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1 April 2015
Happy April everyone! No pranks from me today, I promise. The Autumn leaves are really showing their colours around the place now: I was walking this morning with my friend Kim and we saw a tree in the Cascade gardens that looked pretty much on fire - spectacular! I'm still clinging a little bit to the concept of summer, and moaning about the poor tomato, cucumber, zucchini crop this year. But I'm almost ready to give up and embrace the bounteous joys of Autumn, and the delights of slow cooking on the wood stove.
The preserving frenzy has slowed down to a trickle at last, and now I've done that psycho reversal that makes me wish I had more than just six quinces sitting in the bowl waiting for the alchemy of sugar and long cooking. I've preserved more than usual this year, since part of the crowd funding campaign to get our calendar published last year included the "Instant Homesteader" as one of the rewards. I've delivered the last of these rewards, to Peter from Launceston, recently. The photo above shows some of the goodies that were included: bottles, syrups, pastes, jellies, dried fruit, vinegars, chutney, jam and pickles. Peter was chuffed!
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Pea straw - scrumped!
This crew look pretty chuffed too, don't they! We had a happy day 'scrumping' (great term thanks Chloe) pea straw from the farmer's shed in Woodbridge. It was hot dusty work, but the delight of collecting someone else's 'waste' product and using it as a valued resource kept us all going, laughing, singing, and talking about all manner of sustainability type stuff. Thanks to Martine (below left) for sharing the love.
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Postscipt: Martine sent me a photo last night of a delicious salad featuring pea sprouts that have come up in the straw she spread around her berry bushes. Talk about a gift that just keeps giving! She's been having them stir fried too. Yummo!
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Fimbarista offerings
Here are a couple of offerings from fimbaristas in the network, to follow up if you're interested. Let me know if you'd like contact details for Sharon or Jennifer.
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Soy cooking class
with Sharon Soo
Sharon writes: "I am organising a cooking class, theme is Cooking with Soy Products.
26 April 2015 and 3 May 2015
Time starts from 10.30am
I will introduce a few types of soy products are available in Asian shops, including bean curd sticks, fermented soy products etc. I will also make fresh soy milk and a dessert using silken tofu.
The cost is $37 per person which includes lunch. Each class will be limited to 12 people."
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Free bulbs
from Jennifer
Jennifer is an amazing artist and has been curating her garden up at Mt Nelson with an artist's sensibility. We were up there for a chat recently and she asked if anyone wants any free bulbs. "What sort?" we asked. "Just bulbs" was the droll reply. So if you'd like a mystery mix of spring colour, let me know and I'll pass on Jennifer's details!
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Garden setup at Eaglehawk Neck
We had a big day's enjoyable work at Eaglehawk Neck last Monday, setting up a vegie and berry garden for Jill and Craig. It was a warm day, especially warm in the sweet little sun trap that is the site of the new garden. The pics can tell the story:
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Jorgen, Elias and Michael get started, clearing away stray clumps of this and that.
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Still hard at it, roughly levelling the area where garden beds will go, and laying old carpet down to prevent root invasion from the big ol' trees that surround the site.
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A few hours later, and there are three large raised beds planted out with annual vegies, and three lower beds ready for winter plantings of berries, artichokes, rhubarb and other perennials. Note the sexy new branded "D" on the dovetail beds!
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Bodie not only delivered the beautiful dovetail beds (flat packed) but also bought the sawdust and soil for filling the beds. AND stayed to help set them up. Great service!
We had a slightly worried moment as he was levering the 1 tonne pack of timber off the back of the truck . . . but he seemed supremely and calmly confident, so we stood back (waaaaay back) and watched, cameras at the ready. It all worked beautifully, with the timber landing on a lean against the back of the truck, facilitating us lifting of each piece of the jigsaw in sequence. He's obviously done that many times before.
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Jill and Craig plan to have an enclosure built around the entire area of the new garden beds, to keep birds and wildlife off the berries and vegies. There will be room for a few well trained fruit trees as well. We're looking forward to staying in touch and watching this garden develop and thrive.
