk protein . . . . Kefir typically has a larger and more diverse range of microorganisms in its starter culture than does yogurt. For example, the kefir used in this study contains the following cultures: Streptococcus lactis, Lactobacillus plantarum, Streptococcus cremoris, Lactobacillus casei, Streptococcus diacetylactis, Saccharomyces florentinus, and Leuconostoc cremoris. The dual fermentation by the lactic acid bacteria and yeasts in kefir results in the production of small amounts of carbon dioxide, alcohol (0.01 to 0.1 g/100 g using starter cultures), and aromatic molecules that give kefir distinctive organoleptic properties compared with yogurt. Kefir typically has a tart flavor, is slightly carbonated because of the naturally occurring carbon dioxide, and is somewhat thicker than milk." (http://dx.doi.org/10.1053/jada.2003.50111)

Lactose digestion is attributed to the activity of the enzyme p-galactosidase which is present in our intestinal mucosa (interestingly, the level of activity of this enzyme varies with ethnic origin). When there is low mucosal P-galactosidase activity, lactose is poorly digested and reaches the final section of the small intestine (the ileum), where it is fermented by the native bacteria there. The volatile end-products of bacterial fermentation of this undigested lactose (i.e. volatile organic acids, carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen) cause the symptoms of poor lactose digestion.

Lactose digestion is enhanced if it is consumed together with fermented milk products such as yoghurt. This enhancement is attributed to the presence of β-galactosidase in the starter culture bacteria for yoghurt, particularly the lactobacilli species (lactobacilli are bacteria that convert sugars, including lactose, to lactic acid). Because yogurt has good buffering capacity, it allows some of the bacterial cells to survive the gastric acid in the stomach and reach the first section of the small intestine (the duodenum) intact. At that point, it is thought that bile acids play a role, either by causing the breakdown (lysis) of the bacterial cells, thereby releasing β-galactosidase or by altering of the permeability of the cell membrane so that lactose can easily enter into the cell. Whatever the mechanism, the β-galactosidase gains access to the lactose substrate. Thus yoghurt is said to have an "autodigestive capacity".

Neat eh?

Marie Antoinette

Muck and mystery

2010-12-17T21:43:00.028+11:00

Pods from the tagasaste (Chamaecytisus palmensis) on the swale. A new prostrate cultivar has been developed for grazing which eliminates the need for bi-annual cutting.

Muck and mystery is the description that a scientist colleague of mine gave to permaculture when I told him I was interested in it. Muck is certainly right - I have come to love mucking around with muck in its many soil-improving forms: manure, compost, mulch, worm castings, and so on.

As the for the mysteries, well they are slowly revealing themselves as hard-won knowledge. And lately I've been to some great workshops and field days that have thrown even more light on the ways in which we may be able to design farming systems that provide ecosystem services.

Pasture cropping field day with Col Seis

In October, I attended a pasture cropping field day outside the pretty Victorian town of Avenel, 114 km north of Melbourne in the Goulburn River Valley. NSW farmer Col Seis, from Goolma in central west NSW, gave a workshop on pasture cropping, hosted by the Broken Catchment Landcare Network, an umbrella network of 23 landcare groups operating in the Broken and Goulburn Catchments.

Col Seis talks pasture cropping to local farmers at a field day in Avenel, October 2010

This workshop was a great way to round off the academic part of my year - in second semester I did the subject 'pastures and rangelands'. While native grasses for grazing was on the course material, pasture cropping was not.

Pasture cropping refers to the practice of no-till sowing annual crops directly into living perennial pastures. In Australia, pasture cropping tends to refer to winter cereal crops sown into summer-growing native perennial pastures. The pasture can
be grazed right up to time of sowing and the stock is put back on the pasture after harvest to graze stubble and green perennial grasses.

In Col's case, on his property Winona, this means direct drilling winter cereals (oats, wheat) into native grass pastures made up predominantly of summer-active native grasses such as Kangaroo grass (Themedia triandra) but also some winter-actives such as Wallaby grass (Austrodanthonia).

Conventional broad-acre cereal cropping in south eastern Australia has tended to involve either fallow periods where the paddocks are sprayed out with herbicide to prevent annual weeds prior to the next sowing or 'ley farming' in the drier inland parts of SE Australia. Ley farming involves a pasture phase of 1-5 years duration (pastures tend to be annual-legume dominated - clovers, medics) followed by a cropping phase. As with the higher rainfall areas, the paddocks are sprayed out for annual weeds prior to cropping.

In contrast, pasture cropping maintains perennial ground cover on the paddocks at all times, and with vegetation (native perennial grasses) that is well adapted to the soil. The potential advantages are an increase in soil structural stability, and hence water retention, decreased soil erosion, decreased inputs (including decrease in herbicide use), and more efficient use of rainfall which has the potential to reduce salinity.

Col's presentatation was both down to earth and inspiring. He comes from a pioneering farming family and has the experience, knowledge and results that make farmers and scientists alike sit up and listen. He talked specifics about grazing management strategies, advising heavy stocking (also called 'mob stocking') of no more than ten days duration, followed by 30-100 days of recovery depending on stage of growth of the native grasses, and growing conditions. It was interesting to hear the extent to which the recovery period is based on close observation of pasture growth.

The heavy stocking rate is designed to:
• reduce the bulk of the grass
• manage weeds
• produce litter
• prune perennial grass roots to conserve water
• transfer nutrients to paddock

While annual grasses and legumes don’t like growing through litter, perennials do.
The grass litter and trash generates mulch that works to limit the weeds and is also trampled in by stock, contributing to soil organic matter.

For more information on pasture cropping, including some scientific research that's been conducted on Col's property, see:

Description of pasture cropping from Landcare: www.watershedlandcare.com.au/pasture-cropping-at-winona-stud.html
CSIRO field experiment on Col's property measuring biomass, total cover, soil water and nitrogen: www.pasturecropping.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=50:pasture-cropping-effect-on-biomass-total-cover-soil-water-a-nitrogen&catid=40:research-findings&Itemid=63
www.pasturecropping.com
The Birchip Cropping Group's pasture cropping trial: http://www.bcg.org.au/news.php?category_id=181

Agrowplough in action

Out in the field, we looked at native grasses and and at soil renovation machinery, specifically the Agrowplough, which was demonstrated. Agrowploughs are Australian designed and built, and have been designed specifically for zero-till cropping and pasture systems.

Agrowplough coulters and tines mounted on a display unit. The shape of the tine is designed to avoid soil inversion (the dragging up of deeper, less fertile soil up to the surface where it is mixed by the action of the plough), shear and compaction.

All grassed up

Grasses identification workshop - Dr Graeme Lorimer in wetlands on the Mornington Peninsula

Then, in November, I spent a weekend peering closely at native and introduced grasses on the southern Mornington Peninsula. Dr Graeme Lorimer of Biosphere Environmental Consulting ran this workshop, which was organised by a group called SPIFFA (Southern Peninsula Indigenous Flora and Fauna Association).

We learnt about grass morphology and how to use this to identify grasses using different sorts of keys. And we looked at grasses down a microscope and saw the amazing action of grass awns that spiral and bend in response to moisture levels.

Rain-fed garden madness

Growing in the patch now: garlic, potatoes, tomatoes, rhubarb, sweet corn, and jerusalem artichokes. Groundcover of various clovers and woolly vetch, for weed control and nitrogen fixation, are cut back in the growing season to allow sun to reach edible seedlings. Borders include comfrey (flowering now), canna lillies, wormwood and nastursium.

In the patches, keeping check on rampant growth brought on by the rain and humidity has been a big job.

Herb patch, Peninsula, the curry plant (Helichrysum angustifolium) is the light-couloured shrub towards the back of the patch.

In the peninsula herb garden, I've planted a curry plant (Helichrysum angustifolium) which is doing well. The horseradish is also kicking along and I should be able to harvest it and maybe even divide it soon.

Garlic, peninsula patch

Garlic hanging to dry, peninsula patch.

The garlic is ready to harvest so I've started digging it up and hanging the bulbs to dry on the line, after which I'll plait them and hang them up in the shade between the tanks. Should be enough there to last us at least 6 months.

Yarrow in the inner-city patch

In the inner-city patch, yarrow seems to like its sunny spot beside the pergola. Chervil sown in October responded to the heat and is now paying its way in fish dishes, along with the French tarragon.

In the bathtub I've put a couple of pots of water chestnuts - the soil in the pots is held down with stones. The bathtub is aerated (for mozzie control) with a small solar-powered bubbler.

Loquat and nastursiums in blue pot, inner-city patch. Marjoram and rosemary to the left; bay tree to the right. Bottlebrush behind.

Seedlings of cucumber, eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes are doing well and the beans have already reached the netting of the domes. The grapes on our pergola have finally taken off, as have the two (male and femaile) kiwi fruit plants - we are well on the way to getting good shade coverage for summer.

Cucumber seedlings (mini white) ready to be planted out, inner-city patch

Came across this excellent podcast from The Guardian website on on food security and food justice. It asks whether crops and increasing corporatisation of agriculture are really the only true solutions to hunger in the world. We learn that food security is as much a political problem as an agronomic one, perhaps more so. Interviewees include Raj Patel, author of the fabulous book on food justice Stuffed and Starved; Olivier de Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on the right to food; and Oxfam UK's head of research Duncan Green.

Happy festivus

Marie Antoinette

Paying the true price of food

2010-10-15T23:14:00.018+11:00

Spring bounty: open sausage sandwich with beetroot, rocket and tamarillo chutney

Beetroot growing has always been a bit of a hit and miss affair for me. This spring was no exception. Pulling up the mature beetroots in the inner-city patch produces mystifying results - a big, fat beet, and right beside it a gnarled, grumpy looking one.

I tried using the microwave to cook a few beets this time, with pretty good results. But I'm also loving them just grated and dressed simply with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Now that spring has sprung there is much to do in the patches. The worms are getting some five-star treatment - I've been feeding them a potent cocktail of magimixed old bread and coffee grounds. Judging from their reproductive rate, I think its kind of like giving them viagra at this time of year.

Carrot harvest, inner-city patch

Even though I failed to thin these baby carrots, they still did OK. Most we consumed raw - sliced thinly and dressed with tahini dressing: tahini, olive oil, balsamic, parsley, dash of lemon.

Seeds being raised for spring plantings include: cucumber (mini white), eggplant (Listada di Granda), Sweet corn (bantam), pumpkin (golden nugget), cauli (all year round). Direct sowings include: lettuce (freckles), royal oakleaf lettuce, coriander (slow bolt), chervil, basil (sweet genovese), dill, and of course tomatoes (tommy toes).

On the peninsula, the garlic is coming along very nicely after some frantic weeding to keep the cohabiting potatoes from taking over.

Garlic on the peninsula

There always seems to be enough potatoes for dinner - often they get pulled up while weeding. A few in each haul are old (they've been in the ground a few seasons) and are not good eating, but I'm now experienced enough to pick these without cooking them first!
As the wet weather continued in late winter and early spring, the dam overflowed over the back and we were thankful for the spillway. As I looked at I couldn't help but remember how last year we'd laughed at the idea that we would ever get enough rain for this to happen.

Peninsula dam spills over the the back

Compost tea has gone out onto the fruit and nut trees and I'm planning on doing a small microscope course so I can test the quality of the compost and the brew. My partner is making improvements to the brewer design and we've been getting some good advice from a local compost tea expert who runs a business brewing and supplying tea to wineries and horticulture enterprises in our area.

I'm also looking forward to attending a pasture-cropping field day coming up in Avenel.

The baking continues - fruit and nut loaves are now firmly on the weekly roster.

When I'm not reading for my course, I'm working my way through the articles of Glenn Davis Stone, an agricultural anthropologist who I discovered through an article in Salon. The Salon article covers his work on adoption of GM cotton in India and it is such a refreshing change from the polarised GM debate that teaches us so little about what GM means on the ground. He's also written more generally about GM in a fantastic article 'Both sides now: fallacies in the genetic modification wars, implications for developing countries and anthropological perspectives'.

Paying the true price of food

The TV news has been full of scenes of angry farmers protesting the proposed irrigation cuts in the MDB. I despaired for a while and then started to daydream . . .

What if our farmers groups and agricultural industry bodies (Farmers Federation, Apple and Pear Australia, Meat and Livestock Australia) were to run media campaigns to educate consumers about the need for increased food prices rather than lobbying against policies designed to protect the environment (carbon taxes, reduced water allocation, etc), or running lame tv ads exhorting us to eat more apples.

It costs money to farm in a way that conserves rather than degrades the environment, and the costs can’t all be borne by farmers, as those angry scenes in Murray Darling Basin farming towns remind us. As consumers, it’s all about what we do with our discretionary income – if those of us who can afford it start spending less on electronic gadgets we don’t need and more on food that is locally, sustainably and ethically produced, maybe we can make conservation farming an enterprise that gives farmers a ‘right livelihood’.

These campaigns need to make a direct link between stupidly low food prices in our supermarkets and exhausted agricultural soils, ghost farms made unproductive by unsustainable farming practices, and algal blooms in our waterways.

We might even get some compound effects from a campaign like this – it might become hard for supermarkets to run ad campaigns based solely on price cuts for consumers, which seems to be their preferred modus operandi these days. Woolworths might start running ads telling us they’re charging us more so they can pay farmers higher prices to do the right thing by the land and our children’s future.

Well, one can dream can't one . . . .

Marie Antoinette

Raindrops on my window

2010-07-25T20:10:00.023+10:00

Swale and dam after rain, early July 2010

Rain drumming on the roof is such a lovely sound. And this winter, its been a constant soundtrack to our lives. On the peninsula, the results in the swale are a joy to behold.

Swale, east wing after rain

Animals have been munching on the trees on the west wing of the swale. We're guessing wallabies. Although we've never seen them, our neighbour reports that they are around in relatively large numbers this winter. So we've put those trees in tall plastic jackets.

In the photo above, you can also see the re-mulching that's been going on in preparation for summer. Its a big job - hopefully if I get it right, it will only need to be done once this year. Last September, I put cardboard down and chip on top to hold back the weeds. This job is about taking out the weeds that have come up since then, putting down some compost, cardboard over the top, and them mulch on top of that. That means lots of wheelbarrowing mulch and compost up and down hills. Sometimes, I long for a bobcat . . . . .

Its wattle-flowering time and on the peninsula, the splashes of colour stand out against the lush wet greenery.

As part of a long-term plan to restore indigenous perennial native grasses to parts of the peninsula property, I've been doing some internet research on re-establishment of native grasses and identifying what already exists on the property. Microlaena stipoides is already established in swathes around the property. It loves being beneath the trees in filtered light, and moist(er) conditions.

Also on the property is some Poa labillardieri.

Poa labillardieri, peninsula property

Inner-city patch

In the inner-city patch, our postman swiped his bike past the pepino bush growing along the fence, and I had to harvest the green pepinos. Not sure what to do with them, but I'm thinking that since they're in the tomato family, I can try using a recipe for green tomato relish.

Green pepino harvest, inner-city patch

The cold weather has meant that composting takes a little longer than in summer, but its still getting hot enough to send the worms scurrying to the opening of the barrel to escape the heat.

Compost temperature probe, not so hot, but hot enough.

Worms escaping the heat.

On the baking front, my cousin has returned from Israel and a stint on a kibbutz where he learnt how to bake, particularly sourdough. So we baked a fruit-and-hazelnut sourdough loaf together. Oh my was it good.

The dough is rolled out so that the sultanas, hazelnuts and cinnamon can be distributed evenly.

Rolling up the loaf

The final product, and a plain sourdough roll we made with spare dough

Visitors on the Peninsula

In June Diane Greenwood and friends visited the Peninsula site to take a squiz at the swale and chat about permaculture generally. It was raining so we only had time for a quick look with a brief detour to the compost tea brewer. Di and her crew were on a 'Permaculture weekend away' that was jam-packed with interesting permie-related activities.

