vegetable garden – Page 2

The Wisdom of the Contadini. Spring Garden Diary

An old Italian proverb advises,” Quando i mandorli fioriscono, le donne impazziscono“- when the almond tree blooms, women go crazy. I can safely say that I missed this arboricultural, aphrodisiacal or psychotic event a few weeks ago. The almonds already have fruit! Mr Tranquillo is looking for a later flowering variety to extend the season.

My productive organic orto reminds me of the wisdom contained in old Italian proverbs, based on the experience of centuries of vegetable growing by the Italian contadini, the rural peasants, who depended on a productive home garden for crops to be eaten fresh, stored, pickled or dried. Given that this class of farmer was often at the mercy of the landowner, working under the mezzadria, the traditional share cropping system, a productive ‘home’ patch would have been essential to their survival.

Earrly zucchini plantings- another round wll be planted in late December — Early zucchini planting- another round will be planted in late December.

With each turn around the garden, I can hear the vecchi, the old folk, reciting advice in the form of rhymes, the oral history of food and planting. I have selected a few gems to go with this season’s verdant bounty.

Chi pianta le fave senza concime, le raccoglie senza baccello – Those who plant broadbeans without fertiliser, picks them without pods.

Waiting for the first Fave Beans — Waiting for the first fave beans.

Chi ha un buon orto, ha un buon porco. Those who have a good vegetable garden, have a good pig. We find this to be the case with chooks also: they love wild rocket and silverbeet.

Let me out…stamp, stamp, stamp.

Un piatto di lattuga l’insonnia mette in fuga. A plate of lettuce chases away insomnia.
cos and radicchio
L’insalata vuole il sale da un sapiente, l’aceto da un avaro, l’olio da un prodigo, vuol essere mescolata da un matto e mangiata da un affamato. A salad wants salt from a wise man, vinegar from a miser and oil from a squanderer, mixed by a madman and eaten by the hungry.
Wild rocket pops up anywhere in the garden: enough for us and the chooks.
Lattuga romanella ripulisce la budella. Cos lettuce cleans the gut.
Abundant Cos lettuce seedlings from saved seed

Simple dishes star this season, the cucina povera of the Italian contadini:

freshly made egg pasta with sage leaves browned in butter
frittata stuffed with herbs and wild greens, with ricotta saltata
orecchiette with turnip tops, garlic and anchovies
green salads wisely dressed
pies and tarts with silverbeet, dill, spring onions and mint, along with fetta
silver beet dolmades
salsa verde to dress fish or dill and walnut pesto to dress hard-boiled eggs
risotto with cavolo nero or radicchio

Radiccho grows everywhere, as well as in the path!

It’s all very green with the odd touch of bitter crimson. The planting of the summer fruiting vegetables has begun.

The most versatile vegetable, the humble silver beet.

Julie’s Spring garden in the North Island of New Zealand is always inspiring, especially given her brilliant photography. Find her at frogpondfarm

I am also linking in with Lizzie’s Garden Share Collective this month.

Garden Monthly. Winter 2015

Winter is a great time to check the vegetable garden’s infrastructure before being overwhelmed by the tasks of Spring. Five years ago when we moved into this property, we installed a tall fence around the perimeter of the garden. The base of the fence was then boarded, allowing mowing and brushcutting up to the edge, but the fencing wire was not buried. We should have known that the rabbits would keep finding weak points and enter by digging under the boards. Task number one is to rectify this problem. Time to call a working bee.

Borage Blue - Spring is around teh corner. — Borage Blue Flowers make a colourful addition to a salad.

Last summer we installed hoops over half the garden beds, enabling us to attach shade cloth over the summer crops during the hot summer months. The hoops are made from ‘found’ reo ( metal reinforcing rods) which are cut into 1½ metre lengths then inserted into flexible poly piping. More hoops are required this season, to cover the remaining beds with stretchy cheap bird netting as a deterrent to the winter vandals, namely the cockatoos. These large birds love a winter raid. The guard cocky sits in the tallest tree, alerting his friends of our imminent arrival, though all our loud shooing and yelling has little effect. Down they swoop in large gangs, bombing any plant that they consider too tall, ugly or in the way. Last week the slow-growing broccoli plants became winter’s first victims. Some were sliced in half, others were pulled out of the ground. Just for fun! The 300 garlic plants are getting some height and look like the next target.

Keeping accurate rainfall records is an ingrained habit: we have records from this area dating back to the 8os. Winter rain tallies are important for many reasons. Melbourne can often be cold and dry in June and July, so watering becomes essential. This July we have received 104 mm, with a cumulative total of 491 mm for the year, comparing favourably with the figures from the July aggregate totals from recent years. (July’14- 340 mm, July ’13-300, July’12- 457, July ’11-537, July’10- 483). Let’s hope that the rain keeps up in Spring.

Winter herbs- dill and coriander. Dill and walnut pesto is a new winter favourite.

