Monday, May 26, 2014

Ten Thousand Words….or Ten Photos!


Well, I'm not getting around to writing much so thought instead I'd post some photos and hope that makes up for the lack of words! Since the last post on May 4th we've had two nice falls of 24mm and 42mm of rain….quite an exceptional start to the season for us. I'm looking forward to posting photos of the wildflowers in a couple of months. In the meantime here's a glimpse of what's happening in the garden.
It's three weeks since the photo in the last post and the veggie garden is 
powering.  I am picking lettuces, Asian greens, radishes, silverbeet, coriander 
and parsley. I'm having a few issues with caterpillars on the  broccoli and 
red cabbages and the wind snapped some of the beans which were about to
flower. The beans I planted under the poly tunnel didn't germinate very well -I 
think they rotted- so I've taken it off and resown and will replace when it is properly 
cold. I've planted quite a few flowers in the veggie garden this year so it should be 
very pretty in about August.

The Spud Towers- I made a mistake in my last post saying that you 
should cover the spuds when the green shows through. Apparently
you cover the green when it is about 30cm high. 

Tom's newly planted lucern patch. This will be a valuable source of greens
for the chooks in summer and also for mulching material when it is cut and
dried out. 

I went into town the other day and found this coffee bush at the nursery.
I think it might be very tricky to keep alive in summer but I love
a gardening challenge! I've put lots of water saving crystals and compost  in the 
planting mix and covered the hole with some heavy duty 'mulch' to stop the chooks
scratching around it. 

This is a mini wicking bed made from a foam box. In it 
I've planted water spinach and laksa leaf/Vietnamese mint.
Tom and I are planning to make a large wicking bed from 
timber later this year.

Another gardening challenge!! I'm not sure how this 
blueberry (planted yesterday) will grow here 
but I'll never know if I don't try. Fingers crossed!

This simple tool (made by my Dad) is the best thing ever for 
cutting through and extracting weeds. It's a piece of flat stainless
steel curved and attached to an old broom stick with gutter bolts.
With this I can weed the garden without having to bend over.
This is the bacon hanging in our homemade smoker. You can just see the 
smoke seeping out of the inlet pipe at the bottom of the drum. I left the meat in 
the smoker for about 3 hours. It could have had slightly longer but I'd rather 
it is slightly under smoked than over as it tends to be a bit overpowering
and slightly nauseating if overdone!

Our home made smoker is a bit rough and ready but it 
does the job! The rocks on the lid of the fire pit (an old road sign!) 
are to hold it down so that the smoke is forced to go up the pipe 
and into the 44 gal drum-the smoking chamber. As you can see, 
some smoke escapes! The pavers on the right are nothing to do 
with the smoker, they just happen to be stored there.
This beautiful creature has nothing to do with anything Outback 
Larder (we certainly didn't eat him!!) but he's pretty cute and I 
thought you might like to see some of the local wild life . When it 
rains here the country bursts into life. This tortoise would have been 
buried deep in the ground, hibernating until it was wet enough 
to dig his/her way out. We found it on the road in the middle 
of the day, travelling between water holes.

Sunday, May 04, 2014

Dates, Spud Towers and Bruschetta

It's date season and the fruit eating birds around here are in heaven! The oldest date palm (below right), planted by my mum-in-law many years ago, is laden with fruit and is far too tall for me to pick it so the birds feast and fight over the fruit from morning 'til night. Fortunately we also have a few of younger trees and I have slipped some covers over their bunches to protect them from the birds (below centre), so at least we get a few!

Dates are very easy to grow in our climate, in fact they can be a bit of a pest and I am always pulling them out. If you want to harvest the dates you need to keep trimming the bottom fronds off with a saw or chain saw and you need to be very careful doing this because the leaves have a nasty spike on the end which can cause itching and inflammation if they stab you. It might be easier to buy them!

I like to eat dates straight off the tree but they are delicious when split on one side and filled with some creamy soft cheese and a pistachio or almond and served as an after dinner treat. From what I have been reading dates are having a bit of a renaissance in the Raw Food scene. They are used as a substitute for sugar in all sorts of recipes. My daughter likes to make 'ice-cream' from dates, bananas, cocoa, nut butter and coconut milk all blitzed together in a food processor. Here is a recipe from a blog called 'MindBodyGreen' for this virtuous treat.  Dates also add a delicious hint of sweetness when added to a lamb tagine, otherwise called Moroccan Lamb Stew.


We were very fortunate to have some wonderful rain last week.  For me the best thing about this is that now the trees and shrubs in the bush will stop dying. It has been heartbreaking to watch the country dying before our eyes and I am looking forward now to watching it recover. 

The veggie garden has enjoyed the rain too. Since writing last I have finished making the beds and have planted most of them up. I am trying very hard to be restrained and save some room for later plantings in order to prolong the harvest, but it is taking a lot of will power!

I've just taken possession of a plastic 'grow tunnel' under which I have planted beans. I am hopeful that the tunnel will keep conditions warm enough for winter grown beans, as well as protecting them from frost. We don't get a lot of frost here but of course it only takes one to wipe out a crop of anything susceptible. 

With Tom's help I have also erected three potato towers. The idea is that each time a green sprout pokes its head through you cover it with more soil, which forces the plant to get taller and taller - and hopefully produce potatoes all the way up the stem! When it gets to the top you let it do what it wants to do, which is make leaves in order to feed the potaoes underneath. When the leaves die back you lift the netting off and harvest the bounty. Well, that's the theory anyway. I've never grown spuds this way before so I guess we'll just see what happens. In two towers I've planted Dutch Creams and in the other Ruby Lou. It's a bit hard here in Western Australia to get hold of interesting varieties of seed potatoes because they can't be ordered from the Eastern States due to quarantine laws. I was pretty happy to find the Dutch Creams….I hope they do well! 

One of my favourite things to make for lunch is bruschetta, and that is what I had today, with the first coriander from the garden….it was pretty small but  I had to thin the plants anyway and fresh coriander has so much flavour you don't need heaps to get a good hit. It's a pretty ordinary photo but you get the idea. 

Bruschetta (pronounced Broo-scet-ta)

This is more of an idea than a recipe. What ever you choose to put on top of your bread here are a couple of tips that will ensure your bruschetta will be fabulous: Use a good, robust bread like sourdough (floppy white bread will not hold up under the topping), drizzle the bread with olive oil and grill it on a griddle pan or under a grill, rub the toasted bread with fresh cut garlic and use lovely fresh ingredients, including fresh herbs, in the topping. 

You can use whatever you fancy for your topping. We had fresh corn cooked on the BBQ last night and there was a bit left over which, combined with  coriander, made me lean towards a slightly Mexican salsa theme…… So, into the bowl went diced tomatoes, diced red capsicum, chopped avocado, cooked  fresh corn, diced cucumber, finely sliced spring onion, fresh picked coriander, salt and pepper. All tossed together with some good extra virgin olive oil and a generous squeeze of lime. 

A classic bruschetta is a combo of fresh tomato and basil but you can top your toast with all sorts of things, for example: smoked salmon, dill and capers; tinned tuna, red onion, mayo and parsley; grilled eggplant, feta and mint; caramelised onions, goats cheese and rocket. The list is endless, and you can even do sweet fruit and cheese toppings….but better leave out the garlic!