Marie Antoinette

Agroecology at home and abroad

2010-06-26T18:09:00.030+10:00

February harvest from inner-city patch: tommy toes, chillis, green peppers and spaghetti squash

Apparently in February, while I was in Uganda, my partner was trying valiantly to eat his way through the spaghetti squash (Cucurbita pepo) harvest. I planted a few in early spring and by January they were threatening to take over the garden.

Nick Romanowski in his amaranth patch, March 2010.

In March I went to Grains and Grasses workshop run by Nick Romanowski on his property in the Otways. In the pic above, Nick is in his amaranth patch showing us different varieties.

Chestnuts drying on rack at Nick Romanowski's

Romanesco zucchinis at Nick Romanowski's place

These amazing zuchinis apparently keep well for months out of the fridge due to their thick, tough skins. I think the variety is Romanesco.

Autumn on the swale
On the swale, there has been good growth on the nurse trees, especially the tagasastes. We had to irrigate regularly throughout the long dry summer.

Good growth on the swale, Autumn

The compost tea system has been scaled up to a 1000-litre tank, purchased from eBay. On the advice of a local compost tea expert, I'm now using fish hydrolysate instead of seasol in the additives (fish hydrolysates are fish parts digested into liquid form by natural enzymes at cool temperatures). I also invested in a good backpack sprayer with a nozzle that sprays relatively large droplets and adjustable pressure to keep the pressure low. We had enough tea to spray all the trees on the swale, including the nurse trees, as well as the other 20-odd fruit and nut trees on the property.

View of the compost tea tank from the top: the blower is attached to the side of the tank. The blower hose enters the top opening and coils through the tank, blowing air into the tea. The tea bag is suspended in the tank. Additives, including the fish hydrolysate, are added directly to the tea through the opening in the tank.

Chip ready to be spread out over the back of the dam.

Another big job that my partner and I undertook was applying chip (chip from trees felled on the property) to the back of the dam, and planting it out with native (mostly indigenous) shrubs, grasses and groundcovers. With the help of my dad on his tractor, nicknamed Nigella (don't ask), my partner and father spread the whole lot over the back of the dam in just one afternoon.

The plantings have taken longer, and we've been doing 50-odd plants each weekend. We source most of the tubestock from an excellent local reveg nursery, Peninsula Bushworks. Species include hop bitter pea (Davesia latifolia), Knobby club rush (Isolepsis nodosa), Australian indigo (Indigofera Australis), Poa labillardieri, Poa poiformis, and Lomandra longifolia.

Plantings on the back of the dam.

Eating from the patches
In May I harvested some horseradish from the Peninsula herb patch, planted a year or so ago, by digging around the root and breaking off a piece. I wasn't sure what to do with it so I tried grating it and adding vinegar. Oh boy was it good - we had it with steak, and added it to potatoe salad and then the rest disappeared on sandwiches. It was really hot and so very tasty.

Horseradish going strong, May 2010.

The stalwart Jerusalem artichokes turned on a bumper crop again, so much so that I decided to leave most of the tubers in the ground, and will just dig them up as needed, rather than freezing them like I did last year. We've been eating them raw, sliced thinly in salad with rocket, which now grows wild all around the compost heap pretty much all year round, as well as in soups and risottos.

Jerusalem artichoke and rocket salad

Apart from the Jerusalem artichokes, rocket, potatoes, and herbs, there has been little coming out of the patches, mostly because I've been busy with study and a new job. But we did get an amazing tamarillo harvest from the tree in the inner-city patch which my partner turned into chutney.

Tamarillo chutney, ready to be put in jars.

Tamarillo chutney

I've updated the links section with some new websites, including a US Library of Congress bibliography for wild edible plants that includes links to some great websites on the subject. I've also been reading the US Union of Concerned Scientist's report, Failure to Yield, about GM crops, and have been checking out some of the excellent news stories in Raj Patel's feeds.

UN on board with agroecology

Courtesy of Raj Patel's news feed comes that story that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier de Schutter is about to release a series of reports urging a rethink of current mainstream agricultural policies in favour of agroecology.

Another issue being tackled by de Schutter is the increasingly rapid pace at which developed countries are buying agricultural land in the developing world. Apparently these large-scale acquisitions have accelerated since the 2008 global food price rises, and are on an upward trajectory.

"Between 15 and 20 million hectares of farmland in developing countries have been the subject of transactions or negotiations involving foreign investors since 2006. This figure is equal to the total area of farmland in France and to a fifth of all the farmland of the European Union. The land which has been most in demand is that which is close to water resources and can therefore be irrigated at a relatively low cost in terms of infrastructure, and land which is closest to markets and from which produce can be easily exported. Among the main target countries in sub-Saharan Africa are Cameroon, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,5
China is said to have acquired 2.8 million hectares in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to create the world’s largest oil palm plantation (New Zealand Herald, 14 May 2009)." (Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter: Large-scale land acquisitions and leases: A set of minimum principles and measures to address the human rights challenge, December 2009, UN General Assembly).

De Schutter's 'minimum principles' to guide such acquisitions are designed to protect the food security rights of local people. One of his ideas is that in relation to land investments in net food-importing countries, agreements should be put in place providing that a certain minimum percentage of the crops produced on the purchased land be sold on local markets, and that this percentage may increase, in proportions to be agreed in advance, if the prices of food commodities on international markets reach certain levels.

That's it from me this time
Marie Antoinette

Permaculture in Uganda

2010-02-25T13:14:00.003+11:00

My two-month stint at assistant program manager on the permaculture project at Sabina School in South Western Uganda is now over. I've just published a story about it on the Permaculture Sabina blog.

Now its back to Australia, and back to studies - biochemistry and agricultural economics loom ahead this semester.

Marie Antoinette

Swale travails and nourishing times in Uganda

2009-12-27T18:23:00.012+11:00

Mulched trees on swale

As the year draws to a close, there has been a lot of work to do on the swale to prepare for summer. My partner slashed the field peas on the mound, and this has provided some good mulch for the trees. While grass is growing vigorously on uphill and downhill side of the mound, the mulch provided by the slashed peas has managed to supress much of the growth on the top around the trees. We brewed up and applied another batch of compost tea and also installed drip irrigation to the trees (excluding the nurse trees) to get them through their first summer. And finally we mulched around them, laying down cardboard and then chip. We left a cardboard-free collar round the trunk where the irrigation feeder lines from the main supply line go. Chip has also gone in the base of the swale.

Cardboard round base of avocado tree

We sourced the cardboard from the local supermarket, as a large compacted bale. It was a mighty effort to heave it onto our mini trailer, with supermarket shoppers looking on bemusedly.

Baled cardboard

And finally we lined the base of the swale with straw and chip, with some help from the earthmover who came to install the driveway to the new house site.

Luna's been enjoying the dam on hot days and ducks have taken up residence, along with frogs (heard but not seen).

In the patch the Jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, and comfrey border are kicking on, as are two new trees planted near the patch - a mulberry and a chestnut. Very exciting to see the mulberries already ripening.

Peninsula patch - corner showing comfrey border, potatoes and jerusalem artichokes

Mulberry and chestnut

Inner city patch
In the inner-city patch, not much activity. Instead I've been preparing the beds for a two-month hiatus over Jan and Feb (see below for details) by clearing the beds, putting the crop residue on the surface, covering with newspaper and then mulch (chip, branches, straw - basically any dry material I have handy). However, we have been harvesting broad beans and harvest, and purple king beans planted in early spring are producing a bumper crop.

Broad beans from innercity patch

Purple King beans from inner-city patch

The sorrel is also doing really well, leading to some tasty dinners. The success of this perennial green, and its ease of maintenance makes me think that I'd like to focus more on perennial vegetables. Eric Toensmeier, author of the fantabulous 2-volume Edible Forest Gardens, has just released a new book on this subject, Perennial Vegetables: From Artichokes to Zuiki Taro.

Sorrel tart, with mizuna and broad bean salad

A glut of herbs has led to herb posies for family and friends, and to herb vinegar making for christmas presents. I included chive flowers in the herb vinegar - apparently it makes the vinegar go pink.

Herb posy making

Herb vinegar for Xmas presents

'Food Water Security' at Sabina Children's Home Uganda
Tomorrow my partner and I leave for Uganda. From Jan-Feb 2010 I'll be the Rakai district in the south of Uganda, doing volunteer work at a children's orphanage and school where I will be assisting the incoming managers of the 'Food Water Security' program, a large edible garden and orchard, designed along permaculture lines designed to nourish the children and staff of Sabina (my partner will be staying for 2 weeks). The design and initial implementation was done in 2007 by permaculture practitioners Rosemary Morrow, Dan Palmer, Amanda Cuyler and Mike Cloutier. An excellent blog documenting progress on the site is at: http://childrenofuganda-permaculture.blogspot.com/

The orphanage is run by a US-based charity, Children of Uganda, in partnership with a Ugandan NGO, Daughters of Charity, which owns the land. The Food Water Security project is a partnership with Permaculture International. In January, the orphanage will also host a two-week permaculture course, with attendees from neighbouring African countries, including staff from African and international NGOs as well as government officials, but will also some overseas students from Australia and the USA.

So over the next two months, check in to http://childrenofuganda-permaculture.blogspot.com/ for progress.

Happy festivus to all

Marie Antoinette

A swale of a time

2009-10-22T21:11:00.020+11:00

It's been a long time, but there's been a lot going on, not least of which has been a swale, dam and tree plantings happening on the peninsula property. First came the the digging and the shaping of the dam and swale. This required big machines - very big machines. So big in fact that there was danger that they wouldn't fit down the driveway.

Then came the digging, and the digging, and . . . . well, you get the idea. Our dam is not so big - not even a megalitre, but while it was being excavated, it seemed we had embarked on a mission to dig to the centre of the earth. As the excavator dumped more and more earth around the sides, we watched nervously.
We spent a lot of time admiring the skill of the earthmover, Rick Coffey, who used the blades of his machines like chisels, making precise fine cuts and moving the machines up impossible angles. As the earth he was working with became wetter, he shifted to the wider-tracked machine. The final track-rolling of the dam wall was heart-in mouth stuff: Rick would move up the steep sides becoming almost vertical, and then when he reached the lip, the machine would tip slowly onto the flat. At various points, my partner and I followed him around with the laser level, helping him to check his cuts, but he was so precise that corrections were rare.

And then finally, after two long days, the earthmoving stopped, and we were looking at our new dam and swale. In the image below you can see the way that Rick has placed topsoil around the lip of the dam and stabilised it by smearing it with the back of the bucket. Very schmick.
The swale runs across the paddock in roughly a south east to north west direction, interrupted by the dam. On the downhill side of the swale is a soft (uncompacted) mound. A wing drain is also part of the system, to take swale overflow. It is really a watering system for the fruit and nut trees planted on the swale mound.

Permablitzing the swale
A bunch of hardworking permablitzers helped us plant out the swale. Susie, Liz, Alastair, Jacquie and family, Gillian, Jo, Jessie, Adam and Christine worked like troopers and planted out a total of 80 trees on the swale mound. 20 fruit trees went in - avocadoes, hazelnuts, almonds and pecans. Around each tree, three nurse trees were planted: 2 tagasastes (Cytisus palmensis) and 1 Acacia melanoxyln. A length of polypipe was buried about 30cm into the earth beside each tree for efficient water delivery to the root zone.

The blitz team also mulched the swale with pea straw and sowed 25kg of field peas over the swale mound. We used a compost tumbler to mix the innoculant and field peas, and it worked a treat. Sowing by hand was, I reckon, the best job of the day. It is very satisfying to fling a seed-filled fist out over fresh dirt with gay abandon.

Eastern wing of swale, three weeks after the permablitz. The field peas have germinated well in the mulch.

The troops ate like royalty, with homemade delish food, as well as platters of baked goodies from A1 bakery on Sydney Rd, kindly provided by Susie and Alastair.

The trees were watered in with compost tea, brewed using the new 200 L brewer rigged up the week before. Christine made the arduous trip up and down the hill with the watering cans, as we didn't have a way to get the tea to the swale in larger quantities. We all had the opportunity to smell the brew, and like the good compost with which it was made, it smelt damn fine: sweet and earthy.

Compost tea brewing.

My partner rigged up the brewer, which is made from: a 200L plastic drum, a powerful aquarium air blower (400 L per minute), black irrigation polypipe with holes drilled in it. a connecting hose to connect the blower to the polypipe, and an aquarium heater. A mesh bag containing compost (homemade for quality control!) and a few other ingredients (we used molasses, worm castings, and seaweed concentrate) is suspended in the drum, which is filled with water. Aeration is then delivered using the blower connected to the polypipe. The whole solution is heated with the aquarium heater, which attaches with suction cap to the sides of the drum. The aerator is run for 24 hours. The tea must be used soon after the brew has finished.

The brewer
The aerator

The aftermath
A month later, and things are looking good. The dam is almost full. The field peas are going strong, and there is good growth on the fruit trees, with the exception of the avocadoes, which are suffering from the wind. We even have our first nut - an almond.

Good growth on a hazel

An almond, already!

I have had to replace a few of the tagasastes which didn't survive their first few weeks as tender young seedlings, and the success of the field peas has meant that I have spent an hour or so each weekend weeding around the nurse trees. We've been unable to plant out the dam wall (the aim is to plant it out with native shrubs, grasses and groundcovers) because its been so wet that Rick can't move the earth around. That will have to wait until December.

In the base of the swale, you can see yabbie holes, and lots of bird tracks - probably ibises going after all the cockchafers uncovered with the earthworks.

Yabbie hole and bird tracks in base of swale

Thankfully the rain has meant I haven't had to water the trees yet, but we are looking down the barrel of a long hot summer so that isn't far away.

Signing off for now
Marie Antoinette

Ole oleracea

2009-08-27T23:24:00.020+10:00

Cabbages in the MPYE patch

My mother used to tell me that her violent dislike of all things cabbage arose from being subjected to meals of murdered (overcooked) cabbage as a child. I inherited her prejudice against Brassica oleracae, with the exception of stuffed cabbage, which is a family speciality on my dad's side. But over the last few months, as I harvested cabbages from the MPYE patch, I found myself wondering if there might be unexplored pleasures hidden in those, admittedly snail-ridden leaves. There is not much else by way of large veggies coming out of any the patches at the moment, so it was time to roll up the sleeves and trawl though the cookbooks.

Kohlrabi and cabbage from the MPYE patch

One of the things I've found in my travels in through cabbage recipes, is that it lives in wintry recipes that the older folks love, or at least the anglo older folks. Cabbage and cornbeef, for example, go hand in glove. As does cabbage and vegetable soup. A good cabbage and cornbeef combo came in the form of an Adrian Richardson recipe for cornbeef. It is one of those one-pot winter winners, replete with greens (cabbage from MPYE patch), starch (potatoes from the Peninsula patch), and some satisfying spices (fenugreek, mustard, bay). The relative cheapness of the cornbeef cut is also a plus.

Cabbage, chickpea and fetta salad

I also invented a tasty take on the traditional coleslaw, a cabbage, chickpea and fetta salad. Chop up the cabbage roughly, and add chickpeas and crumbled fetta. Dress with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. You could substitute parmesan for fetta. I reckon some parsley and other herbes fines would go well with this too.

Sign on to herbs

Signs for the MPYE veggie patch

Now that the herb collection on the MPYE patch is respectable, I decided to make some signage for it. A trip to the excellent Reverse Art site in Ringwood, with Sue as a guide, yielded wood and paint. Veggieman, who has made an occasional appearance in this blog, contributed the lettering. The decorative touches are Sue's.

