FOOD-GROWING BLOGGERS UPDATE

Did you vote in the side-bar?

If you did, please email me now at seedsavers@gmail.com as the votes are anonymous!!

As soon as I get your email addresses from you it will be easier to communicate. I have no way of finding out who you are otherwise!

I know who 2 are who said "yes, and I will help" but I have no idea who the other people are who voted 'yes' or 'maybe', please would you send me an email ASAP to give me some idea who we are talking to and how many may be coming. Are you just coming for 1 day or would you be interested in some of the things suggested here? Are you coming by car, boat or other? What questions do you want to ask me?

Please contact these people if you would like to go to their get-togethers:
Ian at Kitchen Garden in France is having a doo on August 24th too in south-west France.
Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots is organising a similar thing in Oxford, England in September.
Pattie is doing her own thing with a few bloggers in Georgia USA in August/ September.

So this year is possibly the start of lots of fun times for food-growing get-togethers world wide.

This post will stay at the top of the page for a while.

TO BARRY'S AND BEYOND

It was an absolutely perfect day today for a drive down to Pt. Elliott to Beach Organics and a tour of Barry's 10 acres, minutes from the sea.We spent 2 hours with Barry and I was particularly interested in the story of how he came to be selling small-producer Indonesian spices, salts and peppers, blended to appeal to certain up-market buyers such as restaurateurs and gourmet cafes. After travelling there in the 1970's he came home feeling he wanted to do something to help the poorer people of Indonesia and considered becoming a volunteer of some sort but years went by, as they do. A few years ago he revisited some rural areas there and decided to help the people by importing their beautiful and often unique spices into Australia, buying direct from the individual growers.This business is growing and he is supplying some quite special ingredients to top-class restaurants all over Australia as well as selling small amounts to people at the Willunga farmers' Market and to us today. I bought some fermented cacao beans, which can be eaten like chocolates but with a sharpness and delicious lingering flavour.	Here is Barry with his barrow, some of his spices and the view of the sea, between the trees..
Barry grows a limited range of vegetables as he says people just won't buy things that are a bit different. He uses his chooks effectively as workers as well as egg-layers and has mobile electric fencing to keep out foxes. He rotates his vegetables all over the place; for example, currently he has broad beans planted between rows of fruit trees. He is also revegetating the area with native, local plants and takes good care of his land. Thanks Barry and see you at the Willunga Farmers' Market soon.	Then we drove down the way a bit to this tranquil waterway for a picnic. It was so beautiful to see and hear running water again after so much dryness during the last year. Roger fired up the choofer to boil the billy for tea and we all shared the food we had grown and cooked. The reflections of the bushland in the water were stunning and, standing there alone, I absorbed the colours of the light on the water, the lush green of the fresh growth and the tranquility of the atmosphere like a  sponge that had at last been rehydrated and given life again.
We then headed off to see Meg's 44 acres nearby and had a lovely walk across the paddocks and the creek-bed to the site chosen for the house and, more importantly, for the vegie garden! They are revegetating the waterway and taking a lot of trouble to restore the land to its natural beauty. The 3 kangaroos in the bottom right photo came by to see what we were doing.
The site for the future vegetable garden.
I will put more of the photos here.  Check out those reflections!	It was great to drive through the Adelaide hills and down to Port Elliott when everything looks so fantastic. I think everyone enjoyed the day; I certainly did and it was nice to spend time with the 15 of our members who came today.

2010 THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF BIODIVERSITY

Here are some real news items about what people are doing in the world to help themselves reduce their dependence on foreign foods, oil, agri-business and to improve their nutrition at the same time.

	http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=dsK3V04LAvw
International day for Biodiversity in Africa Read this article too, from 'Biodiversity International'	Seeding Deep Democracy - Vandana Shiva
Seedsavers Australia trailer for 'Guardians of the Seed'	Vandana Shiva - Reclaiming economy, culture and politics

 

Here I am sitting here writing this stuff at 8pm on a Saturday night and you may well ask why am I not out on the town or even why am I not watching TV with Roger or just relaxing. It is because I just had to get into this - it is THE most important thing in the world today, I think. That is making a big claim but I have written about it from various angles before and I will keep on doing it.(Wild Food Biodiversity, Sowing the Seeds of Civilisation, Saving Seeds, Saving Lives) I find it very exciting, but also frustrating,that people in countries such as Africa and India are getting on with these things while we in Australia and other western countries are way behind in our thinking. Maybe by 2010 and the Year of Biodiversity, we will have caught up (and pigs might fly too!).

