urban vegetable patch

Eggplants behind bird netting - I was not sharing these with the birds!

OK, sorry about that headline, just had to do it as this year for the first time, my eggplants have flourished!

I have had several nice size Eggplant “Black Beauty” and to my surprise and delight I have also had a couple of the heirloom variety of Egplant Listada di Gandia, these are supposed to be a purple and white striped eggplant but for some reason mine was more white. But that’s OK, I was just surprised to get any at all. I had previously tried growing eggplants before but this year I popped them in a different spot and they just loved it. Maybe they liked being planted alongside the tomatoes or perhaps it was the afternoon shade from the large gum tree.

On a regular basis, we will be posting an A-Z of various aspects of vegetable gardening.

So to get started – we will kick off with good old A !

A is for Abundance!

Try as hard as I might to get a good “even” supply of vegetables of various varieties, you can guarantee that something is bound to fail and something else may produce prolifically, at times over prolifically and you end up with an abundance of a particular vegetable.

Hopefully it is one you really like, but what do you do with an over supply?

Here are just a few ideas;

• Give it away to friends, family or a charity – consider a food charity, soup kitchen etc

• Preserve it by bottling, pickling, drying or freezing.
  Some vegetables can be frozen as is, but most may need to be blanched before freezing. Blanching is really just a quick dip in some boiling water for a couple of minutes, depending on the vegetable, then plunge them into some ice cold water to stop the cook process. It is also a good idea to give them time to dry off before freezing them. Bottling and/or pickling and how you do it is really dependant on your taste and the type of vegetable you have in abundance. I just had a look at the Fowlers Vacola Simple Natural Preserving Kit – looks much easier than I remember… my mum used to bottle abundant fruit!

• Drying – lots of vegetables can be dried either using the sun or an electric dehydrator.
  You can also puree some vegetables and dry them as a fruit leather. I dry chili by threading them onto cotton and hanging them under the verandah, they dry really quickly in our hot Australian summers. Many herbs can also be dried by handing them in bunches in a warm, dry and “wind-free” spot.

• Jams, Relish and Chutneys
  Are a great idea as not only do you get to eat the vegetable fresh, but you have it as a different form to be enjoyed in another way, such as on toast or on your sandwiches or meats. But the real double bonus is you can give it away as gifts to people who have already said, hey, don’t give me anymore of vegetable x as I am over them at the moment. But by giving them the jam or relish, yes you are giving them more, but its a different form of the vegetable, so they are likely to jump at the chance to enjoy homemade jams or relish. Sneaky!

• Freezing them as a ready cooked meal.
  An abundance of tomatoes this year led me to do this and I still have a couple of packs of sauce left! I made the tomato sauce out of my homegrown tomatoes, basil and capsicum. Then added some onion and garlic, with some cracked pepper and a pinch of sugar, until the tomatoes were cooked. I then waited for it to cool, pureed it in the blender then poured enough for a meal into freezer bags and froze! Its been used in pasta sauce, as a casserole base and minestrone base.Herbs can also be frozen, I like to pick the herbs, put then into ice cube trays in quantities that I would use in cooking, add water to the trays and freeze. I can then pop a cube into whatever I am cooking over winter.

• Make a cake!
  Zucchini cake, pumpkin scones and pie and beetroot cake are just a few baked items that can be made with your abundance of vegetables. There must be more, so have a surf around the Internet to see what cakes can be made with different vegetables.

There are probably lots more ideas and tips on dealing with an abundance of vegetables, so feel free to share your hints or tips on what you do with your abundance!

Saffron Crocus flower bud

About 3 years ago, I received my regular mailout from the Diggers Club and saw that one of the plants in that edition was the Saffron Crocus – Crocus Sativus and was interested in how a pretty flower like that produced such an expensive spice.

I had purchased “genuine” Saffron threads once for a receipe and they were like little pieces of gold, so I thought why not grow my own?

The bulbs arrived and after some reading about growing saffron, I planted them in a pot. I did this as sometimes things come up in the garden and my partner considers they may be a weed and he pulls them out! So a pot was the safest spot to grow them.