In the inner-city patch, the tamarillos are looking mighty tasty.

Tamarillos in the inner-city patch

With the warmer weather on the way, I planted some pineapple sage (Salvia elegans). Not sure what to do with it in cooking, but I just love the idea of a pineapple herb.

Pineapple sage in the inner city patch

Immediately outside the kitchen, hardy winter staples of chard, spinach, rocket and parsley are going strong.

Greens in the inner-city patch

And my first attempt at carrots seem to be coming along nicely, backed by some broadbeans and hemmed in by wormwood.

Broad beans, baby carrots, and wormwood in the inner-city patch

I really hate to weed, and try to design my patches to avoid it, but I do end up doing some. I've been very pleased to find some parts of the garden that used to be colonised by unwanted plants are being voluntarily occupied by species that are most welcome: warrigal greens, vetch, red clover and such. These are all species that I planted at some time in the past so the seeds have laid in reserve in the soil, hopefully encouraged by my no-till gardening.

Volunteer warrigal greens in the inner-city patch

With spring in the air, I'm sowing seed of coriander, beans (purple king), and cucumber, and chervil.

As part the Integrated Pest Management component of my ag science degree, I've been insect hunting and insect-damage hunting. Looking at lettuce aphids down the lens of dissecting microscopes is an uncommonly fine thrill. My father gave me this lemon, from a tree on the peninsula, to investigate. What animal caused this?

Marie Antoinette

Rat a tat tat

2009-07-12T18:26:00.021+10:00

Capsicums in the inner-city patch.

For a long time, we have lived with rats in the inner city patch. We hear them in the roof and at night we sometimes see them using the trellis against neighbour's wall as a highway. Up until recently, we haven't been overly concerned, figuring they are all over the inner city. We also had built what we thought was ratproof compost bay.

However, one morning in May I woke to find my cauliflowers eviscerated, my broccoli seedlings munched to the ground, and my sweet pea seedlings all but reduced to green sticks. It was clearly the work of rats. Talking to neighbours and locals confirmed that our area is in the midst of a rat plague. Since then I have considered renaming this blog to 'Land for rats'.

First step was to redesign the compost. My partner and I figured that it had become an easy food supply. This big job, undertaken by my partner, meant completely dismantling the otherwise excellent bay. Originally built to be rat proof, the weather and some determined investigations by the rats had rendered it rat accessible. All our compost is now stored in three closed bins, set on a new raised paved platform. When I want to build a new tumbler batch of compost, I move it from the bins to the tumbler.

Next step was trapping. I bought a spring-loaded cage trap recommended to me by a veggie gardener from Olinda. Initially this was reasonably successful, garnering about a rat a week. However, given the rate at which rats reproduce and the obvious ongoing activity, it was clear that we needed to do more. So we laid bait and put out more traps, some of them less humane than the cage. While I think we've reduced the numbers, we haven't won the war, and I think the final step will be thoroughly baiting the roof cavity. And if that doesn't work, we may have to reconsider our longstanding dislike of cats.

Unfortunately, this has meant very little gardening activity as there is not much point planting seedlings out if I'm just feeding the rats. Thankfully, they do seem to leave some mature things alone - rocket, beetroot, chard, for example.

Tomato goodness

Tomatoes from the MPYE patch becoming tomato sauce, recipe courtesy Jeff Jansz

Oxheart and Beefsteak tomatoes from the MPYE patch lasted into May. I made some into tomato sauce, using herbs from the inner city patch, and froze it for use during winter in pasta and other dishes. The very simple recipe is in the May 2006 post.

Tomato sauce ready for freezer

I saved some the seeds from the tomatoes I used in this dish. I used the fermentation technique described in Jude and Michael Fanton's Seed Savers Handbook. A good explanation of this process is published on the Bega Valley Seed Savers website.

Saving tomato seed: seeds are fermenting here. Leave for three days. A foam will form on the top and fermentation will occur. According to The Seed Savers Handbook, this is caused by the microbe Geotrichum candidum acting on the sticky gel that surrounds the seeds. Fermentation produces an antibiotic environment that mitigates against diseases such as bacterial spot, spec and canker.

The passata proved to be a good base for soudough pizza - extending our ongoing love affair with this homemade fast food.

Homemade sourdough pizza with tomatoe passata base and capsicums from the inner-city patch

What the rats left
In the inner city patch, the rats left this lovely eggplant alone.
Thankfully, they don't seem to be fans of herbs, chillis, jerusalem artichokes, or pak choi, so we have had the opportunity to enjoy the last flush of French tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus), admire the flowers on the rosemary, and spice up our chicken pho soup with chillis from a prolific little bush that's growing in a sunny spot towards the back of the patch.

French tarragon, enjoying the Autumn sunshine. This dies back over winter and will need repotting or a good feed of compost in spring.

Potted chilli plant. This put on a flush of growth and recovered from a mystery illness when I moved it into a sunnier spot and fed it with compost.
Rosemary in flower
Pak choi

Other bounty that the rats have left us includes jerusalem artichokes and potatoes (from the the peninsula patch).

I leave you with an image from the pond in the innercity patch (otherwise known as the pink bathtub) where there are some new aquatic natives sourced from MPYE, including the elegantly drooping Slender Knotweed (Persicaria decipiens), which flowers all year round, and Upright Water-Milfoil (Myriophyllum crispatum).

Slender Knotweed (Persicaria decipiens) in the inner-city patch pond

Marie Antoinette

Of mangroves and amaranth

2009-03-16T23:34:00.023+11:00

Mangrove seedling growing at MPYE

At MPYE where I volunteer on Mondays, ten thousand mangroves are being propagated for use in a mangrove revegetation project at Coronet Bay in Westernport. MPYE is in partnership with retired scientist Dr Tim Ealy, who has been awarded an Order for Australia for his work in replanting mangroves to stabilise eroding cliffs, restore water quality and allow seagrass to grow again. The disappearance of seagrass has implications for the local fishing industry as it is a breeding area for fish. The mangroves stabilise the suspended sediment that otherwise smothers the seagrass. Mangroves have all but disappeared from Westernport due to development, dredging, and so on - the usual suspects.

At MPYE, the mangrove seedlings are growing in milk containers, set in salted water.

MPYE is built in the site of a former sewerage plant. This photo is taken from inside one of the decommissioned concrete tanks. The mangroves are in the background at right.

MYPE veggie patch: tomatoes in foreground, corn and sunflowers in background

The veggie patch at MYPE is producing a bumper Autumn harvest: tomatoes, cucumber, corn, lettuce, parsley, spring onions, and silverbeet. Much of it goes to the volunteers and workers. I hope one day when the planned cooking classes are up and running that it can be used in the MPYE kitchen.

MYPE veggie patch: view to the west

The patch, which is huge compared to my inner-city courtyard garden, is set out in a grid with wide mulched paths. In the past it's been cultivated in blocks of plants, but I've started mixing things up a bit by interplanting sunflowers and trying out some combinations for microclimates: cucumbers grown under the filtered light provided by sunflowers has worked well, and lettuces interplanted with parsely are doing fine under bean trellises. A big container of manure tea goes on beds before planting out, along with chook-poo enhanced soil. I've started a couple of compost bins, and am fertilising with worm wee that's been languishing in a storage shed until recently.

Petits pois a la Francaise, courtesy Nigella Lawson

I couldn't think what to do with the gigantic cos lettuces coming out of the MPYE patch, until I remembered watching Nigella Lawson put together a dish she called "petits pois a la francaise" - principal ingredients are lettuce and peas.

Rhubarb muffins, recipe from Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion

Two fine rhubarb plants at MPYE yielded rhubarb for two batches of rhubarb muffins, recipe courtesy of Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion. No pre-cooking of the rhubarb is required: you just chop it fine and put it in the muffin batter and it cooks with the muffins.

Peninsula patch

Amaranth nearly ready for harvest on the peninsula patch

Harvesting and processing grain amaranth (Amaranthus hypchondriacus) has led me to do a bit more research on its nutritional features. A bit of information on the protein component of grain to start, lifted straight from my undergraduate botany course! When the nutritional content of grain is discussed, protein and amino acid content are usually at the forefront. Amino acids are the building blocks of protein (and are proteins themselves). There are 9 "essential amino acids": these are the ones that we get by consuming protein in our diet. The other 11 are "nonessential" in the sense we can make them ourselves from other amino acids.

Amaranth harvested from the peninsula patch, drying at home

Although the cereal crops we commonly consume (wheat and corn) are high in protein, the proteins in both grains are low in the essential amino acids lysine and tryptophan. Legumes complement these grains in our diet as legumes are high in lysine and tryptophan. How does Amaranth compare? With a protein content of about 16 percent, it sizes up well against conventional varieties of wheat (12-14 percent), rice (7-10 percent), maize (9-10 percent), and other widely consumed cereals (see Amaranth: Modern Prospects for an Ancient Crop). However, the white flour that's milled out if Amaranth grain only has 7% protein, which is not substantially different from the protein content of wheat flour used in white bread.

Amaranth protein has nearly twice the lysine content of wheat protein, and three times that of maize, and in fact as much as is found in milk-the standard of nutritional excellence.

As it contains very little functional gluten, Amaranth must be combined with wheat flour if you're baking loaves. But in fact flour is not the main use of grain Amaranth. In Mexico and Central America, bundles of baby weed amaranth known as bledo (which grows liberally in farmers’ fields) are sold as pot herbs. According to the Rodale Institute, "Vegetable amaranth has been rated as equal or superior to spinach in taste and has substantially more calcium, iron and phosphorus."

Amaranth grain can also be popped, and is used widely in this form in baking flat breads and crackers, but also in sweets. In Mexico, for example, popped Amaranth seeds are dried, mixed with honey and baked to make a popular candy bar called alegria.

Winnowing grain amaranth harvested from the peninsula patch. Winnowing separates the grain from the chaff. The fan blows the lighter chaff off the top, leaving the grain.

Inner city patch
Squash and zucchini are coming out of the inner city patch, but as it's now late in the season and we've had rain and humidity, there is powdery mildew on the leaves, which means there's not long to go for the plants. My partner and I have been using the squash and zucchini in quiches, tarts and in (sourdough) pizza toppings.

Squash and mushroom tart: the fine food stylings of my partner account for the beauty of this tart

Despite lush early growth, the tomatoes against the western wall have failed, yielding very few fruit. I'm pretty certain it's lack of sun - the wall only gets about 4 hours of morning sun. It's a good lesson. Beans don't do well on that wall either. The only thing that's worked so far is climbing cucumbers, and this sits with my MPYE experiment of growing them in filtered sunlight, under sunflowers.

A small tomatoe crop from the inner-city patch

Solar-powered farming equipment

I just love this. The idea that you can harvest and mill wood on a small farm with solar energy makes me very happy.

Marie Antoinette

Things to love about Alpacas

2009-02-07T21:34:00.018+11:00

Alpacas at Freshfield Alpacas, Somerville

Things to love about Alpacas:

They are communal poo-ers. A herd will have a few designated dung piles in a paddock, making the collection of their manure easy.

They have soft padded feet, minimising soil compaction

They don't ringbark trees

Did I mention that they are communal poo-ers? I think that deserves two gongs.

After a visit to an Alpaca breeder close to the peninsula patch, I've become interested in the possibility of incorporating Alpacas (Vicugna pacos) into the mix on the peninsula property as grass mowers, and providers of manure and, possibly, fleece. Tagasaste, which is in the planting plan, is a recommended fodder.

On an impractical note, they are entrancing spitters. Spitting among themselves is used to divert annoying suitors, protect themselves from a threat, or help establish dominance over other animals. Unlike Llamas, the spitting is pretty low-key. The spitting I saw between two alpacas was like a hissy fit between two diffident antagonists - half hearted and harumphy, if you can imagine that!

In the inner city patch

Beans and cucumbers, inner-city patch, January 2009

On the menu from the garden these days are zucchinis, cucumbers, and climbing beans. A glut of zucchinis has meant big batches of zucchini soup.

If picked while still small, I often put the beans into salads raw. I cook the bigger ones up in dishes like the one below (recipe is in the March 2008 post)

Beans in tomatoes, ginger, tumeric, masala, and onions

Because I'm often a lazy gardener, I forgot that I'd planted some Buckler-leaved sorrel (Rumex Scutatus) a year or so ago. When I came across it in the garden, I decided to cook it up. I've never used it before, and actually have trouble distinguishing it from spinach but it tasted excellent made into this tart. The sorrel has a lovely lemony, fresh taste. I think it would go well in salads too.

Buckler-leaved sorrel, inner-city patch, January 2009

Sorrel tart with gruyere and cream

Peninsula patch

Grain amaranth, sweetcorn, wormwood, rhubarb, red clover, rocket, woolly vetch, jerusalem artichokes, nastursium, climbing beans (on the trellis in the middle), potatoes, dill, mustard, comfrey.

This video was taken on the 25th January, and the patch is now looking much less green as we've had two weeks of very hot, dry weather. The heatwave has decimated the corn and half the potatoes, and the beans are pretty much gone. The grain amaranth has survived and is ready for harvest. Andrew Djurovich from Tenderbreak Permaculture has advised (see his comment on previous post) that the amaranth seed I sent to him in November is also doing well. You can follow Andrew and his partner Heather's adventures in permaculture on their new blog: http://tenderbreak.blogspot.com/2009/01/seed-amaranth-trial.html

Under my father's extension to the orchard I've planted French millet and adzuki. The millet has done OK, but the adzuki hasn't germinated (no rain).

Rhubarb and beans from the peninsula patch, January 2009

I've also established a stand of Microlaena stipoides (weeping grass), var. Griffin, as a seedbank for future use on the property. An indigenous variety of microlaena also grows in small stands all about the property and I have been harvesting the seed of that.

Microlaena stipoides seed bank, peninsula patch, January 2009

Other seeds I've harvested include chives, Kennedia prostrata (Running postman), woolly vetch, broccoli, and rocket.

On TV, my partner and I are addicted to 'River Cottage', a documentary that follows the fortunes of a London chef, with the improbable name of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who leaves the city to live on a small rural block in Dorset. The doco follows his fortunes as tries to grow and barter his own food, including raising pigs and butchering them, as well as exploring the possibility of sustainable fishing. Along the way is lots of fantastic cooking of fresh, local produce. It's pretty addictive stuff.

That's it from me for the moment.

Marie Antoinette

5% - Shame Rudd Shame

2008-12-18T20:59:00.025+11:00

This week, the Rudd Labour government announced a disgustingly low emissions reduction target of 5-15% by 2020. March, write letters, call your local member. Kick up a stink. Visit Greenpeace Australia or the Australian Conservation Foundation for more information.

December rains

Luna enjoys the sun in the tomatoe patch

Melbourne has had a good week of solid rain. The smell, feel and sound of it has become distressingly unfamiliar, and Melburnians welcomed it like an old friend returning from a long absence. After a few days of wet, a kind of bittersweet nostalgia came upon me. I remembered childhood summers of heat interspersed with weeks of wet, days spent lying on my bed reading and waiting for the beach weather to return. How sad that Melbourne kids won't know this kind of summer.

The inner-city patch

Tomatoes in the inner-city patch

In town, the tomatoes are rampaging up the western wall of the courtyard. This year I've pruned them to let more light and air in, which hopefully will help avoid the grey mould that attacked them last year (possibly Botrytis cinerea). Beans (Frederico) are competing with chinese snake cucumbers (see the January 2008 Land for Veggies post) on the trellises. I probably planted the beans too close to the more more timid snake cucumbers. I've collected seed from mustard, broccoli and rocket. Unfortunately, the broad beans didn't produce much this year - probably lack of water.