Let me just assume that you agree with me that biodiversity is a good thing to have. For a minute, then, lets look at how it came to be, in the first place. As evolution was taking place over the last few million years, every organism created, whether from seed or egg, for example, has had a unique set of genes - unlike any other that has ever existed. Now that is a lot of genes and a lot of combinations of genes, when you think of millions of years and many millions of generations, for some organisms. Every time 2 individuals cross, a new individual is therefore formed. After all these years of this happening you can imagine that, like in the game 'Chinese whispers', the last individual created would be nothing like the original, thousands or millions of generations before. And sometimes this difference is enough to make a new species but sometimes, if only a few of the genes are different, it becomes a new variety of, for example, bean or apple or bacteria or fish etc. Each development has only been possible because of the existence of the many before.

Now, if we go on the way we are at the moment - destroying not just varieties but actual species at an ever increasing rate (read Greg's recent post about this) you can see that whole sections of the gene pool are being erased. Once they are gone, we can never go back to their forbears and re-evolve them. Those genes specific to those species are extinct. So, evolution gets big holes in it, like a web with whole sections missing and unable to be re-connected, ever. If varieties disappear in this way so the next generation of beans or apples or bacteria or whatever can only be formed from an ever-decreasing supply of genes, until the gene pool may be so small that no viable off-spring are possible and then the whole species goes. Or there are no genes available to allow for adaptation to changing conditions - maybe only cold-hardy beans are left in a world heating up, for example. Because beans evolved from other pre-bean life-form which has now evolved so much it no longer exists itself, we cannot get the heat-resistant bean back! We are stuffed, big time! No beans...then no apples...no bananas..etc etc.

To keep evolution going forwards so it can adapt to climatic changes and so on, we need to keep everything we can reproducing and throwing up new combinations of genes which will select for new situations. By doing a simple thing like saving seeds from the strongest / most productive / earliest/ latest/ fastest / best tasting etc etc plants in our vegetable gardens we are ensuring that all those genes are being kept alive. This year I want us, as a seedsavers group, to start mixing our seeds together before redistributing them again. For example, we all have Kath's fabulous broccoli that is fast, has a big main head and lots of side shoots of excellent quality. If I just grow a few each year, they only have the chance to cross with each other and this is OK for a while. But ideally, I would like to mix my seeds in with another 4 or 5 people's seeds from the same variety of broccoli, all in Adelaide, so the genes get some new input each year but are still being selected for similar conditions. Already I have done this by accepting and planting out some seedlings from Sally in my garden group, who grew Kath's broccoli last year and saved the seeds. Now that we grow some of the same varieties we can start to really make use of the size of our group for this type of endeavour.

Somehow I wish I hadn't started on this now because I am too tired to think any more (now its 10pm) and am going to retire to watching The Bill !! Trouble is, I can never go back and get the same thread going again another day, just like with evolution, you can't go back! Oh well. I have probably said enough anyway. Now the darn thing won't align properly.Sorry!

THE WEEK AT OUR PLACE

Installing the new desk...Roger is left-handed and I am right and our old desk couldn't work for both of us so we got this second hand one (ha, ha...left, right, second..get it?) and Roger modified it so it would fit perfectly. Now he has a space on the left of the keyboard and I have a space on the right. All very peaceful again!

My mother's Irish Strawberry tree (arbutus unendo) is covered with flowers and fruits at all different stages of ripening. It is a beautiful little tree and has received no water for many years. It is happy in our alkaline soils and, being native to the Mediterranean regions as well as Ireland, it is very adaptable. The fruits are edible and OK but not that interesting.

Below is a photo of what Tony Scarfo calls a Cauli-Broc. This monstrous thing weighs over 2kg and cost me $5.50 today from Wilson's organics. For that I will be able to make several meals including soup, some sort of gratin and put some in a stir fry too. I wonder what Tony gets for it?

Why doesn't Tony have white fly and aphids?? I hate to admit it but the aphids at my place would weigh more than the crop! Where are all the ladybirds and lacewings? What is the problem ? Something is out of whack...I bet it's garden and nature getting up to mischief again and spending all night laughing at poor me!

I saw Tony again at the market today - before I bought the cauli-broc and we had a chat, him resting on his trolley and me with a handful of his beans. A really decent bloke is Tony.

New Mandala Walk Veggie Garden

Click here or on the photos link to see some before and after photos of our veggie garden.

SIGG OR SWIM

This has almost nothing to do, directly, with growing food but if I hadn't done this walk I would not be the person I am now, with such a passion for the natural world and letting some things just be while treading ever so lightly on the rest.

Pattie at Foodshed Planet has written a good post about those terrible plastic water bottles that are the modern-day necessity for some reason and what the plastic does to your body. She mentions a steel alternative and one person commented, mentioning Sigg bottles. I have a funny story about an old Sigg bottle that Roger and I used when bush-walking.

