Weird and wonderful

One of my favourite parts of growing my own veggies is experimenting with lesser known plants that go beyond your normal standard beans, tomatoes, eggplants and chillies. Luckily for this article most of the plants I have been meaning to feature here have miraculously survived the extreme heat we have had in Melbourne last week. So here goes a list of my top unusual edibles.

Japanese Burdock.

I usually refer to this by its Japanese name 'Gobo'. I came to know this vegetable on my trips to Japan including two years living there. I got my original plant from a Japanese native, Melbourne resident and avid back yard gardener who was selling plants at the annual Box Hill Japanese Festival.

The edible part in Japan is the root. There are various methods to encourage the growth of a single straight ridiculously long tap root using poly tubes etc. But I am lazy and just grow it in a pot and work around the wonkyness of what ever grows. (Based on my experience do not attempt to grow in the ground unless you have very sandy soil or you want to excavate half the garden to get the root out). The plant is a bi-annual that dies off over winter and seeds every second year. The leaves are quite tasty and subject to attack by various pests- including large patrolling feathered variety. The leaves grow large and broad so it needs a lot of space to grow. Based on these factors I am growing them in a dedicated planter. The seeds are prickly and sticky so will end up stuck to you and your pets! (Apparently they were the inspiration for velcro!).  My main use for burdock is to saute with carrot, sesame, mirin sugar and soy sauce. It has a fantastic nutty taste.

Japanese burdock (looking a little wilted from the heat)

2. Tomatillos.  

This is my first year growing tomatillos from seed I saved from tomatillos sourced from the Gasworks Farmers markets, so I have no idea what the outcome of this experiment will be.  Wikipedia tells me you need more than one plant to germinate fruit. I have two plants that are looking fantastic. Last year I made green salsa from my purchased tomatillos.

tomatillo plants

Bitter melon. 

This is another experiment inspired by my travels in Japan, to Okinawa where 'goya' (as its known) is the national dish (Okinawa is currently politcally part of Japan- but culturally and ethnically quite different). This is my second attempt to germinate and grow goya (it needs warm weather) but in my first attempt it was too late in the year to flower and fruit. The birds killed one plant so I am sowing more seeds in case it needs cross pollination.

bitter melon seedling

Water chestnuts.  

These were gifted to me by a work colleague as a single plant/ corm last year. The plants need to be submerged during the warmer summer months and are harvested when they die back and dry off in the autumn. I am looking forward to my first harvest later year and am planning a water garden (water cress and water chestnuts) in my soon to be removed bath (renovations are about to kick off) next spring.

water chestnuts

The tomato project- Part two 'Going Pear Shaped'

At last my first tomato for the year....

And the winner is a 'yellow pear' variety

Harvested on Tuesday 7 January- that has to be a record for tomato harvesting lateness?

This little one was harvested from one of the tomato plants I popped into an empty spot in one of the street planter boxes way back in August! I thought that would be way too early, but it seems to have worked,

The fact it was a yellow pear in that planter means something strange has definitely gone on with my seed sowing? There are little baby pear shaped tomatoes springing up everywhere! in the planters and in my back garden.

It's strange because last year I got two spindly little 'yellow pear' plants very late in the piece from our local veggie swap. They were soon swamped and over-shadowed by the standard cherry tomatoes- (I call them 'feral cherries' because they seem to spring up everywhere). All in all I must have harvested only about 3 or 4 'yellow pears' last year. One of which I kept for seed. Normally the way this works is that I take the seeds and spread them onto a piece of paper towel. I write the name of the variety on the paper towel fold it in half an put it on the window sill to dry for a few days or so. After that I pop the piece of paper with the seeds still stuck to it into an envelope, maybe with a couple of other folded up pieces. When it comes time to plant the seeds I peel each seed gently off the paper. It's amazing that so many seeds from just one tiny tomato have managed to grow and I am pretty sure they were supposed to come from the piece of paper that said regular 'feral' cherry so I am thinking that in some stage of  the process the yellow pear got mixed up with the 'feral cherry'. I am wondering even if they have cross pollinated? I will find out when the others ripen.