On the balcony are trays sown with cos lettuce and some more tagasastes.

Male kiwifruit

The male kiwifruit has really taken off. Apparently it shouldn't be allowed to intertwine as it chokes itself, and I can see how this would happen - it hardens off very quickly after first growth. I love its prehistoric look

Male kiwifruit

Sweet basil raised from seed is growing well in the inner city and on the peninsula. A few weeks ago I received some 'limelight' basil seeds from a work colleague and will try sowing them direct. Other seedlings sown include squash, capsicums, some more zucchini and a few more sunflowers.

Peninsula patch

Peninsula patch goes off

On the peninsula, the recent rain has turned the main patch into a forest of green and gold. Nastursiums are climbing all over the gate that forms that western wall of the patch, and the self-seeded dill is popping its umbels up everywhere. But most importantly, the grain amaranth sown Aug-Nov (see the March 2008 Land for Veggies post) is finally taking off - exciting.

I dug up a couple of comfrey plants from the inner-city patch, divided them and planted them around the border of the peninsula patch. After only a few weeks, they're flowering prettily. Comfrey is one of those iconic permaculture plants - multiple uses: compost activator, weed barrier, chicken fodder, mulch and more.

Comfrey roots, ready for division

With microbiology out of the way, I've started volunteering at Mornington Peninsula Youth Enterprises, near the peninsula patch. It's an amazing place. The two-hectare site includes a substantial plant nursery (mostly natives), vegetable garden, chooks, woodworking and metalworking areas, art areas, and now a brand new kitchen. The organisation provides training opportunties (horticulture, metalworking, woodworking) to long-term unemployed and other disadvantated community members. The plant nursery supplies plants to local conservation groups, including Landcare and coast action. I've mainly been helping out in the veggie patch, but have also done some work propagating natives.

Harvest
From the inner-city patch, the first beans were mighty tender and tasty.

First summer bean harvest

The tamarillo tree yielded one, lone tasty fruit, but there is the promise of more.

Tamarillo

Potatoes galore are being harvested from the peninsula patch. They go very well in a salad with Christmas ham (diced and fried), herbage from the garden (chives, tarragon, sage, parsley), and herb vinegar (see below).

After some success with soudough tortillas, I tried some more flatbread but this time with a pastry of amaranth flour and a filling of warrigal greens from the garden. It was mighty tasty. I adapted the recipe for the filling from this turkish ispanakli gozleme recipe, substituting warrigal greens for spinach. The amaranth flatbread had a kind of earthy taste, not unpleasant, but not as much to my taste as the sourdough flatbread.

Amaranth chapatis with warrigal greens filling (filling adapted from a recipe for ispanakli gozleme)

It's getting hot in here
With a few square metres of mature mustard plants in the inner city and peninsula patches, I thought I'd have enough seed to make whole-grain mustard. Here's how I went about it.

Step 1: the vinegar
First step was to steep some vinegar in herbs, for mixing with the mustard. I bought some fairly cheap white vinegar and put it in a preserving jar with the following herbs from the garden: rosemary, french tarragon, thyme, and sage.

Herbs steeping in vinegar

Step 2: harvest the mustard seed
I harvested the mustard as soon as it started browning off (if you wait too long, the seed-heads split and drop), chopping up the plant into manageable chunks and storing it in paper bags for a few weeks to completely dry off. As I had three big bags, I had to store them in the living room, which made the room smell a bit odd for a few days! After three weeks, I threshed the dry material: basically pushing it through a rough sieve, and then a finer sieve. Finally, I winnowed out the remaining chaff using the same technique as I used for the amaranth seed (see the March 2008 Land for Veggie post).

Step 3: putting it all together
When the herbs had been steeping in the vinegar for 3 weeks, I strained off the vinegar by pouring it through muslin.

I then pounded the mustard seeds in a mortar and pestle. I made hard work of it, but after watching my partner give it a go I realised I'd been doing it the wrong way. Here's some good info on mortar and pestle technique. Because I wanted a fairly chunky mustard, I didn't aim for a fine powder. I really just wanted to bruise and break the skin of the majority of seeds.

I then added just enough water to the seeds to make a thick paste, and let this sit for 10 minutes.

Trial batch of mustard with water

Finally, I added some of the vinegar, testing and watching for consistency as I went. For the finishing touch, I added honey, oil and salt, tasting as I went. I'm pretty happy with the result, and apparently this mustard gets better with age, although keeping the mustard more than one month in the fridge is not reccommended.

I made about 2 cups in total - a lot of work for not so much reward, but I'm sure there are quicker techniques for the harvesting and grinding part of the equation, the two most time-consuming parts.

From left, mustard, herb vinegar strained, extra pot of herb vinegar with herbs still steeping.

The sourdough journey continues
An ongoing favourite in the house is the sourdough pizza, which has improved muchly since my partner gave me two pizza stones for my birthday. I also use the pizza stones when baking the sourdough bread. Placed above and below the bread (the bread tin goes on the bottom stone), they seem to even the heat out so that the bread is more evenly baked.

Sourdough pizza

Until next time.

Marie Antoinette

Crank it up

2008-11-02T21:07:00.027+11:00

Garden bed with freshly laid compost

The summer heat is cranking up the pace of compost making in the tumbler and here's the result: a composted garden bed, ready and waiting for some cucumber seedlings. I wonder if the speed of this batch was also due partly to the addition to the compost of buckets of azolla from the bathtub pond, which is covered in it.

Because I had such success last year with the snake cucumbers (Cucumis melo var utilissimus), I've raised lots from seed this year and am planting them in the bed that had mainly tomatoes and beans in it last year.

Seedlings of snake (climbing) and spacemaster (Cucumis sativus, bush form) cucumbers

To spread the tumbler-compost love around, I bought a second-hand tumbler ($150 off eBay) and took it down to the Peninsula patch for my father to try his hand at it. It's a different model to mine, a little smaller but I think it will work, even with the less-frequent turning that it gets down there. The one thing that's missing from it is a central spindle to help aerate the compost.

Growing notes from the inner-city patch

Apart from the cucumbers, I've planted out the following seedlings, raised from seed:

beans (Frederico)
zucchini (Fordhook)
tomatoes (Tommy toes, Black russians, and Green zebras)
sunflowers

Bean (Frederico) seedlings on the balcony
Tomatoe seedlings protected from the marauding birds; Grape climbing in background

Coriander and lemon basil seedlings from the plant lady at Monash lunchtime market went in in September. By now the coriander is big enough to harvest so I've used it in a batch of chicken pho (rice noodle soup), along with vietnamese mint that's growing in the bathtub pond, some chillies frozen from last year's harvest, and chicken stock made by my partner.

Passionfruit vine in the inner-city patch

The passionfruit vines climbing on the side of the house are producing their gorgeous flowers. No fruit as yet though.

Passionfruit flower in inner-city patch

I failed to raise any eggplants from seed, despite two attempted sowings. I may resort to buying seedlings. Any tips appreciated on growing from seed would be appreciated.

Some volunteer jerusalem artichokes have sprouted in strange places in the garden, far from where they grew last year (in between pavers in the path), so I pulled them up and will give some to my uncle who wants to grow them. I'll plant a few in the garden, but not so many as last year - the harvest was overwhelming!

A 'strawberry grape' (Vitis vinifera 'Fragola') given to me by a colleague in my Seed Savers Group, and planted in August is doing well against the pergola support, alongside my standard table grape (don't know the variety). The male kiwi fruit that looked all but dead over winter with some kind of fungal growth decimating its leaves, has bounced back. I hope to see it 'go feral' this summer, as kiwi fruit are apparently wont to do.

I've saved lots of parsley, rocket, dill and mustard seed. With the addition of mustard seed harvested from the peninsula patch, I should be able to make some homemade mustard this year.

The peninsula patch

On the peninsula patch, I've continued planting the Amaranth seed that I saved last year, in successive sowings. It takes a while to germinate, and I think I may have sown it too thickly, but it is competing OK with the red clover (Trifolium pratense) and woolly vetch in the same beds.

Under my father's orchard, a couple of the leguminous groundcovers I sowed earlier in the year are finally getting going: the red cover appears to be the most successful. The borage is also going nuts and has self seeded all over the place - it is a bee magnet - you can hear the humming as you approach the orchard. I still want to try to get some pinto's peanut (Arachis pinto) going as ground cover, but that will have to wait until next year.

Soil testing drill on Peninsula property

The permaculture plan for the peninsula property involves a dam. In preparation for the dam build, I organised a soil test: a bloody great big drill mounted on a truck arrived at the property on a rainy October day. The drill went three metres down and encountered: red-brown silty clay (moisture content 26%), followed at 1.5 m by brown, mottled orange-yellow silty clay (moisture content 48%) and finally at 3m brown mottled orange/yellow silty clay with a moisture content of 55%. We got a report with a rating for the desirability of the soil for use in rolled-earth dam walls and lining: basically not great but probably doable with a good contractor who knows what they're doing.

In preparation for the plantings planned for the swale, I've attempted to grow some Tagasaste (Chamaecytisus palmensis) from seed. The plan uses these and indigenous acacias as nurse trees for fruit trees to be planted along the swale. Strike rate wasn't high, but I've got seven growing well and will try some more.

Harvest news

Greens harvest from inner-city patch

In the inner-city patch, the greens harvest has included mizuna, rocket (most of which has now bolted), parsley, broccoli side shoots, and chard. We use any left-over greens, and broccoli and beetroot leaves, in the dog food mix we make up for our little jack-russell-daschund cross: kangaroo meat, magimixed greens, oil, salt and any leftover bread or rice or other carbs. Our dog tries to lick the greens off the meat, but the oil keeps them firmly stuck on - devlish.

Beetroot harvested from the inner-city patch

This year the some of the beetroot (white and red) haven't been such good eating: stringy and fibrous. Not sure why. I've also started to harvest the broad beans, but it's hard to get enough for supper when all I want to do is eat them raw straight off the plants!

Beetroot, mizuna and rocket salad

Beetroot and broadbean salad on labna (yoghurt cheese), with mint and parsley

The sourdough journey continues

I'm still baking at least once a week, using the same basic recipe that I posted here a while back. Most times I bake a wholemeal and rye sourdough, but I've also tried a wholemeal and white bread loaf (when I couldn't get any rye). The rise is much better than with wholemeal, but I prefer the taste and texture of the wholemeal. I've started donating my wholemeal sourdough starter to friends, one of whom tried it in a bread machine with good results.

Sourdough rye and white

With leftover dough, Veggieman and I made tortillas. Veggieman did some expert rolling and tortilla fashioning. A video demonstrating his fine technique is slated for the next post of Land for Veggies.

The inner city patch

That's it from me. Back to the books - soil microbes and fungi and their role in the carbon and nitrogen cycle. Just my cup of tea - or should that be worm wee?

Marie Antoinette

Stoolish and poolish

2008-09-18T17:15:00.014+10:00

Calendula in the inner-city patch to attract pollinators

A friend who visited Texas recently told me that stool softeners are a staple of Texan bathroom cabinets. Apparently the diet of most Texans is so poor that they have become an accepted part of life. It's partly due to lack of availability of fresh food: although they have huge supermarkets, fresh food is not always on offer in them, and fresh food markets are few and far between. And so, the knowledge of how to cook fresh, simple food has slipped out of collective memory.

I've been inordinately possessed by this sad fact. What a bizarre state of affairs it is - obesity and constipation in a land of plenty. On the other side of the world, there is hunger and poverty: stuffed and starved, as in the title of Raj Patel's book. Patel looks at this contradiction as more than a lifestyle issue (in the West) or a simple problem of not enough food being grown (in the developing world). He draws together the threads connecting the production and distribution of food by global corporations to the contradictions of obesity and famine: "overweight and hungry people" are "linked through chains of production that bring food from fields to our plate . . . . the concerns of food production companies have ramifications far beyond what appears on supermarket shelves. Their concerns are the rot at the core of the modern food system."

Harvest news

Broccoli, beetroot, silverbeet, rocket and watercress are filling the harvest basket these days. Mizuna (Brassica rapa nipposinica) is nearly ready to pick.

I pulled one tamarillo off the tree, which seems to be suffering from a fungus and a mite infection, despite recent white oil and bordeaux sprays. It tasted like passionfruit - yum.

Growing news

The mustard has flowered and is setting seed. I should have enough to make some mustard in a couple of months - anyone got any good recipes?

On the peninsula patch, I've sown some Amaranth seed, harvested last year, and plan to do successive sowings all the way through to November. Hopefully I'll get just enough grain to bake with.

Under the orchard, I've sown red clover (Trifolium pratense). It's leguminous - I'll cut it back just before flowering to release nitrogen. I also planted out some Salad Burnet into the orchard.

This pepino comes from a potted one that was getting a bit big for its pot. Petra Kahle of Permaculture Southeast (Melbourne) told me I could just separate it at the roots and pull out some new plants. Seems to have worked. I'm hoping I can train it up the side of the tanks on this trellis.

Warding off the stool softeners

Since my last post, the sourdough breadmaking has continued apace. I now bake twice a week and am making loaves with a mixture of wholemeal and rye flour, with seeds such as pumpkin and sunflower. I'm still using the organic, wholemeal, stoneground starter. I think it's getting better with time. Working with rye flour is a challenge - while it is supposed to have less gluten than wheat flour, I have found it stickier to work with. But the taste at the end is worth it - a lovely buttery caramel flavour.

I've made some changes to the basic technique in my last post, based on experience. The key lesson is that the second rise should be shorter than the first - otherwise you risk overising the bread. In microbiological terms, this probably means that the yeast (Candida milleri) and bacteria (Lactobacillus sanfranciso) have entered a stationary or death phase, rather than being in the exponential growth phase. I've also learnt not to overknead the dough after the first rise. Instead of kneading it at this point, I fold it, following the technique shown here. The aim of kneading the dough after the first rise is to redistribute the nutrients and degas the bread, but just a bit - enough so that the carbon dioxide doesn't retard the yeast but not too much so that you lose the gluten network - the holes that produce the holey texture you're aiming for in the finished loaf. Another change I've made is that I use only filtered water (I just use water from our filter jug, heated up a bit) so that I'm not putting chlorine (our local water is chlorinated) into the dough - chlorine is antimicrobial.

I'm finding I have leftover dough - not enough to make a third loaf - but enough to use. So I've started making pizza base and pita bread out of it. The pizza base is fantastic - the sourdough taste goes very well with all the traditional pizza toppings. The pita dough was a mistake that I've since adapted - I was trying to make pizza base but I rolled it out too thin and in the baking it separated into two layers and puffed up, just like a pita pocket: how fortuitous. I freeze the bases and pita for later use.

Tuna and cheese melts, in sourdough pita

By the way, apropos of the stool softener thing, whole wheat bread has 3 times the fibre of white bread. Soluble fiber acts as a filter to help prevent some substances, including cholesterol and glucose, from being absorbed into the blood. It also acts as a stool softener, preventing constipation, which is related to colon cancer and diverticulosis.

That's it from me for now.

Marie-no-stool-softeners-for-me-Antoinette

Chasing the sour crumb

2008-07-30T21:53:00.013+10:00

The winter inner city patch is yielding rocket, mustard, silverbeet and herbs, but apart from that pickings are fairly slim on the substantial veggie front. The broccoli have leafed up with great vigour, but the heads are too small for my liking. The insignificance of my broccoli heads was brought cruelly home to me as I watched Peter Cundall in his last stint as presenter of Gardening Australia pull out broccoli plants from his Tasmanian veggie patch with obscenely large heads. This is my third year running with this problem. Any suggestions as to how to improve the harvest would be much appreciated.