Very early in our relationship we went bushwalking in Tasmania, in the days before any tracks and rules and bookings! We were very experienced at navigation and carried everything we needed for about 10 days hard bushwalking in a remote and challenging area, including 2 steel Sigg bottles for water. One night, in the Walls of Jerusalem, as usual we packed all our stuff under the fly of the tent so it wouldn't get wet (it rains a lot in the mountains of Tasmania; maybe we should have stayed there forever). During the night we heard an animal rustling around in our pots and pans - nothing unusual - and in the morning we just packed up everything into our packs ready to head off.

When you only carry absolute necessities you notice if something is missing and our best, bright red water bottle was missing. Oh no, we thought, it will just have rolled out and be lying under a bush nearby. It being high alpine terrain there was only one bush - the rest was wind-swept and dwarfed native pines, groundcover plants, moss and rock and so on - and the bottle was not there. We searched wider and wider - nothing. We never found it! Luckily there was a lot of water around - pristine ponds and lakes and rivers and we could do without a water bottle but it is a mystery to this day. Did a kangaroo put it in its pouch and hop away?Why would it do that? We didn't hear any kangaroos - they thump along the ground quite loudly usually. Did a little possum roll it so far away, with its nose, so far we couldn't find it? Unlikely. Odd, very, very odd; and there were definitely no people anywhere for miles.

That was a fabulous walk and was the beginning of my deep and unending respect and love of real wilderness. All other previous trips into nature paled into the background in the wild mountains of Tasmania, with only our wits and skills to keep us from the dangers of sudden snow-storms and ferocious winds, getting lost, deadly snakes and rugged, rocky cliffs. There is nothing so beautiful as drinking from a water-way knowing that there is no-one up higher than you, you are at its very source, almost on top of the world, in fact no-one within a week's walk of you, most probably. And we left our Sigg bottle there - I wonder where it is now.

Memories are nice things.

EASY WORM FARM PLUS UPDATE

The idea is to have a perforated tube permanently placed into a hole in the garden and to place kitchen scraps into it and have resident compost worms continually moving in and out through the holes, decomposing and distributing the waste out into the garden for you.

Hopefully I won't need to empty it ever - Deb has had hers in the same place for years - because the worms take it all out through the holes in their travels. It is a good idea to put this one near some perennial vegetables (or fruit trees) with deep roots, so they can get the most benefit from the compost down deepest.

I would put the lid up the other way but it would just get full of mosquito larvae in a bout 5 minutes. Maybe I will try it though in hot weather.

This is not my only worm farm. I also have a traditional one so I can collect the liquid to water my seedlings.

A few days ago I finally got around to making this easy worm farm. I had been looking for the right receptacle for years (not an exaggeration!) until I saw that Deb had used 2 pots joined together at their openings. Brilliantly simple, thanks Deb.

1.So here you can see the 2 large plastic pots, one inverted onto the other and then joined with wire.

2.What is now the top has had the whole lid cut off it and is then a tube.

3.Lots of holes are then cut all over all the remaining surfaces,including the bottom, leaving a band without holes around the top half of the top pot.

4. Dig a hole deep enough for all the holes in the the new worm farm to be fully below soil level so no flies or vermin can get in.( Later, when I cover this area with a layer of compost, the soil level will be nearer the top of the pot.) Place the worm farm into the hole and back fill thoroughly so that the soil is up against the outside of the pots so the worms can easily wriggle in and out of the holes.

5. Place a spade-ful of compost in the bottom, then some kitchen scraps or green leaves or grass etc the a shovel-ful of worms.( Mine have been breeding up in the traditional worm farm so I took some from there.)Add a bit of water to dampen - not too much.

6. Cover the surface with a small piece of hessian.(My mother recently gave me a stack of hessian she got from who knows where. Why is it that old people seem to have supplies of things like hessian, string shopping bags, terracotta pots etc?)

7. Find a lid. Mine is a glazed pottery saucer from another large pot. I hope soon to find something better, preferably with a handle or knob to make it easier to remove with one hand.

8. Let the worms settle in for a bit and don't tip scraps in until they seem to be getting through what you have put in at first. Once their numbers build up they will require more feeding but because they have access to the surrounding soil you can go away and leave them for a while without attention.

Rare Fruit Society Update

I (Kate) am hijacking Maggie's post because I too went to the Rare Fruit meeting last night and I ate some of the fruit they put out on the tables after the talk, as usual. There are usually a few things I have never had before - they are incredible at producing all this fruit - and last night I had prickly pear, jack-fruit, different varieties of guavas,etc and....durian.

If you have never eaten durian my advice is DON'T. It smells like rotting flesh - worse even - and is banned on public transport and in public places, in the countries it is usually grown and so it should be here! I have eaten so many weird things when traveling in Asia and I will literally try anything and I have never ever eaten anything so foul as durian. It made me feel sick for hours. I couldn't get rid of that smell and disgusting tatse and thought it would haunt me all night but luckily it didn't. Some people at the meeting liked it - they must have different senses to me!

