chapter 20: Eating your greens...reds, purples, yellows and oranges too.

Chapter 20:Eating your Greens...Reds, Purples, Yellows & Oranges too.

Taking (Chicken) Stock of Life and Death

A month ago we noticed Charlie (one of our remaining three chickens) had gone 'dickie'. We had noticed that she seemed a little out of sorts, but it wasn't until Gramps 'the chook whisperer' pointed it out in no uncertain terms for all to hear at a recent bbq "You've got a dickie chook there lovey". Joe smiled with discombobulation. Behind his polite smile, he was thinking 'what the hell does dickie mean?'

"well matey, it means her organs are systematically shutting down and she's only got about a week to live, you can tell by the frumpy tail and the colour has gone from her cone. You'd best put her in a box in a quiet corner or she'll be pecked to death by the others."
Joe had grown close to Charlie, particularly because she was named after his father...I could see him thinking 'surely it's not that bad. Jo's dad is prone to exaggeration. Perhaps Charlie is just having a bad day...too much porridge can cause bloating...?'

But dickie she was, and within the week Charlie passed away in a cardboard box on the back porch.

I called Joe to break the news..."can you pick up some milk on the way home, I haven't paid that bill yet,  and by the way Charlie's dead."

After letting Joe down lightly, I thought about the kids. How were they going to take it, they had grown so fond of the chickens, perhaps they are too young to understand. Later in the afternoon when Joe arrived home the whole family stood around the hole under the lemon tree. Joe shook Charlie out of the box and she landed with a stiff thud in the shallow grave, a moment of silence followed until Joe said with a sense of ceremony "would anyone like to say a few words?" After a brief pause our 4 year old (N), spoke up " um, well are we gonna pull her feathers out?" he said shrugging his shoulders. "Why sweety? " I replied.
"Well, we are having chicken soup for dinner; we may as well just add her to it."

Kids eh..Joe sent us all inside as he slumped on his shovel in a state of grief and disbelief at our sons carnivorous pragmatism.

But this was more than a month ago and with only two hens left and eggs at an all time low, Joe quickly recovered after we purchased 4 more hens, Thelma, Louise, Georgie and Noella.


Bean and gone


Talking of has beens we had our first major spring harvest last weekend. Our broad beans were ready for picking. Broad beans are not commonly found in the shops but are a delicious bean and very easy to grow. Plant them on St Patricks day (Autumn) and they will be ready for harvesting in early Spring. You can eat them straight from the shell or freeze them for later use as we decided to do. Alternatively you can leave the mature pods to dry for planting next season or adding the dried beans to next winter's dishes. Simply soak the dried beans overnight. The mature plants grow up to a metre in height and yield about 15 pods, each with 3-5 beans. We harvested enough to fill a wheelbarrow.

Shelling the beans was a fun family affair and is set to become a favourite annual tradition.

Another handy broad bean tip is that the roots draw nitrogen back into the soil. When harvesting, don't pull the plant out by the roots, simply cut off at ground level leaving the roots in, in time they will break down providing a rich source of nitrogen in your next crop. Follow a crop of tomatoes, potatoes, pumpkins or melons (heavy feeders) with a broad bean crop to replenish the soil.

Colourful crops

With spring well and truly in the air the garden is quite a buzz, literally. Our bottle brush trees are covered in bees from dawn to dusk and the other flowers throughout the garden are coming into bloom. The poppies, nasturtiums, roses, camellias, lavender, black-eyed Susie's, hibiscus and geraniums are all doing their colourful thing. But its not just the flowers being colourful in the garden. This month we've pulled up our purple dragon carrots, plucked our purple king beans, had our first ripened red, cherry tomatoes, red lettuce and budding beetroot stems and lets not forget the greens. Silverbeet, coriander, rocket, basil and beans all look great in green.

garlic

purple King Beans

we simply call this our handsome lettuce.

Kapow! Purple Dragon Carrots...

Seaweed in the mountains

Seaweed is a great fertilizer for the vegetable patch, but as we are in the mountains, we have been making the most of our trips to the coast when we visit Joe's family. On our last trip north, Joe and his sister filled the entire boot of the station wagon with garbage bags of seaweed from the local lakes.

After rinsing it in the rain, to wash off any salt, we added it to the pumpkins, tomatoes and potatoes. the potatoes and pumpkins are absolutely thriving! best of all it's free, and can even be used to make a liquid fertilizer, seaweed tea.