Our vegetable garden relies on dam water. The house is supplied by rainwater collected in tanks and is reserved for home use, topping up the swimming pool and emergencies, such as bushfire. We extended the dam, making it deeper and wider, soon after we arrived in our new abode. It filled quickly during a Spring downpour: we watched in awe as it went from empty to full in one afternoon, like a giant cappuccino in the making. During the dry months, water is pumped from the dam up to a 5000 litre holding tank on the ridge. The water is then gravity fed down to the garden, via underground pipes, as the vegetable garden is sited well below the tanks. Sometimes the lines get blocked or are slowed down and need the filters changed. This is another winter task.

Our beautiful Dexter cows, Delilah (the bitch) Sad Aunty Derry, Skinny Duffy and the boys, Dougie and Oh Danny Boy (the rogue), give us a bountiful supply of manure as do the chooks. The manure is layered into large bins, along with dry leaves (carbon), and green matter (kitchen waste and green clippings): the resulting ‘lasagne’ puffs away for three months until ready for use with each new season. We have around five bins in various stages of maturation. Well made compost is the answer to successful organic growing, along with adequate water, mulching, and siting the garden away from shade or large rooted trees. East and north sun are key factors, along with protection from the South West, the main source of our destructive winds.

Dear Auntie Derry. — Dear Auntie Derry knows more than you think. She recognises Andrew from the road. ‘Here he comes, let’s chase his car up the driveway”.

Winter lettuces come in all colours and flavours. They are picked every few days, washed then spun and bagged. Unlike the supermarket packets of uniform ‘baby’ leaves, gassed and given a mandatory wash in bleach, home-grown lettuces are delightfully irregular, and often come with stems attached. The current mix includes Cos, butterhead, red oakleaf, red butterhead, rocket and baby radicchio.

Radicchio grows everywhere, even along the brick paths. — Self sown radicchio grows everywhere, even along the brick paths.

Perrenial Cacolo Nero ( kale) = good winter standby. — Perennial Cavolo Nero ( kale), good winter standby.

Looking for more garden inspiration? Check out this month’s vegetable garden posts on Lizzie’s Garden Share Collective from Monday, August 3.

Garden Monthly April 2015

My orto needs some serious attention. Some remaining Autumn crops are happy to linger longer and fatten up. Other beds need digging over, re- seeding and mulching. The rabbits got in and munched all my lettuce, parsley, radicchio, rocket and coriander! Some one left the gates open while I was at the beach. This invasive pest (the rabbit, not the gate person) also finds a way through our Fort Knox fencing during Autumn, especially when it’s really dry and the green pickings are slim in the paddocks and bush. The kangaroos are also desperate, jumping the fences to dig up the remaining vestiges of green grass around the veggie patch. They have also taken a fancy to apple trees. This is unusual behaviour as only wallabies tend to be so destructive. Too many jobs, not much will or time.

Now for the happy news. The eggplant are ripening and so long as the frost stays away, they should continue for a while.

We also have belated borlotti beans. I tried to plant these in December but they couldn’t cope with the blasting heat. I re-seeded some in late February and the mild weather seems to suit them. Again, stay away Jack Frost.

We have had zucchini crop continuously for five months now. I am happy not to buy any after their demise. We harvest a few each week.

Some self-sown lettuce popped up with the latest rain. I usually relocate them when they are a little older and not deplete the soil of the same nutrients.

It has been a wonderful year for pumpkin and other cucurbits. They liked the milder weather and scrambled all over the garden. They need a few more weeks to ripen and harden in the remaining sun.

It’s also time to make a few basil things for the freezer- basil butter and frozen pesto ‘bombs’ which will bring a touch of summer to a winter soup.

To do list this week:

Remove remaining bird nets from strawberries and raspberries
make basil butter and basil oil
investigate products in Australia for frost protection of limes and lemon grass.
make a small mix of concrete to plug rabbit holes in fence
collect more cow manure and spread about
sow turnips – such an easy crop
cut back herbs
bake remaining apples and the lone quince!

Are you a keen food gardener? Do you grow herbs, vegetables or fruit? Do you need assistance or advice to get you started? Go and check out the other posts this month at Lizzie’s Garden Share Collective.

Garden Monthly, January 2015

Summer gardening in Melbourne is an Yin/Yang experience. We need the heat to bring on the tomatoes, basil and beans: too much, and the plants suffer badly from heat stress. The temperatures soared last week to over 40c for two days: this is a taste of what’s around the corner. Melbourne can often experience heat waves of 44 degrees celsius for four days in a row, followed by cooler days in the 30s. On extremely hot days when north winds gust at over 50 km an hour, we self- evacuate in line with the Victorian policy of Leave and Live, which I have mentioned in a previous post. On these days, the garden hangs on, just.

