Pretty in pig

Here he is:

I think he looks pretty fabulous in fuchsia pink, don't you?


This morning I woke to find another pig in my garden. My young neighbour sneaked across the wall before he went to school to put his pig in my corn patch:

Meanwhile, I've been busy harvesting like mad... the beans are producing roughly a handful a day and the peas a similar amount. And they're so tasty! You forget how flavoursome vegetables actually are, when they're picked fresh and grown naturally, as opposed to being pumped full of fertiliser to grow fast, giving them a high water content (which equates to less flavour), and stored or transported and then refrigerated before they hit your table. Here are the beans I harvested today:

 

 

Of course, that's too many beans for the four of us to eat (yes, the beagles eat beans!), so I put together a little package of peas, beans and zucchini for our neighbours and left it on their porch. (see below) They've been watching the garden with interest, so I think they'll be happy to taste the results. They said this morning that watching our garden grow has made them put more effort into their own. I like to inspire. 

Pig make-over

We have this beautiful, big terracotta piggy bank in our garden. He was all the talk of the neighbourhood when we moved in and the removalists dumped him in our front yard.

As you can see, he's seen better days and his grey paint is wearing off in the weather. So we've decided to give him a make-over! My young neighbour is super-excited about this and brought over his big papier-mache pig to show me.

Much discussion and consultation has gone into choosing what colour he should be. Tune in tomorrow to find out how he looks!

How to manage your rocket

There are a few tricks with rocket I've learnt over the years. It seems to sprout in about three days from seed, and while you just start enjoying the odd handful in your salads a few days a week, all of a sudden it rockets up and you have more than you know what to do with and it looks like its about to flower and go to seed.

I prefer to plant a small number of rocket seeds every three weeks or so, to get a continual supply of fresh greens. Then when the plants are up and getting too large, I do a big harvest before I pull out the old plants. Now, you could throw the rocket to your chickens, if you have them (leafy greens are an important part of their diet) or you could do what I did yesterday and make delicious rocket pesto!

Here's the recipe I used, from one of my favourite cookbooks; Eat Fresh: Cooking Through the Seasons by Annabel Langbein.

.

Rocket Pesto

Pour boiling water over 140g rocket leaves, drain, rinse under cold water (this sets the colour so it doesn't go brown so quickly)

Squeeze out water and place in food processor with:

1clove peeled garlic

3/4 cup toasted almonds

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

and Grinds of pepper

Purée until smooth.

Spoon into jar and pour a little oil on top to cover surface. Will keep in fridge for a week.

Or you could do what I do and freeze most of it in an ice block tray, then transfer the ice blocks to a labelled bag in the freezer for use on pizza bases, grilled chicken breast, crostini or pasta.

Don't forget, toward the end of rocket season, let one or two plants up the back of your patch go to seed, stake them up out of the way and when they dry out, collect the seeds... you'll never have to buy rocket seed again!

Right now I have a whole patch of coriander that looks like it's about to start going to seed too... so I think I'll be making another Annabel Langbein recipe for Asian-style pesto soon!

Progress photos

This post is a bit rushed, but I wanted to show some progress photos.

Production is ramping up in the food garden and it's really exciting! We've been eating a little something from the garden in each meal... even if it's just some spinach in our bacon and egg breakfast sandwiches this morning!

Here's how it's looking:

We now have several different types of tomatoes... my special colleague who I've mentioned before, gave me two seedlings of the yellow cherry tomato, which I'm excited about. They will join the red cherries (which are starting to turn red now, we ate the first three little ones the other day and they were bursting with flavour... tastes like a REAL tomato!)
The corn is starting to get tall as well... it's yet to flower because we put the seeds in a bit late, but it will catch up:

Here's the zucchini. People who say zucchini doesn't have any flavour obviously they haven't eaten baby ones picked straight off the bush. We're making zucchini and cheese slice this week... I've been waiting until they were big enough to harvest! If it turns out ok, I'll post the recipe.

Tonight we're having tabbouleh from the parsley you can see above. So, that's the progress. My neighbour says he can practically see the garden growing before his eyes! I think he might be right. I'm hoping to have enough produce soon to share with them!

For Remembrance...

Passers-by may have seen something a little odd on my verge the other day. That was me with a box of plants and a tape measure!

It was Remembrance Day and I was planting out a hedge of rosemary. The herb is an ancient symbol of remembrance and in olden times was thought to improve the memory.

Anyway... I got out on the verge and measured exactly 90cm between each plant and made sure it was in a straight line. Odd for me really... I'm usually much more of a 'near enough is good enough' kind of person when it comes to geometric accuracy. I was never very good at woodwork. Or Patchwork. Apparently you have to be really accurate for those types of jobs.

Although looking at this photo... it doesn't seem all that much like a straight line after all:

Anyway, six months from now, this will be a (somewhat) neat hedge that will provide a bit of a windbreak for the food garden! And of course plenty of rosemary for the lamb roast!

I'll put up some photos tomorrow of the garden progress... the corn is taking off, we're eating plenty of zucchini and spinach, a truss of tomatoes is blushing and we have tiny beans, that we will be picking in about a week!

Keeping the vampires away

You may remember that when we moved into the house we only had a very short amount of time before we went away on holidays. In that time, I quickly threw some garlic cloves into the ground, in the hope that I could grow something, at least, in my first few months here. Well, the garlic never really looked so healthy, the shoots were spindly and seemed to go brown and fall over very early.

 

Anyway, I took the lead from my wonderful Italian neighbours and decided it was time to harvest. The sight of bunches of big, fat garlic bulbs in their shed made me extremely envious. Especially when I dug mine up on the weekend and all I got was this:

The bulbs are so underdeveloped they grew as a single clove. But still, it's 50 cloves of garlic I won't be buying from the supermarket, shipped in from Chile or China, bleached and sprayed with fungicide!!

 

Back to my Italian neighbours... they knew exactly what the problem was. I planted them at the end of May... apparently I should have planted them in March. So next year, they promise to tell me exactly when I have to plant.

 

Garlic is a wonderful thing to plant, even for someone who doesn't like gardening or have time to garden. You put it in the ground and six months later dig it up and hang it to dry. And then have it on hand for cooking. The perfect low-maintenance crop, that grows quite well in our sandy Perth soils and tastes so much better than that stuff in the supermarket.

 

I'd saved the garlic from my previous garden, where I grew so much, I gave jars of it away as Christmas gifts. Obviously none of my friends will be getting home-grown garlic for Christmas this year!