Straw and your strawberries
If there is one taste that defines spring, it simply has to be the home grown, hand picked, delicious taste of ripe red strawberries. the only problem is getting them before the snails do. Strawberries are a hardy plant to grow, but the strawberries themselves can fall victim to rotting if allowed to sit on the soil, and become easy targets for fat little snails.

Its worth padding some straw beneath the berries to elevate them from the ground. this reduces the likelihood of rot, and munching mollusc's. In fact, growing them in hanging baskets is a sure fire way to save your berries from the snails and slugs. this is definitely on our to do list, although we plan to leave some in the ground to grow runners and new plants for next season.

Possums in the patch
If you have ever visited the mountains, it’s quite possible that you have crossed paths with the semi-famous Possum Man. Known throughout the district for his cunning possum catching talent, The possum man can be called on his possum hotline (somewhat like ghost busters we imagine), will arrive in his hand painted possum-mobile and (for a fee) proceed to trap your furry possum fiend and then let it go again in your backyard, thanks to the Blue mountains City council’s policy on protecting those poor, poor little possums that wee all over our car, eat our garden and thunder across our roof at 3am in the morning.

one of our cheekiest possums

Since moving here possums have had a go at most things that we have tried to grow including our chilli bush, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. They have dined on our entire lettuce crop and munched away our heirloom ‘lazy housewife beans’ down to the very last stalk. They even have the hide to do so right in front of us, causing Joe to fling into a wild frenzy of maniacal fist waving and chasing them around in the dark, before near breaking down in tears at the state of our helpless seedlings. It can just about break a man’s spirit.

possum solutions
The possums are here to stay but we have learnt how to live with them. We now cover most of what we grow with bird netting but we have also discovered some things that you can grow that the possums don’t seem to bother with and we feel obliged to share these with you.

Possums have not bothered the zucchinis that grew rambunctiously all over the yard last year. They don’t eat our leek, onions, garlic, shallots, coriander, rosemary, pumpkins or melons, perhaps because of their coarse leaves. Interestingly, with the onset of spring, the possums have become much less of a problem. In fact, we have been able to successfully grow leafy silverbeet, lettuce tomatoes and potatoes uncovered over the last month, and not one leaf has been munched.

The famous gardener, Jackie French, seems to believe that possums don’t like ‘foraging’ for food in dense vegetation, and we have tended to notice the same. This may also explain why the possums have left our sweet potato leaves, which grew abundantly all through last summer. Just don’t leave your harvested sweet potatoes out over night, as they will happily eat them for you.

Even flowers occasionally fall victim to hungry possums. They have eaten all of our beautiful geraniums down to the stalks but don’t touch the nasturtiums or lavender.

Although our grapes are still too small for the possums or birds to care about we plan to net each bunch with stocking as we lost at least 70% of our grapes last year to them. We are not sure if it will work but are going to give it a go.

Next blog we are going to mull over mulberries, talk lavender champagne and get cheesy making our own ricotta.

Chapter 12: Greenhouses, Recipes and Exploding Butterflies.

Chapter 12: Greenhouses, Recipes and Exploding Butterflies.

It was a sweltering 43 degrees here today and as the sweaty stench of newly laid cow manure permeated our t-shirts, there in the palpable humidity, time seemingly stood still as Jo and I shared a blissful moment of gardening satisfaction. We were standing inside our brand new greenhouse. Out there, beyond our plastic see through veneer, in the real world it was a mild 22 degrees and although it was tempting to savor the moment inside the greenhouse, if we had stayed in any longer, we risked fainting and collapsing in cow manure. It was hard to make out the expressions on our neighbours faces through the foggy poo condensation on the plastic walls but we are fairly certain they were looks of pure jealousy. That's right, we have a greenhouse and now we can grow tomatoes all year round.

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Bunnings and bought some lengths of pine and a roll of heavy-duty plastic for about $50. We have spent the last couple of weekends sawing and nailing the frame together, finishing with a lick of paint and attaching the plastic sheeting. We designed it so that the roof is detachable and can be rotated to allow for ventilation on warmer days and we left a sheet of the plastic detached from the sides for a door. It is tall enough to stand in and the base is 1m squared. The greenhouse is easily moved to where it is needed and currently we have it on top of one of our veggie patches in the front yard.

 After digging in two new bags of manure and mulch today we will let the bed lie for a week or two before planting tomatoes and basil as a test run.

Drying Rack

We have also been busy building a drying rack to dry flowers and fruits from the garden for preserving and storing. The idea was inspired when we stumbled across some recipes for making wine from flowers. You may remember that we were planning on making elderflower champagne, however, after a little research, we found that elderflowers actually grow on enormous trees, so we searched for alternatives. We came across several other recipes for making wines from flowers including hibiscus. As we have two hibiscus bushes in full bloom at the moment, we've been drying as many flowers as we can.