In other tomato news down at the community garden plot where I am testing Bek's varieties the only ones that appear to have fruit at last count were the Ned Kelly and the Big Beef. With hot weather finally on the way I am looking forward to some more tomatoes soon.

Garlic fail - part two..... the pre Christmas postscrip.

Last month I posted about my sad little garlic harvest...... I was little ashamed to mention the postscript to this story, thinking it was a reflection of my poor garlic husbandry skills.

A week or so after pulling the garlic I had it all on in a tray drying in my living area. I could small a strong garlic odour but wasn't too concerned as normally, when its not so damm cold and miserable I dry it outside in our covered BBQ area (which is on the south wall of the house) where I assumed the smell would dissipate. The smell went on for the rest of the busy week until I decided to sort and separate what was worth eating from the smaller cloves that I intended to put back for another year. Much to my dismay I found that half the heads felt empty inside. The cloves themselves had shriveled and gone almost butter-like in texture.  Most of what little I harvested was now apparently ruined. I assumed it was some kind of bulb rot and put most of the affected cloves into the worm farm.

Fast forward to pre Christmas preparations at the Gasworks Farmers Market collecting my free range ham from Bronwyn and Michael at Gypsy Pig. On my round of the market I purchased a bag of garlic and got chatting with the farmer about my garlic incident. He immediately diagnosed the cause.... I had sun burnt my garlic! After I pulled out the garlic it was a little damp so I left it on our outdoor table for a day before I brought it inside. Apparently 15 minutes in the sun is enough to do it- so a few hours and I had essentially cooked up my cloves. Who would have thought. Oh well lesson learnt. It won't happen again and I am feeling a little less insecure about my garlic growing skills- rather it was my garlic harvesting skills that were more of a problem!

The tomato project -part 1

My tomato patch at the community garden

It seems ages since I have had a decent crop of tomatoes. I have to swing my mind back 13 years to a rental share house on the other side town where it seemed like magically with little effort we just had buckets of them -quite literally. Here at my current home, the past few years have not been kind to my tomato growing efforts. Throw in climatic factors; too hot, too cold; not enough rain; too much rain (Melbourne's erratic weather),  lack of full sun and my experiments (pre-chook days) with perhaps a bit of an overdose on worm castings and worm wee that yielded huge green plants but little fruit,  its been a long time since my last bumper harvest. Last year for the first time I had a decent crop ready to ripen but that disappeared thanks to a boom in the population of the local rats.

This year,back in the depths of winter, I decided to get organised a set up a tomato growing strategy. It started with Bek's call out to help her clear out her seed collection. It was very exciting to receive in the old fashioned post a beautiful envelope containing neatly labelled plastic zip-lock bags with the following selection:

• Ned Kelly
• Big Beef
• Champion
• New Yorker
• Mortgage Lifter
• (and most intriguingly) Big White Pink Stripe (lets call that BWPS).

To that collection I added two kinds of cherry, Yellow pear and some Mini Roma. The cherry tomatoes included a small sweet tomato I took from the planter garden (variety unknown) and what I refer to as feral cherry- the cherry tomatoes that seem to crop up everywhere around the garden. Unfortunately due to an accident during seed sowing the Mini Roma got tipped into the BWPS so its going to be interesting to see what grows where.

My first step back in July was sowing a few of each into strawberry and tomato punnets. These act as perfect mini greenhouses out on the front porch in the northern winter sun. The punnets were lined up in a kitty litter tray so they could be bought inside and put in front of the heater at night. That technique seems to work and I got excellent germination. Once the plants had their first sets of decent leaves I planted them out into single tubes or two by two into small pots.