Warrigal greens (New Zealand spinach)

With pickings out the back so slim, I've been eyeing off the Warrigal greens (Tetragonia tetragonoides) in the front garden. Early last year, I was given some seeds by Paul Fogarty who helped permablitz the inner city patch. I planted them out the front last summer and a couple have come good. It seems to like the cold weather, which makes sense as it's a New Zealand native (it's also called New Zealand Spinach). I cooked some up into Warrigal greens pesto. The recipe calls for Warrigal greens and Sea parsley (Apium prostratum), but I substituted Italian flat-leaf parsley from the garden for the Sea parsley - still tasty.

Warrigal greens and parsley pesto

I've also been raiding frozen produce, including the bags and bags of Jerusalem artichokes harvested from the inner city patch over summer. My partner and I made a dent in them by cooking some of them up in a Jerusalem artichoke risotto.

Activity in the patches

In the inner city patch, it has been mostly maintenance such as spraying the citrus, kiwi fruit, and tamarillo with white oil to control scale (in the case of the citrus) and mites, and watering the potted plants with worm wee. I made the white oil according to a recipe by Jerry Coleby-Williams from ABC-TV's Gardening Australia. On the balcony in the weak winter sun are a few boxes of winter hardy seedlings: Mizuna (Brassica rapa nipposinica), spring onions and Salad Burnet (Sanguisorba minor).

I've planted some perennial flower seedlings to increase the pollinator and beneficial insect population: Gaillardia Amberwheel, Lavender Bee Pretty, and caldendulas (Calendula officinalis).

Strawberry seedlings planted in a mound in the orchard on the peninsula patch

Where I work there is a Friday lunchtime market and a lady has started up a stall with home-potted seedlings for sale, mostly edible. I've bought comfrey, watercress, pyrethrum and strawberry (Fragaria ananassa, varieties Tioga and Aromas) seedlings from her. All have gone in down on the peninsula. The strawberries I put into the orchard where I'm trying to build up an understorey layer. Never having grown strawberries before, I did some research and ended up building a long mound and planting them into it to asist with drainage. I planted them with the top of the root ball partially exposed (I think this is called the strawberry crown). I plan to move one of the self-seeded borage (Borago officinalis) plants next to it over the next few weeks - borage is a recommended companion plant for strawberries.

Borage in the orchard

In the herb garden on the Peninsula patch, built by the Compost Queen, I've done some weeding, laid down some chook poo, and sowed some rocket, which has germinated in record time - probably because it's been raining buckets down there over the last few weeks, interspersed with glorious sunshine.

Rocket germinating in the herb garden

My sourdough journey

My homegrown sourdough starter

At a recent permablitz at the house of friends Susie and Alastair in Preston, I looked in on a sourdough making workshop that produced two loaves of very tasty goodness. I begged some starter culture off Kat Lavers, who ran the workshop and have been a little obsessed with getting it right ever since, although I've since made my own starter from scratch.

Although the rising times in bread making don't suit my impatient nature, there are many things to love about sourdough, apart from the taste. There's the fact that it requires neither store-bought yeast, nor a fancy bread-making machine. Instead, you get to breed up and care for a living culture of microorganisms, the starter, that you can keep forever and share among friends and family. The basic ingredients for sourdough (flour, water, salt) are cheap, simple and easily obtainable. Not many people make bread by hand any more. If you know how to make sourdough, you're one extra step away from supermarket dependency. When I get further down my sourdough journey, I'm sure an added bonus will be the opportunity to experiment with different ingredients like nuts, seeds, herbs, and different types of flours.

There are many, many good internet resources about making sourdough, some of which are listed at the end of this post. It's the kind of hobby that breeds obsession, including my nascent one. I'm even reading about the microbiology of sourdough, but that may be because I'm also studying microbiology.

One of the frustrating things for a beginner (I've never made bread before, let alone sourdough) looking for information on the internet, is the number of times you come across such bla bla-ness as "trust your instincts and your hands" and "when it feels right, it probably is right". When you're starting out, you don't have any sourdough instincts. And if all you seem to be able to do is make bricks, that kind of hippy wisdom is not very helpful! So, for what it's worth, here is what I've found works for me, after many failed attempts. The guts of this is taken from John Ross's excellent non-nonsense site 'John Ross's sourdough basics' with some shortcuts (as I've mentioned, I'm impatient) and hotbox tips thrown in. It's probably not great sourdough, but it sure is tasty, and there's nothing like an early win to get you fired up for more action. These instructions exclude the making of the starter. For info on how to make starter, check out John Ross's site.

A SOURDOUGH RECIPE FOR THE TERMINALLY IMPATIENT

1) Rig up a hotbox
Make yourself a hotbox - a warm, preferably enclosed environment where the bread can rise over extended periods of time in a fairly stable temperature. I made mine out of a polystyrene esky with a hot water bottle at the bottom (thanks to my partner for this idea). The lid of the esky sits fits fairly loosely so as to allow some air in. The bowl and tin I use to rise the bread in are big enough so that they kind of wedge into the esky, sitting perched above the hot water bottle, but not directly on it (this would be too hot and would heat the base unevenly, methinks). The ideal temperature for raising sourdough is said to be 27 degrees celsius but I didn't use a thermometer - I'm trying to keep things simple.

2) Proof your starter
This step is designed to ensure that your starter is active. Take 1/2 cup of starter (put the rest back in the fridge to hibernate) and add 1/2 cup flour (I use wholemeal flour) and 1/2 cup warm water. Mix in well. Put the mixture, still in the container you mixed it in, into your hot box. For this stage, you can just put the container, which is probably smallish, at the bottom of the esky in the middle, with your hot water bottle leaning up against the side of the esky but not touching the container. Leave it there for at least 3 hours. If it has formed lots of bubbles, and has increased a little in volume (it should look somewhat like the photo above), you're in luck. If nothing's going on, you may need to let it stit a while longer or nurture your starter for a week or so. I built my starter up over 3 weeks (see links below for starter making info).

3) Make the batter
In this step, you make the "batter" or "sponge" and it's basically the same as proofing the starter but with more flour and water. (Before you start on this step, put aside some proofed starter as starter for your next loaf - if you didn't have any starter left over in the previous step). Add 1 cup warm water and 1 cup flour to your proofed starter. Put the mixture in your hotbox for about 2-3 hours. As with the previous step, it is ready when it's increased in size, but this time it should increase more as the whole mixture should be active by now. This is your batter.

4) Make the dough and set it out to rise (1st rise)
For this step, you'll need 2 cups of batter, 3 cups flour (I prefer wholemeal), 2 tbsps olive oil, 4 tsps sugar, and 2 tsps salt. To the batter, add the sugar, salt, and oil. Mix well, then knead in the flour a half-cup at a time. I do it in a bowl with my hands and finish it on the bench, and instead of flouring my hands to avoid stickyness, I wet them (this prevents the dough getting too floury). As John Ross says, flour amounts are approximate. I think if you're using wholemeal flour like I am, you may want to stop at 2.5 or 2 and 3/4 cups rather than going all the way to 3. I left my dough a bit wetter than the non-sourdough dough I've made in the past (pizza dough and flan bases). The test for whether you've kneaded it is enough is to stretch the dough between your hands. If it skins out in plane, it is good. If it just breaks up into ropy strands, it's not done.

Shape the kneaded dough into a circular form (don't worry too much about shape at this stage; that comes in the next step), put it in a wide bowl (to give it space to increase in volume) and put it in the hot box for a couple of hours. "Let the dough double in bulk: when a finger poked into the top of the dough creates a pit that doesn't "heal" (spring back), you've got a risen dough." (from John Ross).

5) Set the dough out to rise again (2nd rise)
Take the dough out of the hotbox, and knead it a bit more. Form it into a loaf and put it in a floured tin. To help prevent the loaf sticking, you can scatter seeds (i.e. sunflower) or oatmeal in the tin before putting the bread in. I haven't yet tried slitting the top to let it rise better in the overn and make it look purty, but you could - this would be the step at which you do this. Put it back in the hot box and let it rise again, but this time for a shorter period of time. You don't want to overise it, otherwise you won't get any oven rise. Don't let it double in bulk - increase by a third is enough.

6) Bake it, bake it good
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees celsius, put your tin in and bake the loaf 30-45 minutes. This is contrary to John Ross's advice - he reckons you should have the oven at 180 degrees and you shouldn't pre-heat it. He also says you should leave the loaf to cool - but I reckon half the fun is eating the hot bread just as it's come out of the oven.

A success. I think this could be a 'crumb' shot. Sourdough enthusiasts talk a lot about 'the crumb'.

Fresh-baked sourdough - with someone poised to eat

SOME SOURDOUGH MAKING SITES I FOUND USEFUL
John Ross's Sourdough Basics
Taming the Wild Yeast
Dan Lepard
San Francisco Sourdough

Marie Antoinette

Grains of truth

2008-06-09T16:20:00.026+10:00

On the 25th-27th April, just outside of Goulburn, NSW, my partner and I attended a 'Designing Water into Landscape Earthworks' course, taught by Geoff Lawton and Darren Doherty. Together with about 60 other participants, we learnt the theory behind swales and dams, keyline design and dam and swale construction. Under the direction of Darren, Geoff and Nick Ritar of Milkwood Permaculture, we used surveying equipment and surveyed and pegged out a swale, then watched it being built by an earthmover.

Darren Doherty teaching inside the newly built swale

Earthmover in action, building the swale

Use of a keyline plough in the construction and planting of a swale

Also on the agenda at the course was a session with a keyline plough, which ripped the downslope of the swale to accelerate water infiltration and promote aeration and biological activity.

Close-up of one of the tines on the keyline plough: coulter in front

The shape of the tine on the keyline plough is designed to minimise soil inversion so that the inert subsurface soil is not brought to the surface. The shape of the tine is also designed to minimise compaction, both vertically (shear) and horizontally. The depth of the furrow in our case was no more than 12 inches. The furrow cavity created by the plough coulter and tine, combined with the roller that follows (not shown in the photo above) makes a small amount of topsoil fall back in the cavity. If you're seeding (seeding boxes are available) this assists seed germination.

Darren Doherty recommended two passes of the keyline in the context of planning and building a swale. Before the swale is built, a first pass should be done in Autumn over what will be the upslope and downslope of the swale. In the case of the downslope, the keyline ploughed area should include the area immediately adjacent to the swale, which will become the swale mound. Then, in spring, after the swale is built and organic matter development has accelerated since the last keyline, another pass should be done. This second pass can be run at an offset to the original path. Approx hire cost for a keyline plough: 2 hectares per hour @ $50 per hectare.

With the second pass, a compost tea application should be done. Compost and compost tea was covered briefly in the workshop, and since then I've been reading up on large-scale home-built brewing kits built using second-hand spa parts.

Immediately after the swale has been built, sow a cover crop on both sides of the swale. Start with a scatter mulch of 1 bale straw to 40 m. Scatter mulch should be thin enough to just not see the ground, but not too thick as to supress germination. Just before the cover crop flowers, flatten it (Darren suggested dragging reo behind a three-while bike). Plant trees directly in the mulch.

My partner and I took our contour map and draft swale and dam plan for the peninsula property to the course and managed to get a few minutes of Darren's time to discuss it. We got some valuable feedback on our plan, including good hints on setting up a header tank and drip irrigation system. We now feel much more confident about moving ahead. I'm working on a planting design for the swale and area below and my partner is shopping for surveying equipment on eBay.

Against the grain

Back in the city, I enjoyed reading 'Against the grain', John Lethlean's fine rant against 'rice in a bag' in the the Age's Epicure section. Railing against ads for pre-packaged foods ads is a favourite pastime at my house. It seems like ads for these kinds of products address their audiences with a knowing, commonsense wink that says "you and I know that cooking fresh tasty meals is all very well for some (other) people but it's something we don't need to make time for, or invest time in learning". Looking at the bigger picture, pre-packaged foods are big on food miles and packaging, and therfore embodied energy. Our reliance on them corrodes the social fabric and distances us from the source of our food. Sounds like a big call, but think about it - cooking for friends and family is part of the social glue that holds families and communities together. Knowing how to shop and cook fresh ingredients ties us to the seasons, and to the land and the way it sustains us.

The peninsula story

With Winter setting in, I've invested in new gardening footwear. If I could wear these inside too I would. How perfect are they - eminently slip-onnable and stylish to boot (pun intended). Purchased from a Rivers clearance store for a bargain $30.

Growth is slowing right down on the peninsula patches, but potatoes planted earlier in the year are kicking on, as is the indestructible rhubarb.

Luna in the potatoe patch: perhaps she is catching the future scent of roast kipflers

Rhubarb after division

I divided the rhubarb, somewhat inexpertly, having never done it before, and planted another plant on the opposite side of the patch. With the rhubarb harvest I made a rhubarb and apple tart (recipe from Stephanie Alexander), which went down very well (two helpings each) with veggieman and the cross-country king.

Rhubarb and apple tart, just out of the oven

Under the trees in my father's orchard I've been putting out the chookpoo-and-chips mixture that we have so much of, and sowing with nitrogen-fixing groundcovers. Towards the beginning of Autumn I tried pinto's peanut (Arachis pintoi), a perennial legume that is often used as an orchard groundcover. Unfortunately it didn't take - I don't think there was enough rain to get it going. In late Autumn after we had some rain, I tried again with red clover (Trifolium pratense), a biennial legume also used as an orchard groundcover. Looks like I've had more luck with that. The borage planted early last year has also self seeded under one of the apple trees.

After a really dry summer, it's lovely to see the small dam on the property full again, and so pretty . . .

Inner-city patch

The beans kept soldiering on till late May and I put them into a quinoa dish with mint and lemon from the garden.

Quinoa with beans and mint-honey dressing

Quinoa with bean and mint-honey dressing

Makes 2 servings

Chopped beans (I've also made this dish with zuchinnis and cauliflower instead of beans)
½ tsp finely grated fresh lemon zest
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp mild honey
salt
pepper
3/4 cup quinoa
2 spring onions, chopped (can substitute chives)
sprig chopped fresh mint

Wash quinoa well in a fine-grained metal sieve. Cook quinoa in boiling salted water (enough to cover quinoa generously, but not as much as rice), uncovered, until almost tender, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, whisk together lemon zest and juice, butter, honey, salt, and pepper in a large bowl until combined. Drain quinoa in sieve, then set sieve over same pot with 1 inch of simmering water (water should not touch bottom of sieve). Cover quinoa with a folded kitchen towel, then cover sieve with a lid (don't worry if lid doesn't fit tightly) and steam until quinoa is tender, fluffy, and dry, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand (still covered) 5 minutes. Add dressing and toss until dressing is absorbed, then stir in corn, spring onions, mint, and salt and pepper to taste.

*************

I cleared one of the beds, put out compost from the tumbler and some chook-poo-with-chips from the peninsula property on one of the patches and planted it out with broad beans and parsley on one side, and red cover on the other (spare seed).

Herbage is kicking on, including chervil (Anthriscus cerefolium) and watercress. Chervil is great in potatoe salad, with sage, chives, parsley and any other sympatico herbs you've got kicking around. With the watercress, I made a watercress and sour-cream sauce for a steak and teamed it with the last of the beans.

Chervil

Steak with watercress sauce, beans and potatoe roesti

I've also been seedsaving, mainly dill, parsley and rocket, but also beans and tomatoes.

I leave you with an image of Luna on the peninsula property, tail in curlicued readiness.

Marie Antoinette

Helianthus tuberosus

2008-05-05T22:27:00.007+10:00

Jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes) rock my world. Fast growing, prolific, pretty in flower, good to eat with a sweet, nutty flavour. What more could you ask of a tuber? Aside from the fact that friends and family have dubbed them jerusalem fartichokes, I'm impressed.