Flower wines
The recipe requires around 60 grams of dried hibiscus flowers to make about 4 bottles of wine. Rather than letting them simply shrivel in the sun, we decided to do the right thing and turn them into something everyone can enjoy... wine. There are plenty of other flowers that can be used for wine making, including sunflowers, lavender, marigolds, pansies, orange blossoms, daisies and many many more. Its also a novel way to make your own blends of unique teas for your next tea party. The wine takes at least 6-12 months to mature in the bottle.

Here is a pic of our drying rack suspended in the shade of our carport to maximise air flow. It is basically two frames with fly screen strtched over top and bottom and hinges to allow it to open.

Butterflies & Possums attack
But dear readers, not all has been rosey in the garden.

Picture this:

You wake up to a beautiful Autumn Saturday morning, sipping on your coffee in your bath robe and slippers as you draw back the blinds to let in the streams of morning sunlight. All seems peaceful...you can even forget about those oddballs across the street with vege gardens and that bloody new greenhouse. Not to mention that smell...what the hell is that smell? Surely they don't own a cow?!

And then you see him.

Tiptoeing pensively, staring upwards at the sky again,  holding that squash racquet above his head. "Darling, quick, it's our oddball neighbour again...the one with the greenhouse...he's swinging at the air with that racquet again and running all over his front yard...oh wait his wife has come out now, and she has a racquet too... what the hell are they doing?! Dont ever speak to them again!!!"

At least that's what we imagine our neighbours must say about Joe's new hobby. Lately, we have been inundated with a plague of white cabbage butterflies. The Green grub lavae have devoured all of our Pak-choy, swedes, and brussel sprouts, leading us to wage war on them. We struck upon the idea of swatting butterflies with tennis racquets as a arguably humane and organic alternative to pesticides... but more importantly, its so much fun. The only problem is that while we are having a great time swatting little butterflies, and cheering as they explode in delicate puffs of white, our neighbours across the way don't see them, only us, swinging racquets at thin air.
It was initially hard to pluck up the courage to swat openly infront of prying neighbours, but we figured that if you can stop for council pick up, you can shamlessly swat butterflies in your front yard too!

The little buggers have really made a mess of things, and set us back in our produce plans. We have also been waging an offensive on the ground, hand picking the grubs off what is left of our greens, and spraying them with garlic, chilli and soap spray.  We will aslo trial a vegetable oil spray, and let you know how it goes.

To add insult to injury, the local possums have either sat on or devoured all of the foliage from our new avocado tree, countless beans and the potatoes that were growing oh so well in potato bags. The potato leaves are supposedly poisonous, but this does not seem to deter them, we can only hope that it has given them a bad bout of gas. As a result, we will have to net our potato crop and start again.

Our potato plants a few  weeks ago before the possum attack......................and our potato plants now.

At this time of year the possums are extra hungry with the onset of winter. They will eat everything. Last year they ate every leaf off our chilli bush, and then the chillies, basil, lettuce, and anything that wasn't netted. In Spring, you can get away with planting a few things in the open. Winter is a different story.

Whats on the menu?
Something else that our obese possums may be interested in is some of our garden recipe ideas for our FFFC week. Jo and I have set about planning possible menu items that could be prepared using only garden produce and our extra items (flour, oil, coffee and milk).

Here are some of our favourite menu munchables.

for entrees:
Lets start with chilled potato and leek soup.
Sweet potato wedges with citrus and chilli marmalade.
Escargo, sauteed in parsley garlic and home made champagne. (See online poll).


for mains:
Gnocchi with roasted baby beetroots and basil pesto.
Home grown mezze platter; grilled capsicum and zuchinni, hommus, flat bread, fallafel, and dolmades made with vine leaves and bean stuffing.

Spicey Lentil burgers with cool mint and sliced cucumber.

Home made pasta with cherry tomatoes, basil and chilli.

Poached eggs with roast tomatoes, rocket and herbed flat bread.

and for desserts:

Macadamia and blackberry tarts, served with homemade lavender icecream.

Sweet pumpkin pie.

Lemon sorbet & Mulberry crepes.

Yummmmmmm....

Let's not forget a fine selection of home made mulberry wine, beers, flower champagnes, teas and Aldi's Brazilia coffee.

LLLLLLLivin' the high life.