Each year they bulbs came up and did nothing, died off, remained dormant and came up again…

Can you imagine the buzz when we discovered a lone flower this year… we watched it, checking its progress 3-4 times a day…waiting like expectant parents for the flower to open and revel its 3 precious stamens.

Yes, each crocus flower has only 3 stamens, so you need to grow quite a few to produce a kilo of this expensive spice, but I dont really mind if I just get a few, its better than nothing and certainly an excellent way to learn about saffron. Just think you may decide to grow a row of crocus saffron flowers as a border or garden edge and not only do you get some beautiful purple flowers, but you get to grow your own Saffron.

The big day arrived, the flower was open (you need to pick the threads as soon as the flower opens) and carefully we removed the 3 precious stamens. We then dried the stamens for 5 days on paper towel in a dry spot (aka – the laundry) then into a screw top jar ready to be used in cooking.

Was it worth the wait – it certainly was!

Saffron Crocus Flower with threads

Saffron Threads drying

Well after a long hot summer we took a long hard look at our vegie patchs’.

Time for a revamp was the call.

One particular patch was just really past its useby date, so I started to look around at what we had on hand, so that we could have a bigger and better vegetable garden. Hiding behind the shed were a couple of bits of colourbond (left over from the shed construction), so with tinsnips and a metal grinder we spilt the wider piece of roofing colourbond into two and decided that the two smaller bits would be perfect for the ends. Construction began and in a short time and some random bits of scrap wood we had a new raised vegie garden.

We also found some old garden hose that we put a slit into one side and then placed this on the edge of the colour bond and rivited it to hold it firmly in place. This will help prevent getting cuts from the tin.

In went some lovely compost, chicken manure, soil, blood and bone, plus some wetting agent to help with moisture retention. But before the patch was complete, we decided we would include an experimental watering system, to help save some watering time and maybe improve the efficeincy of the water. So before the last layer of soil was put down, we coiled a weeper hose across the bed and held it down temproraily with some metal pegs. The hose attachment end was left hanging out of the garden bed.Then down went the final layer of yummy soil mix, then the metal pegs were gently removed and we hooked it up to the hose from the rainwater tank.

In went some cauliflower and brussell sprouts and in between these went some randomly placed red onions. This combination I have since found out is a receommend companion planting combination that helps deter white cabbage moths… Fingers crossed on this…

As for the watering system, it seems to be working the cauli’s and brussel sprouts look like they are happy and healthy.

I was recently flicking through a new seed catalogue and I was struck by the number of purple vegetables that are available and many of them are the traditional heirloom varieties which have been saved from extinction by seed savers around the world.

OK, we know about purple cabbage, beans,eggplant and more recently purple carrots, but here are some other varieties of vegetables that come in the colour purple.

• Artichoke – Violetta
• Asparagus – Purple
• Beans – Purple King – Violet Queen Bush
• Peas – Purple podding
• Broccoli – Purple Sprouting
• Cabbage – red Drumhead
• Carrots – Dragon & Purple Three Colour
• Cauliflower – Purple Cape
• Eggplant – Many varieties, black beauty, Early purple and more!
• Tomato – Eva purple ball
• Potato – Sapphire seed

As I said, I was amazed at the number of vegetables available in a purple colour and I have possibly missed a few, so please feel free to let us know of any others.

You could even dedicate a section of your vegetable garden just to purple vegetables. It would certainly make a good conversation piece.

There are some juvenile delinquents roaming my neighbourhood at the moment and boy are they sneaky!

My juvenile delinquents are in fact 2 young butcher-birds… I have done the “crazy vegie gardener” thing ( I think much to my neighbours amusement) and waved my arms and “shooed” them, but they hardly take any notice and fly into the large gum tree, pretend to hide and then after a while they return. So what are they doing?

They are sneaking cherry tomatoes… And are doing so through the bird netting…. its actually quite an achievement and I have watched them do it out of fascination for their skill, they put their beak through the netting, latch onto a tomato and then twist and manoeuvre it through the netting, I don’t quite understand how they get a tomato through the netting but they do it.