Advice was to snip flower buds off before they bloomed, and I tried, but they'd grown so high that it was hard. Because I didn't get to carry this out, I thought I'd have a poor yield. Boy was I wrong. In late April, I pulled out three plants and harvested at least 4 kilos.

Turns out I had two varietes, a knobbly one that looked like ginger, and another longer variety that I think is called 'Fuseau'. Both make tasty soup. You can make the soup with the artichoke as the main ingredient, or you can include potatoes or/and leeks. The soup has a lovely velvety texture, whether you make it with straight chicken stock or add milk. Apparently Helianthus tuberosus are good roasted too, like a parsnip, with other veggies. They freeze well (like ginger). I might try this Jerusalem artichoke and green pea tart with some defrosted ones.

Relishious

With the bumper tomatoe crop from the peninsula patch, my partner made relish, from a recipe in Stephanie Alexander's, Cook's Companion. Five kilos were turned into 5 jars, which didn't seem like much reward for a lot of effort, but there's a lot of taste packed into those small vessels. A friend vowed to eat her relish every day for a week, and took photos to prove it. Relish with pizza was one of the more unusual combinations.

Herbage
We're enjoying all the herbs from the garden at the moment. From left to right below are sage, mint and oregano, chilli (I know, not a herb, but good colour contrast), perennial basil, thyme and rosemary. Watercress is also thriving in a sunny spot on the balcony, and we are getting some lovely pepperminty feathery chervil to go with our fish.

Birds begone

My partner has built walls for the patches, so they're now a series of (slightly raised) beds. Wood was gleaned from a neighbour who had just pulled out all his skirting boards. Combined with my not-so-well constructed nets, plantings are pretty much birdproof. Now what do we do about our jack russell who has developed a taste for obsessive rat hunting in the garden . . . .?

Plantings
Seedlings: broccoli, beetroot, cos lettuce, sweet pea (massey gem)
Seeds: direct seeding of mustard, parsley, dill, rocket, poppy seeds
Also planted some Russian garlic, and early purple garlic for harvest in December.

On my balcony in the sun, I have seedlings of coriander, cauliflower (mini), and broad beans (coles dwarf)

Harvest news
Other than the jerusalem artichokes, I've had a late harvest of french beans, probably brought on by the heat spell in March. Made a polpete pie with them, which is really just a fancy label for bean and potatoe mash with parmesan, cooked in the oven in a pie dish for about 40 mins until a cheesy crust forms.

Spinach and chard are also staples at the moment.

A few small strawberries came out of the hanging pots, pretty disappointing really.

Eggplants were few and far between - planted too late I think.

Education
A stint of earthworks education at Goulburn will be the subject of the next post. Swales, dams, tractors, keyline ploughs, surveying equipment. Most entertaining.

Marie Antoinette

The big dry

2008-03-21T11:43:00.027+11:00

Oh. Oh. So Dry. Where is the water? Autumn is underway, and now that I've started clearing garden beds in preparation for autumn plantings, the low soil moisture level is apparent.

The rain deficit has been exacerbated by a March chock full of higher than normal temperatures, a situation described by the Bureau of Meterology as "an exceptional and prolonged heatwave in southern Australia".

Late summer harvest

Pepinos

Five pepinos came off the potted pepino (Solanum muricatum). The taste is like a kind of bland rockmelon - pleasant but nothing to write home about. They're a relative of the cucumber and I note that they are susceptible to something called cucumber mosaic virus. I've come across the mosaic virus while volunteering at Mock's Biodynamic Orchard on the Mornington Peninsula. Mosaic virus also affects cherries and apples.

The chinese snake cucumbers are now finished, with the leaves having succumbed to a late summer mildew. The harvest was bountiful and included some strangely shaped specimens.
The tommy toe tomatoe harvest got larger and larger, so that by mid Feb, I was running out of freezer space for homemade tomatoe sauce and frozen whole tomatoes. Stephanie Alexander's method for making tomatoe sauce is a cracker - just mix the seeded tomatoes with herbs and olive oil and onions and bake for 15 minutes (or until the tomatoes skins are soft and coming off the tomatoes). Then mouli the lot. As I don't have any fresh basil this year, I've been using my perennial basil (Ocimum gratissimum - I wrongly called this Ocimum obovatum in the last post) in the sauce, which is stronger but just as tasty.

While tomatoes in the inner-city patch are nearly finished, on the peninsula they are still going strong, and on much less water. Tomatoe relish is next on the agenda. Anyone got any good recipes for that? I've saved some seed from the peninsula tomatoes, and am trying the seed fermentation method recommend by Jude and Michael Fanton in their Seed Savers Handbook.
Zucchinis are now finished and the freezer is full of zucchini soup for winter. Like the cucumbers, they all finally succumbed to mildew leaves, but I think I prolonged their lives by cutting off affected leaves.

The climbing beans (Frederico) reached the pergola and produced a big harvest, but not for very long. We enjoyed the small ones in salad and the older ones mostly went into an Indian tomatoe-based bean dish, which is a firm favourite with a certain young visitor (sometimes known as Veggieman). It's also a way to use the chillis proliferating on my chilli bush (not sure of the variety but it is prolific) and the lemons from the tree on the peninsula property. Thankfully chillis freeze well. Here is the recipe, curiously called "Fried Beans' in my cookbook, but for no apparent reason as it's not a fried dish.

FRIED (NOT) BEANS

Ingredients: 500g green beans, 2 small onions (minced), 1 tsp grated fresh ginger, 1tbsp olive oil, half tsp garam masala, half tsp ground turmeric, half a fresh chilli, 1 tsp salt (or leave out if you're not a big salt fan), two thirds of a cup of chopped tomatoes, 2 tsp lemon juice.

String the beans if necessary and cut into one-inch pieces. Saute the onions and ginger in the oil until golden brown. Stir in garam masala, turmeric, chilli and salt, and cook for a few minutes. Add tomatoes and beans and cook about 20 minutes, or longer if you have time. I reckon this dish tastes best cooked for ages, and then reheated. Stir in lemon juice and serve. It's extra tasty served with yoghurt.
Plantings
I've planted the following seedlings, raised from seed in polystyrene boxes:

broccoli
swiss chard
sweet pea (Massey Gem)
sunflowers
potatoes (peninsula patch)
sweet corn (peninsula patch)
garlic (peninsula patch)
In one of the new beds, I scattered lots of parsley and rocket seeds, as well as the seedlings, for eating and groundcover. The broccoli is in a sunny spot, with the soil covered in sugar cane mulch to conserve soil moisture and reduce evaporation.

On the balcony are many polystyrene boxes (surely I'm bringing the tone of the neighbourhood down - one can only hope) of beetroot (chioggia), onion (barletta), watercress, more sweet pea (massey gem) and lettuce (goldrush).

The sunflowers are already flowering after only 4 or 5 weeks, and will hopefully be pollinator and beneficial insect attractors, along with some calendulas (seed sown direct). Nastursiums planted last year are reactivating again.

Garden maintenance

Compost tea brewing

Another batch of compost-tumbler compost has gone out on the beds, and I made two batches of compost tea out of it as well. Australia's expert on compost tea is Elaine Ingham. I use Cam Wilson's recipe. Cam is a permaculture teacher, and all round excellent bloke.

CAM'S COMPOST TEA RECIPE (makes 20 litres)

2 handfuls good compost mixed in with handful worm castings from your worm farm
fish bubbler (buy this from an aquariaum/pet shop - it is the device that is used to oxygenate water in a fish tank - will set you back about $20)
a 20-litre bucket
1/8 cup organic molasses
2 tbsp oatmeal
2 capfuls Seasol

Put the compost and wormcastings in a mesh bag (I use an old delicates washing bag). Place the bag in a bucket and add water. Add remaining ingredients and stir gently. Insert the fish bubbler and turn on. Leave for 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

*******

I've been progressively clearing the beds of spent plants. The jerusalem artichokes are in flower so I've been heading some of the buds to encourage the plant to put its energy into tuber growth. As they have grown very high (up to neighbour's roof), I haven't been able to get to all the buds. Tubers should be ready for harvest in about 4 weeks. Looking forward to Jerusalem artichoke soup and having Dad make his skordalia with them.

On the peninsula patch I've progressively harvested the seeds off the two grain amaranth plants (Amaranthus hypochondriacus) so that I now have four batches of seed, each batch harvested one week apart. Gathering the seed has been a lesson in grain harvesting, including winnowing the chaff from the grain, a process which I find relaxing and meditative. Basically, once you have separated the larger chaff from the grain by pushing it through a garden sieve, you can further separate the grain by winnowing it, which means pouring the chaff-grain from one bucket to another in a breeze. The breeze blows the chaff away, and the (heavier) grain falls into the bucket. It takes a bit of practice, and you have to wait till there is a reasonable breeze, but it works.

Fully grown grain amaranth plant, ready for harvest.

First step in harvesting grain from grain amaranth - separate seed and chaff from head by grabbing the stalk and running your hand down it.

After some winnowing the much of the chaff has been removed

Grain on the left, chaff on the right - winnowing is nearly finished.

I'll leave you with some images of the amazing edible garden of Mark Dymiotis, which was part of the Victorian Open Garden scheme this year. The crowd on the open day was huge - so much so that it took me an hour to inch around his suburban backyard. The centrepiece of Mark's garden is a covered compost shed where he makes hot compost. He teaches gardening and cooking at Melbourne's CAE and not only does he grow most of his own veggies and fruit, but he's also an expert at bread making, and olive preserving. What a dude!

Grapes in Mark Dymiotis's garden

The crowd in Mark Dymiotis's garden on Open Garden day.

Go well in your garden.

Marie Antoinette

Summer of the Cucumis - 26 January 2008

2008-01-26T21:52:00.000+11:00

Summer has well and truly set in and even though we have two 2100-litre tanks in the inner city patch, we've come close to running out of water for the garden. Some plants are also suffering from the heat: kiwi fruit leaves have burnt, as have some of the leaves of the zucchinis and comfrey plants. Watching the zucchinis suffer makes me think I should plant one or two more smaller deciduous trees that might provide some dappled shade in the summer. That's the idea behind having the lemon tree in the middle of one of the patches. Although it is still establishing, it is providing a good climbing structure for a Chinese Snake cucumber (Cucumis melo var utilissimus).
Climbing action
There are a few interesting climbing synergies happening, most unintentional. The unplanned nature of these is fun and educational. It makes me realise the truth of the gardening writers who say that gardening is as much about observation as activity. The Purple King beans (Phaseolus vulgaris, Purple King) have climbed all over a sunflower. Other climbing beans (Phaseolous vulgaris, Frederico) have climbed all over the tomatoes, which are themselves staked to a wire structure. The squash (I don’t know the variety because they’re volunteers) climb vigorously anywhere they can and I’m constantly cutting them back to allow other plants sun. Tomatoes are climbing everywhere – the Tommy Toes (Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme) don’t need much by way of ties. I just weave them around any nearby structure.

My partner tied up some string supports for seedlings of the climbing beans (Frederico) that I planted in early December and they have almost reached the pergola.

Harvest

Much to my delight, we’re now eating most of our veggies and fruit out of the inner city garden and peninsula patches. It makes for a lean fridge – the garden is the pantry. My anxiety about the tomatoes not ripening has proved unfounded – we’re getting a good harvest with some to spare for family and friends. The zucchinis are absolutely rocking on. As well as the ubiquitous zucchini soup, my partner has made a delicious zucchini tart out of Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook, Jamie at Home.

A fair sweet corn (Golden Bantam) harvest came out of the Merricks patch.

However, although the the plants all produced ears, the taste wasn’t so good (kind of starchy) and the kernels themselves were unevenly ripe. I’m not sure why – might be inconsistent moisture levels: lack of rain, once-a-week watering.

We’ve also been eating potatoes from the Merricks patch, planted back in July 2007, in the Bill Mollison method.

But the vegetable I am loving most is the Chinese Snake Cucumbers (Cucumis melo var utilissimus), which took off in mid January and are now climbing all over the trellis on the neighbour’s wall and producing the tartest, most delicious cucucmbers. The taste is like a Lebanese cucumber, but with more oomph, and they can grow really big, although I like to pick them small so they are still tender and sweet. This is the first time I’ve had success growing cucumbers and I’m hooked!

Plantings

Direct seedings: lettuce (Green Oakleaf), chervil, parsley, rocket

Seeds sown in containers (recycled polystyrene boxes that used to hold vegetables): sweet corn (Balinese), silverbeet (Swiss rainbow chard), chervil

Seedlings planted out (raised from seed): eggplant, capsicum, mung beans

Seedlings planted out (purchased): Cape Gooseberry (aka goldenberry), Perennial Basil (Ocimum obovatum), French Sorrel (Rumex scutatus), Cardamon (Elettaria specie),

Seeds collected: running postman (Kennedia prostrata), dill, poppy

Dried poppies, ready for harvest of seeds. Dried poppies are like shakers of seed: you just take that petal-like top off the poppy and hundreds of seeds come tumbling out.

Composting update
The first batch of compost from the whizbang new compost tumbler has arrived.

Time from loading to compost: three weeks
Effort: 1.7 hours (two minutes a day to turn, plus initial collection of material and load into bin)
Verdict: Excellent. Check it out.

The barrel is really easy to turn as it has a chain-driven handle. You are supposed to turn it at least 5 rotations every day, but it doesn’t matter if you miss a few days here and there. Loading it is fairly straightforward – you have to load it all at once though (you can’t keep adding to it). We’ve been storing materials in the old bay that my partner built for me when I was turning it by hand.

The barrel produced two and half wheelbarrows of compost. Emptying the barrel is dead easy – you just rotate the barrel so the opening is over the wheelbarrow, and presto.

Continuing education
On the study front, I made it through soil science, the first subject in my agricultural science degree. Emboldened I’ve upped the stakes and am going to try two subjects this semester: botany and basic chemistry.

Am also doing a lot of reading around pasture cropping and the use of native grasses in farming. This is part of an interest in small-scale speciality grain raising on the peninsula property. I’ve been researching specialty gluten-free grains such as Amaranth.

Grain Amaranth (Amaranthus hypochondriacus), Peninsula patch

Rain is falling as I write, an all too rare occurrence these days.

Palm oil - 20 December 2007

2007-12-21T00:26:00.000+11:00

A Greenpeace survey team walk through a fire devastated forest in the Riau region. Palm oil companies are clearing forest and peatlands with fires in preparation for oil palm plantations. (Image from Greenpeace website: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/photosvideos/photos/smoke-from-forest-fire2)

As if you didn't have enough reasons already to limit purchases of packaged products from the supermarket, here is another very good one.

Palm oil is used in a wide variety of packaged food and some other products (such as cosmetics) available in our supermarkets and stores: for example, Kit Kats and Pringles. In ingredients lists, it is often listed as just 'vegetable oil'. Global consumption of palm oil is predicted to more than double by 2030 and to triple by 2050. While over 70 per cent ends up in food, palm oil is also used in the biofuels industry.

Large areas of rainforest in Indonesia, largely in Sumatra, are being cleared to make way for palm oil plantations. We all know that forest clearing is a major contributor to global warming. In this instance, the effect is even greater because these forests are peat forests, and peat is an amazing carbon store. A UN Environment Programme report on peatlands, biodiversity and climate change, released at the recent Bali Climate Change Conference, states that "peat is the largest and most efficient land-based store of carbon, and the world's second largest carbon store after the oceans."

Land clearing for palm oil involves draining and burning the peat, releasing large amounts of greenhouse gas. Greenpeace estimates that while Indonesia's peatlands represent just 0.1 per cent of the Earth's land mass, their destruction for palm oil constitues a staggering 4 per cent of global emissions.