Next week, we are going to talk about the theories behind Moon planting and our first attempt at making citrus jams from our grapefruits, oranges, and lemons. Also we will be preserving some of our summer herbs before the frosts, or possums, get them first.

N and G dressed up as scarecrows one morning to do their bit for keeping white butterflies out of the garden. N even put vegemite on his nose!??? A scarecrow tactic supposedly.

Lastly, dont forget to vote in our poll. In short, should Joe capture and prepare some of our healthy garden snails to trial a swish escargot dish? The verdict now lies in your hands. I won't be eating them though...

                 P.s. thanks to those of you who have given us feedback this week. Our highly coveted honorable reader of the week award, for starting not one, but four veggie gardens and an orchard, goes to Hayley! Hide your avocado tree from the natives, lest it suffers a simlar fate.

 cheerio gang.

chapter 9: snail trails and easter egg hunts

chapter 9: snail trails and easter egg hunts

On Easter Sunday the Twyford Family descended in near full force upon us and despite a glass being broken over Aunty Bug's potato bake and another glass tray exploding as it came out of the oven...all went well. In the morning Uncle Steve and Noah carefully planted chocolate eggs over the entire yard in preparation for the Easter egg hunt for the 10 neices and nephews. Noah had strategically hidden a significant amount of the eggs in 'tricky' hidey holes, many of which were not discovered until the days following Sunday by none other then himself. The Easter Bunny himself would have been impressed because as Noah explained to us on Easter morning at 4:22 am (thanks day light saving) "the Easter Bunny made a fair bit of noise last night when he came and I even heard him doing a wee in our shower, that's strange isn't it?". Some things will forever remain a mystery. Despite Noah's acute hearing it is less plausible that a giant bunny went and weed in our shower and more likely that Uncle Steve who had stayed that night was helping himself to a long drink of water...surely?

Snail Repellent Experiment
One thing that won't remain a mystery however is how to deter the ever common garden snail and other pests from your patch. Joe has been busy conducting a highly technical experiment, and if he had one of those white lab suits he probably would have worn it.

We have heard many tales of ways to deter pests in the garden without using poisons or pesticides. The key theories we wanted to put to the test were whether or not garlic and chilli juice sprayed onto veges deter snails and secondly whether or not sprinkling crushed egg shells around the base of vegetables also repels snails. (To make garlic and chilli spray simply dice up 5 cloves of garlic and 5 chillis. Add to boiling hot water and allow to sit overnight. Strain into a spray bottle and apply to all of your leafy vegetables).

These are our OFFICIAL findings.

Our Aim: How to best deter snails using organic substances.

Our Method: Contain a number of very hungry snails..in a container. Add three juicy green bean leaves. One sprayed with garlic and chilli juice (right). One surrounded by crushed egg shells (middle). And one left alone - the control leaf (left).

Our Results: Within a few minutes of the snails being added to the 'test site' (a big plastic container) they near devoured our control leaf. By the afternoon all seemed promising as neither of the other two leaves had been touched. Night descended and we all went to bed confident that the other two methods had successfully detered the snails. However, come morning time ,Joe was shocked and appauled to find that the two biggest snails had broken through his supposed impenetrable egg shell perimeter and eaten the entire leaf! Worse still leaf three, saturated in the chilli and garlic spray, had also been partially eaten (approximately 27% of the total leaf mass index was missing). However, his potent mix proved too powerful for them to finish off those final mouthfuls.

within the first hour, the control leaf was the first to go. by morning nothing was left of the control leaf or the leaf surrounded by egg shell thanks to the two fasto's sitting in the middle. The garlic & Chilli sprayed leaf was partly eaten. We suspect an ethnic snail of mediteranian or mexican background.

We will give you a moment to lift your jaws off the ground before we make our final conclusion.

Our Conclusion: Neither the egg shells nor the chilli and garlic spray will completely prevent snails from eating your garden but they do provide some level of inital resistance with the chilli and garlic spray appearing the most repellant.

We're going on a Snail HuntA more effective method that we use is 'snail hunts'. This is a great one for the whole family to take part in. You will need one flashlight, one jar with lid, one drizzly/rainy evening and x amount of excited children (and dads). Snails come out in their hundreds in these conditions and are easy to spot, pick them up and pop them in the jar. From here you can either keep them as pets (not recommended), drown them (more of an option), or befriend an old Italian/French/Maltese man who will more than happily take them off your hands to whip up a quick escargot delight (highly recommended)!

Brave Sir Knight Noah and Princess Georgiaveve prepare for yet another treacherous snail hunt! Such Bravery!

We have also been trialling beer traps so far with no success over the last 24 hours and Joe is beginning to regret his waste of a good home-brewed beer.