Having grown far too many seedlings for my own use (I have kept 2 of each of the standard varieties) I sold seedlings off for a gold coin donation at work and at a little stall I set up for an hour and a half as part of the Garage Sale Trail Day (basically this was an event encouraging everyone to have garage sales that offered me the chance to publicise my sale via a listing on the website). With very little effort, my combined sales of excess chilies, eggplants and capsicum came to $52 which has been donated to Oxfam to help fund local food growing programs in East Timor.

This year with my expansion out into a community garden, I have shifted the focus on my backyard beds leaving only cherry varieties in the backyard. There are numerous cherry plants filling out the various pots and tubs and a row of the 'feral' variety lined up on the back fence. Yellow pears and either mini roma or BWPS are out in the planter boxes and a full plot of standard tomatoes in the community garden plot. Not content with that I have planted out all my left over seedlings in the adjacent plot that seems to have been abandoned. I am hoping with any success the community garden will be so overrun with tomatoes that the crop from that bed can be distributed to one of the many community or refugee  groups that could use donations of fresh vegetables. Stay tuned to see how it all works out!

Garlic fail!

A few weeks ago I read with trepidation  Liz's post on Suburban Tomato about her unsuccessful garlic harvest. For some weeks I had been watching the rather pathetic garlic stalks in my garden whither away (not helped by the odd  "naughty chook got BUSTED in the garden stampede") knowing that the day would soon be coming where I would  need to soon take the plunge and dig them up.

Last Saturday was that day..... and here are the results of my entire garlic harvest.......

Unlike Liz I don't necessarily use my best cloves its more a case of what happens to be left over and sprouting at the end of the season. Never the less I swear on the whole the cloves have still managed to end up smaller than when I put them in.

In the past I used Chinese garlic because that's all there seemed to be around (you can see there is still some white garlic which I think dates from that time). For the past two seasons I have added in organic purple garlic that I have picked up from Farmers Markets.

With this being my second year with a less than bumper harvest I have been interested to see what other people think might be the problem. Last year I am sure I read a similar post on Liz's blog where readers mentioned that garlic needs lots of food. So in preparation this year I dug mounds of chooky goodness (composted manure and wood shavings) a few weeks prior to planting. Throughout the growing season I also gave the plants the odd dose of worm wee.... mmm so maybe it's not nutrients after all.

My second idea is that it's about water. I am thinking well watered draining soil might be the best. I am growing my garlic in fairly heavy clay type soil so its a real balancing act to keep the soil wet but avoid water- logging and rotting the bulbs. I am putting it out there in a totally non scientifically tested way that the water balance is most important right about the time the growth is highest before the plants suck all that nutrient back into the bulb. That was right about the time I went away and the whole bed ended up a little dry.

My third idea is that garlic needs 100% sun. I am going to struggle in the yard with proving this, so to test out this theory I am going to plant out some of the bulbs in the planter and my new community garden plot. Stay tuned for this time next year for the results.

Coming back

Well I have been away from this blog and away from home on my jaunt around Central/ South America. I spent the best part of the week in Costa Rica pitching my 'Bottles to Boardwalks' project to the good folk at G Adventures  at the "Summit in the Jungle" (you can read about it here and here). While I didn't win the $25,000, I am keen to not let my idea die....so watch this space. Costa Rica was followed by the opportunity to extend my complimentary ticket over to that side of the world by joining a G Adventures 7 night cruise (not sure if that's the right word- safari on a boat perhaps?!) of the Galapagos. This was followed by another week on the islands hanging out, getting to know the town sea lion population, catching the local inter island ferries (small speedboats with BL**DY big engines) and doing a spot of diving. Combine that with a few days of exploring the sites of mainland Ecuador (Quito and surrounds) and far too long in transit and I was back!

Backyard in the Galapagos

Coming home there is always a sense of anticipation and anxiety... will the pets be waiting, will they be happy to see us (no not really) and hows the garden ?! Slightly overgrown but a little dry was the answer to the latter. One of my girls had gone clucky and caused some grief to my Japanese house-sitter who thought she was on her last legs. But everyone and everything else had survived incident free.