Companies such as Unilever, Cadburys and Nestles represent a significant proportion of the global palm oil trade. Despite participating in a voluntary scheme for sustainable use of palm oil, they still rely on palm oil suppliers who destroy rainforests and convert peatlands into plantations.

For more info on palm oil see:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/palm-oil_cooking-the-climate

and

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oil

and

http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/faq-palm-oil-forests-and-climate-change

As well as exercising your consumer power by limiting your purchases of packaged food from these companies, you could also make a donation to Greepeace who are doing excellent work on this issue, including campaigning and lobbying for a moratorium on forest and peatland clearing, as well as on-the-ground work bearing witness to the ongoing destruction in Indonesia.

I'm sorry to bear such un-Christmassy news, but I think this is something to be aware of.

Marie Antoinette

Avian war - Friday 14 December 2007

2007-12-15T22:32:00.000+11:00

In November, when the callistemon at the back of the city garden was in full flower, the bees went crazy for it. Happy buzzing sounds filled the garden. Honeyeaters flocked to the tree, feasting on the nectar.

But that was then, and this is now. In those days I harboured tender-hearted feelings towards birds in my garden. Now the blackbirds, mynahs and starlings have moved in and . . . . .IT'S WAR.

It seems I've created soil that is so attractive to worms that it is also a magnet for birds that wreak mayhem and destruction. There is no point sowing anything direct and no point planting seedlings without putting netting or wire over them. The birds roam through the garden pecking at the soil to get the worms and scattering soil and seedlings everywhere.

I've tried a wide variety of deterrents, most of which work for a short time before the birds wise up. Tactics I've tried with limited success include flash tape, hanging CDs off stakes, a blow up ballon with (according to the manufacturer) "terror eyes". This last has become a running joke in the house - you can almost hear the birds' sarcasm: "oooh, I'm terrified". The only thing that really works is exclusion: netting and wire cages, and putting spikes or sticks all over the ground so they can't land. These strategies are of course a pain in the bum to implement and once in they make harvesting a chore, not to mention ruining the aesthetics. Oh Cruel World
Any tips for buggering off pesky blackbirds, starlings and mynahs would be appreciated. I'm getting so desperate, I've even considered buying a sonic repeller but that seems like overkill for courtyard veggie garden! A slingshot is, however, looking like an increasingly attractive option.

On the bright side
In happier news, the city garden is looking lush and pretty and is offering up summer bounty in the form of butter lettuce, rocket, zucchinis, the remainder of the spring spinach, and purple king beans. Of course the trusty old chard is still coming on - there's so much of that that I chop it up and feed it to the dogs - I put it in the blender with some oil to get it chopped up fine and then I mix it well with fresh meat. The finely chopped chard covers the meat so the dogs have to eat it - otherwise they just eat the meat and leave their greens.

The purple king beans are a truly a wondrous discovery. They are good to look at in the garden, with a small purple flower and leaves with a dark purplish tinge. The beans themselves are a rather startling purple but when you cook 'em, they go green, and they taste scrumptious: sweeter than your average long bean, with a nutty flavour.

Am loving the butter lettuce too - goes well with shaved parmesan. Here's the meal I had last night - all veggies courtesy of the good earth in my garden.
Before this in October, my partner and I dined on the remaining peas, broad beans, spinach, beetroot, and loads of parsley which mostly went into tabbouleh. And, of course, chard, always the chard.

I think I've tried at least 5 new broad bean recipes, including a really simple dip that is just about cooking them, adding olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper and magimixing it all up. This dip is yummy on crusty bread.

In October my partner and I pulled out the olives that we picked off the tree in the front yard last August. We had cured them according to instructions from my partner's uncle who grows olives near Tocumwal in NSW. Unfortunately, ours don't taste too good, which is a disappointment given that the curing process is kind of time-consuming. Anyone got any olive curing hints?

As summer approached, I was pulling out odd shaped beetroots and as time went on, the ones I pulled out seemed to have more white in them. If anyone can explain this or has any plausible theories - bring it on.
Towards the end of spring, I caught our little caramel-coloured sausage-jack russell cross lounging in the parsley and mint bed - it was very cute. She was lying on her back in patch, with the sun on her tummy and her head in the fragrant parsley and mint, breathing deeply.

A trip to central Victoria
In early December my partner and I went on a week's holiday to Daylesford (central Victoria) and surrounds. We kicked off the holiday with a tour of Melliodora, David Holmgren and Su Dennett's permaculture property in Hepburn Springs. A fantastic passive solar house and amazing permaculture garden. Check out the greenhouse at the west end of the house. It is an entry point to the house and the kitchen opens out onto it. When we were there sweet corn seedlings were on the outside wall of the greenhouse, soon to provide shade and climate control.

David Holmgren in the 'house garden' at Melliodora

Greenhouse in the west wing of the Melliodora house

I highly recommend taking one of these tours, which are run once a month on a Sunday. You can do the garden and/or the house.

I was pretty excited to visit the dry composting toilet, located in the garden shed. It was a pleasure to use. When you use a dry composting toilet, you usually have to add sawdust or some other dry chopped matter. This one had a big bucket of dried lavender, presumably harvested from the garden. How cool is that?

Dry composting toilet at Melliodora

I find that most people wrinkle their noses at the idea of composting toilets. For many people its because they have never used one or their only experience with them has been a smelly pit toilet in a national park. But if compost toilets are designed and maintained correctly, they don't smell at all, and they produce excellent compost. Check out this beauty in the Eucadorian eco-lodge, Black Sheep Inn. This site also has a bunch of links and further info about composting toilets and their place in permaculture.

We also visited the Diggers Garden of St Erth at Macdon, which includes some very impressive veggie patches. We both gazed longingly at the lovely berry bounty. I also looked enviously at the undoubtedly scary predator bird replica flying above the main veggie patch, mounted on a long pole and flapping it's wings menacingly. Bet that keeps the bloody blackbirds away.

Raspberries at St Erth

Bird scarer in the edible garden at St Erth

The peninsula

In late September on the peninsula, my father netted his recently espaliered fruit trees, a big operation but already paying off with what is shaping up to be a bumper harvest.

Contractors came in to take down and chip some large eucalypts behind the house and they mixed the chips with chook poo to create a pile of compost for us. Unfortunately, the ratio of chook poo to chips was too high and the pile heated very quickly and then proceeded to burn itself slowly. The mixture was too strong to apply directly as compost - it would have burnt plants - so we've had to content ourselves with spreading it out away from the trunks of trees. I've also taken some back to the inner city patch and mixed it with sugar cane mulch to take some of the heat out.

Pile of chook-poo and woodchips, peninsula

The potatoes I planted in September are doing well, and I've also planted a corn patch (Golden Bantam) but as corn is very water hungry, I'm not sure how it will do without regular watering.

Sweet corn seedlings, peninsula

Composting update
All the bending required to turn the compost in the small side access path in the city garden has proved to be no good for my back. So I've changed tack and have bought a big compost tumbler.

It is designed to make compost the berkeley way - ie. the same way I've been making it up until now. I'm going to use the old purpose-built compost bay to store materials for the tumbler compost. I'll still be visiting the crew at Australian Herb and Fruit Supplies on the corner of my street for a weekly barrow full of veggie waste. Pat, Tim and Louie keep boxes at the front for me - they're just winding up the busy season now. Sometimes I bake them tasty goodies for their morning tea, but they tell me that unless they keep it under lock and key, the other shift staff get the loot!

The crew at Australian Herb & Fruit Supplies

Garden high points
The city garden has just gone through a big growth spurt and the greenery is rampant. It's gone from this in late September:
to this in mid December:

Tommy toes planted against a sunny brick wall are coming along well.

Cucumbers are starting to climb the trellis on the west wall and pumpkins are searching for any space and light they can find. Purple king beans are climbing everywhere - not only on their trellises, but all over the tomatoes, up sunflowers and up jerusalem artichokes. The jerusalem artichokes are going gangbusters. Unfortunately, I seem to have an allergy to the leaves and stalks, which have fine glass-like shards all over them.

Bounty that will be on the table in the next few weeks: tomatoes, more rocket, more beans, cucumbers, pepinos, capsicum, chillis, and more butter lettuce.

Pepinos, not yet ripe

Seeds I've saved or been given by other gardeners recently: mustard greens, poppy, parsley, broccoli. I also got a lovely big handful of rocket seeds, given to me by Socrates, who tends an impressive vegetable garden at the corner of my street. One of the highlights of this garden, which is street-facing, is a beautiful loquat tree. Socrates has rigged up a homemade tank to his roof downpipes, made out of, he tells me, an old mattress glue container.

As I write this, it is raining. Rejoice.

Marie Antoinette

Eating from the garden - Saturday 13 October 2007

2007-10-13T15:46:00.000+10:00

Harvest from the garden is picking up so I thought I'd make this post all about enjoying the harvest, with a bit of other agriculture news thrown in. Excuse my shoddy photography. I'm all about the flavour, and don't spend much time on the looks.

Beetroot salad with labna

We're moving into salad weather so rather than roast the beetroots, I made a lebanese beetroot salad out of them, which is basically beetroots, onions and herbs on labna. As well as beetroots from the garden, I used just some of the masses of the mint and parsley (which is serving as groundcover) that is growing now. I love labna, an extension of my love for yoghurt. I noticed that there is a recipe very similar to this one in Greg and Lucy Malouf's latest book on Lebanese and Syrian food, Saha.

(serves 2)
2 large beetroot or 4 small ones
300g labna (500ml yoghurt that has been placed in a small muslin bag and hung overnight to drain excess liquid – use a whole container if making salad for 2)
½ cup parsley leaves
½ cup mint leaves
½ Spanish onion (thinly sliced)
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
sea salt to taste

Boil beetroots in their skins in salted water till tender. Peel while warm by rubbing skins (wear gloves to stop hands staining). Allow to cool then cut into 2cm cubes. Spread labna on serving dish. Toss together parsley, mint, onion, beetroot and salt. Arrange on the labna. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

Broccoli and sesame seed salad

Australian-French chef Gabriel Gate was big in the 80s, with his low-cal cooking and cute Frenchie accent, but he's fallen out of favour recently. I think people started wising up to the suspicious persistence of a strong French accent in the face of long-term residence in Australia. Someone gave me this book when I was in my early twenties and I used to cook out of it a lot. I still do this salad regularly as I find broccoli a bit bland straight up. This dish used up the last of the broccoli crop from the garden.

Serves 4
600g broccoli
2 tbsp sesame seeds
freshly ground black pepper
1 tstp red wine vinegar
1 tsp soy sauce (light is better)
2 tsp olive oil
2 drops sesame oil

Break up broccoli into florets. Steam until just cooked and dip in icy water until cold (blanch), then drain. Toast sesame seeds over medium heat. Mix pepper with vinegar, soy, olive oil and sesame oil. Toss broccoli with dressing and sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve.

Vietnamese chicken soup (pho)

This is probably best eaten standing up, outside a hawker's stall in a crowded rural marketplace, but it's also really easy to make at home, and a good way to use the coriander, chives, parsley and vietnamese mint that is growing well in the garden at the moment. Amounts are approximate because I make it from memory. Leave the leaves of the herbs unchopped, except for the chives.

Serves 2
1 chicken breast, halved lengthways and cut into strips
cellophane noodles (enough to put in soup for two, be generous)
handful coriander leaves
handful vietnamese mint
chopped chives
1 red chilli, finely chopped (don't forget to take the seeds out)
splodge of fish sauce
2 tsps minced ginger
peanut oil
3 cups chicken stock

Arrange the herbage and chilli (mint, coriander, chives) on a plate.
Fry the ginger in a wok with some peanut oil, until aromatic and then add the chicken. Cook for about a minute. Add the chicken stock and fish sauce and bring to the boil. Cook for about 8 minutes until chicken is cooked through. While it's cooking, cook the noodles.
Ladle noodles into bowls and cover with the chicken in the broth. People can add the herbs and chilli when they eat. If you like it spicy, serve with chilli paste.

Broad bean salad with prosciutto

After watching my broad beans grow too tall and spindly, I was worried they wouldn't produce anything, but they've come good and we get to enjoy this salad. The dish seems particularly Spanish to me, but that's probably because eating prosciutto also makes me yearn for Jamon Iberico. It also uses the cos lettuce that is going nuts in the sunny bed against the wall of the neighbour's house.

I won't bother reproducing the recipe here, because you can find it here.

Gardening update

I reckon the pollination rate in the garden would be up, with the flowering of the red bottlebrush in the back corner, which seems to be a bee's paradise. The nastursiums are all in flower too, and the mustard greens are flowering with their brightly coloured yellow flowers.

Seeds planted: corn, basil, rocket, sage, tomatoes (tommy toes), alpine strawberries, eggplant (last batch didn't germinate), snake beans (direct).

I tried to sow the rocket and basil in situ, but the birds (miners mainly) are wreaking havoc and destruction as they feast on the worms living in the newly-spread compost. I've resorted to constructing crude bird -repelling things, like plastic bags pegged to sticks and cds on string. All these methods work up to a point - then the birds wise up and continue on their merry ways.

Seedlings planted out in the garden: zuchini, cucumber, spinach.

I want to sow some edible groundcovers (and I've got plenty of rocket and parsley, seeds for this purpose) for all the standard reasons, including stablising soil temperature, reducing evaporative moisture loss, and weed prevention. But I think it would be a waste of time, with the birds still going hard at the freshly laid compost. It's a cruel conundrum because the groundcover would itself protect seedlings from bird damage. Might wait till the worm activity subsides a bit.

Soil science

Since the last post, I've done a soil-science residential school at Wagga campus of CSU, including a mid-semester soil science exam. Here's a photo from one of the field trips, where we took soil samples from different locations and classified them out in the field. In this photo, a student is holding a bolus, which is one of the steps in the field classification of soil-texture.

This week in my study, I'm focusing on nutrient cycles in the soil, especially nitrogen and phosphorous.

Get into your gardens folks.

Marie Antoinette

Spring has sprung - Sunday 26 August 2007

2007-08-30T21:07:00.001+10:00

The science and practicalities of composting in the inner city
It just so happens that I'm studying soil science as I enter a new phase of my obsession with compost. Soil science is a subject in Agricultural Science, which I'm studying part time by distance mode at Charles Sturt University.

This week's soil science topic is organic matter as a property of the 'solid soil fraction'. This includes looking at factors affecting the rate of decomposition, one of which is that ratio beloved of all composters worldwide - the carbon to nitrogen ratio. Other factors of which we composters are well aware are aeration, water and temperature. It's quite neat to be turning my compost, adding water, then hitting the books to find out why I'm doing it.

Anyway, I'm not sure that it's improving due to my scientific knowledge - plain 'ole observation and wisdom from other gardeners would teach the same lessons about this age old art.

Due to space limitations, turning the pile is quite a business. I thought I would need two bays: one to store the pile; the other to turn it into. However, I've found that I can turn it out of my purpose built bay into our trailer and then back in again. It's not ideal in that there's a bit too much bending and lifting, but it does save space and we don't have much of that.

Plantings and maintenance
As spring has sprung, there is much to do. This weekend I cleared one of the beds, leaving only a few elephant garlics (which won't mature till November), some broad beans that are just coming into flower, some mustard, and a fence-line row of spring onions and some flowering plants whose names I've forgotten (oops!) but which have only emerged in the last few weeks. I then laid down compost, about 5-cm thick. Along the fenceline, against the spring onions, I made a small furrow, filled it with sifted compost and put down some rocket seeds (mmmmmm).

I also planted the following seeds into some trusty polystyrene veggie boxes and put 'em out on the front balcony in full sun:
sage
zucchini (Fordhook)
cucumber (non-climbing)
eggplant (Long purple).

What I'm eating out of the garden
Lettuce, mustard greens, silverbeet and broccoli, and of course herbs (coriander, parsley, dill, watercress, vietnamese mint, shallots).