But the worst thing is they are only doing it as a bit of sport, they don’t eat the tomatoes, they bite them, then throw them on the ground and try for another. I am not sure if my tomatoes just aren’t to their taste or if it is a bit of a game.

Wonder if  I built a scarecrow, if that would work???

Last year we dug a crop of potatoes that we had planted and we backfilled the patch to allow it to rest before we planted another crop. But we must of missed a couple of tiny little potaotes, because after a short time, up came some new potato plants.

We thought about not keeping them, but fiqured if they felt the need to grow, so be it – and waste not want not!

So up came a little crop of potatoes and as they grew we just kept heaping the dirt around them, so they would continue to grow upwards. Finally the time came for our accidential – free crop of potatoes to be dug and while we didnt get a ton of spuds, we certainly got enough for a meal or two.

And yes, we are now resting the potato patch!

Well what can I say, I have been slack!

And now I find that the year is marching on and I am sooooo late putting in this season’s crop of vegetables. So off I trotted to the garden centre and I begrudgingly purchased some seedlings.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not against the planting of seedlings and I find them very convenient and a great way to get a vegetable garden off to a flying start. It’s just I feel that seeds give me better bang for my buck! Even when I factor in the other costs such as seed raising mix, I still feel that seeds give better value. Plus you get to see a mature plant develop from scratch.

But in the “for’s” for seedlings, you only pay for what has sprouted and you don’t need to thin them out, they are just ready and waiting for you to pop into your vegetable patch.

So because I am running so late this year and have only just cleared out my vegie patch, I have decided my plan of attack is to plant some seedlings to get crop 1 started and then some seeds to get the second crop going so that I have a continuous crop of vegies such as cucumbers, lettuce, bok choy and beans…. hope my plan works and if it does it should keep me in vegies for a while…

But  what is your preference? Seeds or seedlings?

Snow peas flowers!!

I thought I would never see the flowers from my snow peas but the day has come. After buying some seedlings from Bunning in early August, I stupidly realise that peas are more of an Autumn – Winter plant then a Spring – Summer plant. Oops! That would teach me to read before buying.

I did not really tend to them much after transplanting except for watering and the occasional splash of leftover liquid fertilizer. No surprise, some died, others eaten by bugs of unknown species.

So there I was, minding my own business and doing the usual gardening type things and ‘Whoooo, is that…..?’ Oh yes. Surprise indeed. I am now like a praying hawk (more like a mother realising the potential in her long neglected child), waiting for the emergence of the sweet, sweet peas.

Yellow Zucchini - before the dreaded leaf mildew set in

Well after years of fiddling around with lettuce in pots etc, 3 years ago I took the plunge, got my act together and organised 3 garden beds. Each measured approx 2 metres long by about a metre wide and yes I am in the suburbs of Melbourne. In the past 3 years I have managed to grow some awesome tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, broccoli, chilli’s, spuds, a random eggplant or two and some other odd bits.

But it has not all been success, last year the zucchini went mouldy, I tried everything but nothing would help those poor little things, so out they came. The hot summer knocked the stuffing out of my garlic and it died, but to my surprise it has come up again this year.

I also have a large possum population that enjoys a nibble on the odd leaf or vegetable, so I have driven stakes into each corner of each bed and hung bird netting over the top and sides, fixed the possum and bird population. Or so I thought, watching out the kitchen window a very clever butcher bird had found a way to steal my cherry tomatoes, perched on a corner stake, he carefully put his beak through the netting and picked out a nice ripe cherry tomato, squished it in his beak, decided that one wasn’t tasty, spat it out and tried another… needless to say he was quickly “shooed” off. But that’s part of the joy, the ups and downs, successes and failures. The learning.

But there is nothing quite like picking your own produce, especially the first one of whatever for the season, it’s kind of an almost childlike sensation, amazement that “I grew this”. And for me this feeling never goes away!