Tomato News. My triffid tomato, the miniature yellow pear, is still growing madly and is covered in hundreds of baby fruit. I will definitely save this seed. My son planted some weird black tomatoes, the seed bought on eBay. They look like some awful deadly nightshade cross between a potato and a tomato. They are still too young to eat so wait for the reports in February. There are six plants so ‘fingers crossed’. The Rouge de Marmande, my favourite tomato, were planted a little late so these fruits won’t appear on the table until February. I forgot to plant a green zebra tomato this year. What an omission; I will miss their green stripes in the the tomato salad bowl.

It is definitely the year of the cucumber. I had some old seed to use up a few months ago, and voila, they all came up. Although not fond of apple cucumbers, I am investigating using them in some lovely Yunnanese dishes, with loads of chilli. I only notice two Lebanese cucumbers for green munching and pickling.

The strawberries are producing continuously, thanks to the netting which has 20% UV shadecloth, and the addition of mulching with pine needles. At last a use for the dreaded pine trees that inhabit our 20 acre block.

The task of sifting the seed has begun. I found this fabulous sifter in Bas Foods in Brunswick, near Melbourne. A ceelik , I think it is Turkish in origin.

I have saved my own Cos and Red leafed lettuce for years. It germinates in any season and there are always hundreds of seedlings to give away, thus keeping the strain going. The cavolo nero dried seed pods needed splitting open by hand. Seed saving is one of the real pleasures of gardening, knowing that you have selected the best specimen for your own micro climate.

Garlic cleaning has begun. Last year the garlic lasted for 12 months without shooting, thanks to correct storage in the dark, in an airy container. This year, I plan to store them in these old Chinese steamer baskets, covered with hessian, in the larder.

The garlic crop was disappointing in size due to lack of rain in winter and early Spring. Our total rainfall this year was 587mm, compared with 670 mm in 2013 and 711 in 2012. As we are in the midst of an El Nino cycle, watering needs to happen more consistently in Winter and Spring, especially as garlic requires it to fatten up. Winter can often be our driest period. We forget this, thinking that cold equals wet!

I leave all the radicchio to go to seed as the flowers do their job attracting bees and insects for pollinating the tomatoes, pumpkin, cucumber and so on. And their cornflower blue is so stunning.

Jobs to do: Net the grapes. Mulch the tomato and pumpkin beds, create another green shade cloth bed for lettuce. Remove old seeded silver beets.

It’s a gardener’s source of inspiration at Lizzie’s The Garden Share Collective every month. Check it out.

A Farewell to Broad Beans. Frittata di Primavera

At some ungodly hour this morning, still half asleep, I heard my mother’s voice saying, ‘Don’t make a rod for your own back.’ At the time, I was considering the long list of jobs in the vegetable garden for the day ahead. Rod for my back? Yes indeed.

In Spring, the garden turns into the dictator of this little kingdom. The broad beans must come out today, the potatoes were dug out yesterday, a rather disappointing crop due to frosts in June. All the silver beet plants are now towering over me as they all simultaneously go to seed. They must be dug out and handed over to the chickens, reminding me that next week, the greens will be few in our kitchen. There are lettuces and cucumbers to transplant, more crops to sow, and a piece of metal rio (metal building mesh) would be very handy to make a shady wall for the rhubarb. The fruit trees need netting, the tomato plants staking! Just as one languishes in the land of plenty, along comes that dictator to deliver the rod. Or am I stuck in some bygone land of Catholic penance?

Many meals come my way gratis, thanks to l’orto, the veggie garden. This is the upside of our peasant labour, and when I eat this way, I feel that it’s worth all the effort. Last night’s Frittata is an example. I gathered all the ingredients from the garden, added some eggs from our chickens and made a 10 minute meal that was alive with taste, and rather healthy too.

Frittata di Primavera -Fave, Patata e Rugola

Spring Frittata with Broad Beans, Potato and Rocket.

This recipe takes only a few minutes to throw together if you have already cooked and peeled the broad beans, which is discussed previously here.

4 -5 small new potatoes, yellow fleshed
1 cup of broad beans
3 garlic cloves
4 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon smoked hot paprika
a large handful of rugola/rocket
Extra Virgin olive oil ( Australian oil is an excellent choice if you happen to live here)
vinegar di Jerez ( Sherry vinegar)

Method

Boil the new potatoes in their skins, until just done. Roughly chop.
Heat a small non stick pan and add a good glug of olive oil.
Add potatoes, turn around in the oil, add a pinch of salt and the paprika, and cook till golden.
Add the chopped garlic, turn about for a minute, then add the double shelled broad beans.
Beat the eggs with a little more salt and pepper, then pour over the vegetables.
Lift up the edges of the frittata, allowing the unset egg to run back under, turning the pan as you go.
When the frittata looks almost done, except for the wet top, pop it under a hot grill for a minute or so to set.
When done, invert onto a plate, using the plate as a lid over the pan.
Top with rugola/rocket, which has been dressed in olive oil and sherry vinegar.

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