Coming back there's always the issue of restocking an empty fridge- Well the fridge wasn't quite empty as expected the other half had basically ignored my instructions about the leftovers for him and the chicken necks for the cat  before he left to join me in Quito and my house-sitter bless her had clearly not wanted to throw out anything she wasn't supposed to. The month old left over milk that hadn't soured was a very bizarre mystery of science! Anyway with out having to rely on everyone's favourite (un)freshfood people or getting down to the  store with the'big red hand',  the best bit about coming back was ducking out into the garden for survival rations of Tuscan kale (cavalo nero), carrots and the last of the sprouting broccoli. (I like to think the overdose on Tuscan kale also helped make up for the significant absence of leafy greens on my Latin American jaunt).

Aside from Tuscan Kale layered in lasagna, sauteed with garlic,olives pesto and pasta, I have been adding it as a side dish (along with some roasted parsnips from the garden) to accompany my favorite recipe discovery of late. Here it is:

Slow Roasted lamb shoulder with cumin and pears
2 brown onions, skin on and sliced into rounds
1 lamb shoulder (bone in), semi-cut into portions (ask your butcher to do this)
2 tbsp cumin seed
2 tbsp black peppercorns
5 cloves garlic
2 tbsp flaked salt
1 tbsp olive oil
7 sprigs thyme, leaves only
4 beurre bosc pears, skin on and cut in half (if available, you can also use 3 quinces, peeled and cut into cheeks)
3 tbsp raw sugar
2 tbsp red wine vinegar
1. Preheat oven 160C fan-forced (180C conventional).
2. Place onion in base of a heavy ovenproof dish.
3. Trim and slightly score top of lamb.
4. Crush cumin and peppercorns with a mortar and pestle, then add garlic and salt. Crush to a paste and add oil. Smother paste over lamb, rubbing between bones as well. Place lamb on top of onions, scatter with thyme and add pear halves. Sprinkle with sugar and vinegar and pour in 80 millimetres of water.
5. Cover dish in a double layer of foil and roast for four hours, then remove foil and skim some of the fat. Return lamb to oven and raise temperature to 180C fan-forced. Baste lamb a little and cook for another 35 minutes or until golden brown.
6. Serve with braised silverbeet and couscous.
Serves 4-6
(Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/good-food/cook/greatest-hits-20130812-2rr60.html#ixzz2iiamojRC)

Nothing like a good challenge

A part of my day job is keeping track of what's going on in the media. I subscribe to an excellent free media monitoring service- 'making environmental news' which is collated by an organisation called the Banksia Foundation. Unfortunately the 'environmental news' space is a pretty depressing space these days. Take the issue of food for example -just a sample of themes and challenges currently featuring  include the expansion of coal seam gas exploration into our most productive farmland, various reports about the challenges of feeding the planet's growing population in a world constrained by the challenges of climate change, Victorian farmers pulling up peach trees because they can't sell the peaches and the Chinese buying up another patch of local farmland. To top that all off there was a Four Corners investigation into toxic dioxins being found in common herbicides used on our farms.  So rather than get down about it all I have decided to make it a motivating force to keep up my home grown challenge....

With spring around the corner, my baby girls have started to lay and the garden and the planter boxes are starting to yield serious dividends.....

Sprouting broccoli and rapini are the current staples

my first ever  parsnips, a random carrot and more broccoli and rapini for dinner

Just like the Chinese ...... I am continuing with my own land grab....taking on my biggest expansion challenge ever......

A plot in the new Braybrook community garden. This was supposed to be a new community and food hub in one of Melbourne's most disadvantaged areas.... two years later the vision hasn't materialised and Council has given up... leaving a weed filled field with ten garden plots up to the community to deal with.... like I said a challenge.

To fill my garden beds I am cleaning out the seed drawer

A test of some really old (about 10 years old!) lettuce seeds yielded the following results:

Oh well, at least the tomatoes I scored from Bek's seed collection clean out are now happily germinated on the way to being my first Braybrook crop.