Looking forward to broad beans. I have a broadie recipe culled from the internet: lamb braised with broad beans and artichokes. I might just stick with a trusty broad bean, mint and prosciutto combination though. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

The higher temperatures have set the peas off - I love the way their tendrils seek out climbing structures. You can see them growing in mid air towards the nearest support, which may be as much as 10 cm away - amazing.

I leave you with a shot of the woolly vetch growing down in the peninsula patch.

Happy spring gardening.

Marie Antoinette

Land for veggies goes permanently cultural - Wednesday 25 July 2007

2007-07-27T15:38:00.000+10:00

Land for veggies has now been dormant for over 6 months. This is the first step in a revival that will see it reporting on not one but two veggie patches, and with an added focus on permaculture and sustainable agriculture generally.

The peninsula patch
The summer harvest from this patch was tomatoes (tommy toes), basil, cucumber, and zucchinis, lots and lots of zucchinis.

With two permaculture courses under my belt since the last post, the patch on the peninsula has been reconceived. It is now growing a green manure crop of woolly vetch and lupins, in preparation for a summer crop of quinoa and amaranth grain.

Until late June, the last of the tomatoes were ripening in the patch, and last week I harvested the last of the potatoes with veggieman who was much taken with the many giant worms living in that part of the patch. This weekend, if I have time I may plant out a couple of rows of potatoes at the north end of the patch, using a combination of methods:
- Peter Cundall's technique, which includes a generous topping of manure. Luckily, the neighbouring property has plenty of that in the form of cow poo.
- a trick I learn't in Tasmania while on a permaculture training camp - dip the cut end of the spud in wood ash.

My peninsula patch task before summer is to research quinoa and grain amaranth, including grain preparation and recipes. No point growing it if I can't make it into something tasty.

The inner city patch

In the inner city, a permablitz has transformed the small courtyard I share with my partner, father, two dogs and (every second weekend) veggieman and the Jamesmeister. For a full report on the blitz, visit the permablitz website. Take some time to read about some of the other fantastic blitzes, a few of which I've been to. The latest one I went to happened last weekend (Sunday 22nd July) was at the home of the lovely Tamara and Andy in Bunyip. Tamara is a colleague from the two-week permaculture training camp I did in April in Tasmania, on Bill Mollison's property. She and Andy live on a fantastic acre of lovingly designed permaculture. Check out her flickr site and look her up if you need a permaculture design, because that's her main game now.

The inner city patch (a series of patches really) is growing lots of green goodness. The main harvest since Autumn, when things got underway, has been lettuce (cos and great lakes) and mizuna. Along the way there's been a lovely set of beetroots, and now we're seeing the beginning of the broccoli. Other greenery that is in abundance at the moment is parsley and dill and green onions. You can see that various patches are mostly mixed, with a main crop in each patch (such as the broadbean patch) interspersed with other complementary goodies such as the parsley, dill, spinach, mint and so on.

I've yet to have any success with the peas in the south east patch. Even though they were despite provided with an excellent trellis, they've stayed small and insignificant. Peas planted against the western wall later seem to be doing better, so there's hope yet that I'll get to sit down and shell peas with veggieman who loves to eat them raw. The south east patch is the only one that didn't get a dose of my compost. Instead it got a french millet mulch (millet grown for the purpose in that patch) slashed (before it set seed) and covered by a half-cubic metre of commercial compost. In the pond (bathub), the vietnamese mint is happy, as is the watercress. I'm loving the tart mustardy taste of watercress leaves in the salad and think I'll grow some more. I've just purchased some water chestnut corms from GreenHarvest, and those will be going in the bathtub this weekend.

Composting is go
I am, as my partner keeps reminding me, quite obsessed with compost. I have a kickass compost bay, built by him out of pallets and small gage chicken wire. Unlike me he has an eye for design and the beauty of a well made object. The bay keeps the rats out and has an ingenious removable front wall to allow for regular turning. I've also purchased a compost thermometer as I'm using the hot composting or 'Berkeley' method, which involves turning it every 5-6 days . I'm making about a cubic metre a month. Sourcing green materials for the heap has been relatively easy - a herb and vegetable packing business at the end of the street provides me with twice-weekly hauls of high quality green waste - mainly the outer leaves from cabbages and lettuces and such as well as slightly bruised or old veggies and herbs, all of which go straight into the pile (I don't bother to break it up - it seems to be decomposing fairly quickly). The only input that I'm not particularly happy about in terms of sustainability is the one bale of sugar cane mulch per pile that I add to keep the carbon-nitrogen ratio right. Hopefully when summer comes I can use dried grass from the peninsula patch property. The compost pile also gets some sawdust provided free of charge from the furniture maker down the road. It's a mix of untreated timber shavings and MDF sawdust. There's a potential toxicity issue with the glue used in the MDF but I did some research and don't think it's a problem.

Well that's it from the two patches. Next week will be a composting special methinks. I leave you with a not particularly relevant, but endearing nonetheless, photo of some highland cattle on a farm near Bunyip, which I took while being taken on guided tour of this farm near Tamara's place. These cattle have very cartoony looks, particularly the perfect pink cross that is their nose.

Marie Antoinette, 27 July 2007

Permablitz inspiration - Sunday 26 November 2006

2006-11-27T23:43:00.000+11:00

It's been a while since the last post, too long in fact. This Sunday it was just me (Marie Antoinette) in the patch but I was all fired up and doing the work of two. I was inspired by having participated in my first permablitz at the house of Nelson and his family in Springvale.

After helping with seed planting, lunching and viewing Nelson's fine veggie garden, I tagged along with seasoned permablitzer Dan on his visit to the house of Vilma whose backyard was the site of the first permablitz about 6 months ago. Mint tea (mint from the garden) was followed by some delicious pupusas, which are a kind of tortilla and are a specialty of El Salvador, where Vilma comes from. Goodness growing in Vilma's small backyard includes broad beans, parsley, rosemary, mint and much else besides. The sheet mulching, and perhaps also the dense planting, seems to have kept most of the weeds down.

Harvested
- A big kickass salad, made up of spinach, chervil, parsley, coriander, dill and one ickle immature garlic.

- Sweet peas - oh my lordy they are good.

- Two beautiful artichokes, proving that they love being hacked.
- Potatoes - a few very small ones so eager to grow that they've popped up out of the ground (should have mounded them). In fact there are voluntary potatoes popping up all over the second patch. I think that the potato section in that patch will be ready to harvest in a few weeks.

- Some small broccoli heads - from the first patch.

Activity
Planted snake bean seedlings in the second patch, including 6 or so in the mulched section.
Mulched two sections of the first patch.
Did a ****load of weeding in the second patch.
Watered.

Observations
I left the very leafy cauliflower in the first patch, but I don't hold much hope that any heads will develop - I reckon the time has passed for that. Little One's rhubarb is still just contemplating its navel. As Little One predicted, the tomatoes in the first patch are not doing nearly as well as those in the second. Perhaps her prognosis of nitrogen-sucking gum trees is correct. No rat attempts on the sweet peas - as yet. Perhaps the inter-planting of mint throughout the second patch, and the sprinkling of wild mint around the peas, has helped.

In a week's time I'm off to do a two-week residential permaculture course in Leongatha. Hopefully this will herald a whole new era for Land for Veggies.

Marie Antoinette

Spring is in the air - Sunday 27 August 2006

2006-08-29T21:00:00.000+10:00

Spring is in the air

Sunday 27 August 2006

Oh my lordy what a beautiful day it was - perfect for spending quality time in the patches. As it gets warmer, growth spurts are happening. The spinach or 'spinachi', as we like to call it, is looking promising. Another few weeks and we'll be making Spanakopita like there's no tomorrow. The peas that Little One and I moved a few weeks ago are clinging determinedly to their wire support (the fence), and the Broccoli is making a last stand.

Today in the patch I cut the Lupins that were about to flower in the first patch and dug them back into the soil to give it a good nitrogen fix. I checked under the ground for taters in the second patch, the ones that I covered completely with compost, and lo and behold if there aren't lots of littlies growing all over the joint. I did some weeding in the second patch and looked longingly at all the lettuces, which are still a way off from maturity. I also gave the first patch a good dose of Seasol (seaweed fertiliser).

At home on the balcony, the dill and coriander seedlings are going strong. They are destined for our new regime of companion planting. The balcony is also holding a few successful rosemary cuttings. No action on the mint front, which is disappointing as it's been my experience that any fool can grow mint.

On Monday night (28th) I went to a Peak Oil seminar in Melbourne - questions from the audience to the speakers were mostly about transport but encouragingly a couple of people in the audience stood up and asked about growing veggies in urban areas. More land for veggies, I say.

Marie Antoinette

Veggieman makes an entrance - Sunday 18 June

2006-07-18T22:04:00.000+10:00

Veggieman makes an entrance - Sunday 18 June

Hi, I'm Vegieman, the newest 'Land for veggies' team member. Here is my story of what happened in the patches on Sunday 18 June.

Little One planted some great potatoes at the farm and even planted some lupins to make the soil better. I helped plant some beautiful new cute little peas. They looked great. Little One was surprised the peas were so well made. Then I helped with the foundations of the construction for the new plot and brought over some great big bricks for the foundation of the outer layer. Little One helped with the confusing design of the foundation. It was pretty hard constructing it but we were determined to build this hard construction. We also had to solve the mystery of the rat holes.

Then, about an hour later, we were done, and you know what? We were proud of ourselves! And then . . . Yes! Yes! Hooray . . I finally found the entry and the exit to the rat incident that occurred. Although it was strange that the entrance we thought was the actual entrance, was the exit. Good Work! Veggieman. You've done it!

Then, some time later, we looked at the potatoes to see if they were ready to harvest. Sadly our potatoes weren't ready to harvest, but luckily they should be ready to harvest next week.

Veggieman, signing off now.

Slash and compost - Sunday 21 May

2006-06-28T10:44:00.000+10:00

Slash and compost

Sunday 21 May 2006

Having been absent for sometime I returned to the farm for a big day in the veggie patch. The 3 degree mornings pretty much tell us that the last of the tomatoes won't be ripening and it is time we ripped them out to get the patch ready for summer (after much promoting from Marie Antoinette.) Notable absentees this weekend are The Good Doctor and Suzie Compost. We toyed with the idea of stealing one of the Good Doctor's prize celeriacs but knew they would notice upon their return from sunnier climes, so we let them be (this time).

So instead of enjoying a delicious feast and a glass of red, it was a quick bowl of soup and the donning of a collection of very daggy jumpers (function over form this time) before we embarked upon a most enjoyable slash and compost. It was very cold but after a while we were all warmed up.

An interesting development

Some months back we posted 'Dwats we have wats'. At the time we knew something was eating our beans and tomatoes ... Well clearing away 'le foret des tomates' revealed how the 'mystery critters' made their way into paradise. They dug tunnels! Photos of the crime scene are submitted as evidence. Of course Marie Antoinette took the opportunity to again remind me that had we cut the tomatoes back more we would have seen the little ratty pathway. We are not one hundred per cent not sure what the critter is. It may be some other kinda rodent... there was mention of 'bush rats'or native rats. This presents issues for us and our desire to share our produce with the other inhabitants of the farm.

So we cleared the tomatoes, basil and capsicums, turned the soil and planted lupins to put nitrigeon back into the soil.

In the other patch things are progressing well. The broad beans are two feet high but still no beans. We were worried but we read that they take much longer in winter so we have to be patient. The big excitement was the broccoli. We decided to harvest out first head. I got to take it home and ate it that night! My God how beautiful, crisp and sweet; not rubbery like the old thing in the bottom of my fridge. If the cauliflower tastes that good fresh I could be tempted to reasses my 35 year old aversion. While I finshed off 'lupining' the tomato patch, Marie planted out the cauliflower. The patch is hanging in there - we have had very little rain and the Good Doctor is not down there giving it a drink of water. The potatoes are going great guns so hopefully we will have enough for a kipfler feast.

We finished up after dark with Marie assisting me in lower patch with a torch. Everything looked grand after what was a great day in the patch.

As lovely and invigorating as the day was I personally can't wait til the whole gang is reunited! Until then ' more land for veggies!'

Little One

Go Mouli Go - Saturday 13 May

2006-05-17T22:19:00.000+10:00

Go Mouli Go

Saturday 13 May 2006

Today was classic Autumn weather for this corner of the globe: rainy, then sunny then hail, then sunny. As a result, activity in the patches was sporadic and hurried. Little One used up the rest of last week's tomato bounty to make a fabuloso tomato-sauce base. Her expert Mouli action is pictured. Recipe is too simple, and comes courtesy of Jeff Jansz, the original TV 'chunk' (chef-hunk): seed your tomatoes (keep seeds of course), fry up garlic in some olive oil, add the seeded tomatoes with some sympatico herbs (i.e. parsley, oregano) and cook on low for 25 minutes. Final step is ze Mouli. To get the most out of the tomatoes you can also sieve the seeds to get extra juice, which you add to the mixture before cooking. This sauce base can be frozen. It is a great base (instead of canned tomatoes) for pasta sauces, including the classic bolognese.

Progress report
Not much to report here other than the amazing up and go of the lupins, planted in various plots to fix nitrogen in the soil: the seeds planted direct a few weeks ago have germinated and are growing like the clappers. Broad beans are flowering but not producing many beans yet. Broccoli has produced its first little head - such a delicate flower. Broccoli planted later is coming along, but slowly. Potatoes look very healthy. Basil has finished, in what seemed to be a very sudden finale - here one day gone the next. Mini capsicums still ripening on a few of the bushes. Rhubarb planted a few weeks ago is doing well.

Cauliflower seedlings planted a couple of weeks ago have germinated on my balcony in the city.

Bounty
Enough lettuce for a salad and about 1 kilo tomatoes.

We planted
Chicory seedlings, wormwood seedlings, and onions. We plan to plant a stand of wormwood and use it to deter rats and possums - apparently torn wormwood leaves scattered around the base of plants helps repel them. Might also try to grow lots and lots of mint for this purpose but I guess the problem with that is containing it.

Next week we plan to build a mini plot for a potential new Land for Veggies team member, who is a young 'un. He may make a contribution here. Stay tuned.

A wet weekend - Sunday 7 May 2006

2006-05-08T23:05:00.000+10:00

A wet weekend - Sunday 7 May 2006

But so beautiful. The rain brings out the lovely damp growing smells of the patch. It's also mushroom season - wish I knew what was what in that department.

Things have definitely slowed down with the cooler weather. The broad beans stand proud and tall but haven't produced more than 10 or so beans. Broccoli is coming along slowly, growing like it's got it's mind on other things.

This weekend I planted chicory and spinach seedlings, using Little One's ingenious hothouses, being old plastic card indexes with clear lids. They sit on my balcony in the city - at night the I close lids over to protect them from frost.

Harvested around 3.5 kilos of tommy toe tomatoes. The tomato patch is looking dilapidated but still fecund.

The Thomas Street garden
This week I was inspired, and disheartened at the same time, by the story of the Thomas Street garden. The Thomas Street Permaculture Garden is an intensive edible garden developed on a rented quarter acre suburban block in Clayton (Melbourne Australia). It includes plants, trees, compost production, greenhouses, ponds, a worm farm and poultry. The Thomas Street gardeners recently received a notice from their landlord requiring them to either restore the garden back to its former state (lawn) or pay $2100.

What a travesty! Turning a lawn into a food garden should be rebatable exercise not an economic liability for gardeners. The Thomas Street crew held a fundraiser on Saturday 6 May. Check out the photos of the garden - it's truly inspiring - and the words of support from David Holmgren, one of the founders of the permaculture movement.

Marie Antoinette