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Myrtle rust alert
Here's a message from Jenny Calder, sent around recently. Serious stuff:
"Calling all owners of CHILEAN GUAVAS, aka "tassie berries", especially those that have been purchased recently. Please check them for signs of MYRTLE RUST, http://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/biosecurity/plant-biosecurity/pests-and-diseases/myrtle-rust. If they've got it, don't touch the plant but contact Biosecurity Tasmania on 03 6165 3785. This disease recently entered Tasmania and could have a very large effect on our native plant communities, which are dominated by Myrtaceae species. I bought a Chilean guava last week at a major nursery and I just discovered it is infected. (It could be worth checking your feijoas too, and lophomyrtus if you are into ornamental hedges)."
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A stroke of genius
Here's a brilliant idea from Alan and Eileen at Murdunna (who demonstrated clever recycling with their propagation system as shown in our newsletter from last year). The garden system they inherited in their new place has large garden beds, and so internal pathways are needed to avoid compacting the soil in the root zone. Alan has collected some old pallets (you can find them free all over the place - look around the back yard of businesses in any semi industrial area) and cut them into sections, then laid them down as paths. The thing I really like about this, apart from upcycling free stuff, is that the cross pieces of the pallets keep the soil compaction restricted to just a few places. This means the vegies can have uninterrupted root exploration in the soil under the pallet pathways.
Of course, the pallets wont last forever, but they're easy to handle, and FREE, and can be replaced every year or two as necessary. Good one Alan and Eileen!
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We'll be visiting Alan and Eileen's lovely garden as part of a garden tour in the Murdunna region on Saturday May 9th. The tour is being organised by Dunalley Neighbourhood House: book directly with them. It will be a great day visiting three very different, and fascinating gardens. And talking with the gardeners who have been creating them. Cost $15, timing 9.30 - 3pm, car pool from Dunalley.
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Then afterwards you could go to the fabulous new Bangor Wine and Oyster Shed at Dunalley for a glass of something yummy as you gaze out over the water. Perfect!
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We did a fun garden makeover in Battery Point recently for Kate, and planted these broccoli in one of the narrow beds we created. On a follow up visit a couple of weeks later, it was great to see how much they had grown.
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We did notice a few tell-tale holes in some of the leaves however. Now normally a few holes in a leaf isn't necessarily a big deal, especially if you're not going to eat the leaf. But in the case of brassicas at this time of year, it can signal the beginning of a rampage by the caterpillars of the cabbage white butterfly. And sure enough, when we turned the leaf over, there were some eggs, and just-hatched little grubs on the underside.
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Sorry its not a very good photo - I squished the more photogenic ones out of reflex action. These grubs are tiny, and hard to see. They will grow fast however into large very hungry caterpillars. They can still be hard to see when they're bigger, because they are the same colour as the leaf, and tend to lie along the stems when not eating. And they don't just make little tiny holes - they can demolish whole seedlings overnight. To control, squish 'em or spray dipel (buy as a powder and mix up in the watering can) which wont harm other good insects.
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Book review
"Bee Friendly: A planting guide for European honeybees and Autralian native pollinators". This is an inspiring collection of information by Mark Leech, a Tasmanian beekeeper, covering urban and rural areas for all climates in Australia. I had a great chat to Mark at the Sustainable Living Festival last year - our stalls were opposite each other. I got all excited about planting chestnuts at our Bream Creek farm and in 10 years time having chestnut honey!
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This fairly hefty tome is available as a free pdf download from the RIRDC website or you can buy a hard copy, which supports further research, and is nice to have sitting on the bedside reading table!
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Garlic cultivars
You're probably beginning to think about planting your garlic soon, if you that way inclined. You might have already done so if you're super keen. I'm planning to get mine in during the next few weeks. I grow a 'SOHO selection' of Tasmanian purple, which is pretty common around here. (SOHO selection means I've selected the best from my own harvests in SOuth HObart for the last 10 years). Uh Huh. Its Hip.
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Elaine Reeves, the wonderful food writer for the Mercury, has just published a terrific piece in yesterday's newspaper about garlic varieties, and the thoughts of Letitia Ware, an experienced garlic grower and soil microbiology superwoman. If you can't find a copy of the paper lying around, you can find a link to the article online HERE.
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