AphidsSome other simple techniques that do work in protecting your garden include using soapy water spray to kill aphids. It is also great to get rid of powdery mildew on pumpkins, zucchini and squash plants. Just use some hand soap in a spray bottle diluted with water.

Birds & Possums
In the grand scheme of things snails and aphids are of little concern here at our place. It is the plethora of birds and possum folk that think we have grown the veggie garden just for them that are our key concern. The best solution we have found to prevent birds and possums is to cover our veggie beds with bird netting (we bought ours from Bunnings). This system worked a treat on our raised veggie gardens, but prooved less successful on our fruit trees and vines. Next year we are going to trial using stockings to cover our grapes to protect them from the birds, we used bird netting this year but the crafty little buggers easily hopped underneath it and ate 80% of our lovely grapes.

because of the combination of excessive chocolate consumption by our children , and their stubborn refusal to accept that daylight saving has now ended, Jo and I are both too dazed and confused to continue blogging tonight. later this week we will deliver on our promised recipe (an Italian style courgette stuffed (for want of a better term) with secret stuffings - i am not allowed to say any more at this stage) and also chat about the wonderful world of companion planting.

Ok. we are back.

Companion Planting:

As the name suggests, the concept behind companion planting is grouping certain varieties of plants next to one another because they are beneficial to the growth, or pest resistence of both plants. Companion planting has been used for many years and is a far better alternative to pesticides and unnatural fertilizers. Below are some companion planting partnerships that you can try in your own vegetable garden.
1. Cucumbers grow well with beans

2. Asparagus repels nematodes (tiny-worms), and is a good companion for tomatoes and parsley.

3. Celery repels white butterfly, and are good companions for cabbage & cauliflower.

4. Chrysanthemums inhibit root-knot nematodes, and are a good companion for strawberries.

5. Borage is also a good companion for strawberries.

6. Silver beat is also an excellent companion for strawberries.

7. Foxgloves stimulate growth in other plants in general, and should be planted as a boarder plant (around vege garden).

8. Yarrow (planted sparsely) improves pest resistance in general.

9. Marjoram improves the yields of most vegetables.

10. French Marigolds are a good companion for all root vegetables as they inhibit pests and diseases. They are also a good companion for tomatoes as they repel white fly, which attacks tomatoes.

11. Parsley is beneficial to tomatoes and roses.

12. Garlic improves the growth of roses, but is bad for peas and beans. It is also a good remedy for blight diseases on tomatoes and potatoes. Simply crush cloves and sit in boiling water. Use as a spray.

13. Gladioli is BAD as it restricts the growth of vegetables and should be kept well away from your vege garden.

14. Dandelions are also bad for the growth of vege gardens, but grown on their own, they are good for cleansing the gallbladder, and are high in vitamins A & C.

15. Nasturtiums improve the growth of potatoes and radishes. they aslo add a lovely splach of colour!

16. Chervil is also a good companion for Radish.

17. Chives repel many insects and pests and inhibits diseases in your vege garden. They are particularly good companions for carrots and apple trees. For best results, pick the leaves and flowers regularly.

18. Dill improves the quality of cabbages.

19. Fennel is bad for the growth of beans. Keep them separate.

20. Hyssop improves the growth of grape vine yields. Garlic may also be good in preventing some diseases in grape vines, as roses and vines often suffer from similar diseases.

21. Summer Savoy is a good boarder for onions and beans.

22. beans grow well near carrots, potatoes, cabbage, celery, cucumber, and cauliflower.

23. beans do not grow well near garlic, shallots, onions or beetroot.

24. cabbage improves when grown near potatoes. Sage is also a good companion for cabbage.

25. Carrots are good companions for onions/ peas/ lettuce/sage.

26. Cucumbers are good companions for peas/potatoes/beans/cabbage/chives.

27. Leeks are good companions for celery.

28. Lettuces are good companions for radish/carrots.

29. Peas or pumpkins are good companions for corn.
30. Peas and onions do not grow well together.

31. Potatoes and tomatoes/pumpkins/sunflowers do not grow well together.

32. Potatoes are good companions for cabbage/corn/peas/beans.

ok people. we are done for tonight. Joanna's top secret stuffed zucchinni (or courgette for the more culinarily sophisitacted) will be cooking tommorrow. On a side note, we watched Costa's garden odyssey tonight in the hairy hope of some gardening gems, but we were sadly dissappointed. It is only the second time we have watched the hairy man. has he been better in the past or are you in aggreance that Costa can do better?