Check Rare Fruit Society web site for more details.

THE WRONG SIDE OF THE WORLD

It is a day like any other and I have been doing ordinary stuff while the rain washes away the dust from the air and a mist drifts up the valley past my kitchen window, softening the light. We roasted chestnuts on the fire for moring tea, I have a fruit cake cooking in the oven and a Middle-eastern cookbook on the bench, open at a page ready for making dinner. There is a basket of lemons from a friend and a bottle of vodka for the next batch of limoncello, apples that I must deal with from my mother and the last of the pears from my tree, ripening on the sill. Life is good at my place.

While making the cake I was thinking about Burma and China, both in the midst of shocking humanitarian disasters. I can't imagine 7,000 schools collapsing and 10,000,000 Chinese people being affected, directly, by an earthquake. We know relatively little about the cyclone in Burma; they have put politics before the people. I was thinking, in particular, about the Chinese army - actually about the individual men and women - and how horendous it would be to have to spend weeks carrying out dead people and putting them in mass graves; about the noise and the terror and pain and how I can stand in my kitchen and make a cake...and feel so inadequate.

I turned on the radio to think about something else and I heard a brief chat with a local singer called Beccy Cole before she sang one of her songs. She had been to Iraq to entertain the troops and when she came back she received a letter from someone saying they were taking her poster off the wall because she was supporting the war. There was no address to write back to so she wrote this song, called Poster Girl. Watch it or read it below.

'Poster Girl'.
You won't listen to my songs anymore
You ripped my poster off the wall
Cause I'm a singer that went to the war
You see no good in me at all
Pardon me if I believe that I haven't got it wrong
And Before you turn your back on me....
I'll sing you one more song

Cause I shook hands with a digger
On the wrong side of the world...
With a wife at home that holds her breath...
With a brand new baby girl

And the Digger fights for freedom
In a Job that must be done
And I let go of his hands so proud
To be an Aus...tral...ian

If unlike me you feel no pride at all
then go ahead and take me off your wall
cause I prefer to be a poster girl
on the wrong side of the world

And I'm just the girl who sings the crazy songs
Not qualified to sit and judge
I've been right and I've known I've been wrong
But I'm for peace and for love
And I admire the burning fire that causes you to fight
I only wish the wrong of the world
Had the same right....

Cause I listen to the wisdom of the Aussie Brigadeer
He spoke of widows and of orphans
And the need to dry their tears

And He leads the fight for freedom
In a job that must be done
And I've never been more proud to say
That I'm Aus...tral...ian

If unlike me you feel no pride at all
Then go ahead and take me...off your wall
Cause I prefer to be a poster girl
On the wrong side of the world

Maybe I'm naive to think we all could get along
But sir I read your words and all I ask...
Hear my song

I shook hands with a digger
On the wrong side of the world...
With a wife at home that holds her breath...
With a brand new baby girl

And the Digger fights for freedom
In a Job that must be done
And I've never been so proud
To say I'm Aus...tral...ian

If unlike me you feel no pride at all
Then go ahead and take me...off your wall
Cause I prefer to be a poster girl
On the wrong side of the world

I'm so proud to be a poster girl
on the wrong side of the world

I doubt anyone could listen to that and not be moved, on many levels. So many terrible things happening all over the world, so many people doing what they can to help, so many injustices and manipulations. All these are slightly removed from my everyday life but they are there, out in the open and reach into your heart in this song. Then there is that thing that comes with national pride - wherever you live and whoever you are - and I always find it surprising that that is what gets me every time, despite myself. Lastly comes the personal pain of misunderstandings. Beccy must have felt pretty hurt when she read that letter and not to have been able to personally respond would have been so frustrating after all she had experienced in Iraq. Sometimes all it takes is to stop a moment and think, for understanding to come.

The world is meant to be a sphere with no sides; but it is more like a raw diamond, with some facets shining, some rough and wild and others sharp and will cut you like a knife.

FOOD IS GOOD...

Ian from Kitchen Garden in France sent me an email which ended with

"Food is good. Grow it fast and then eat it slow!"  I love it!

Ian is on a roll now - here is his next creation, hot off the press:

"Food is good. Cook it fast and then eat it slow."

 

 

If you read this blog regularly you will probably have picked up that I love salads - not stodgy things like potato salads with mayonnaise or pasta salads either but assorted fresh, green, tasty leaves dressed only in dew or rainwater with crisp little bits like daikon seed pods at their green stage, slices of raw, crimson okra with those tiny, juicy pearl-like seeds, or yellow fennel flowers giving a hint of aniseed. Here is my list of things to grow to provide you with a continuous supply of salad ingredients through the seasons.

SALADS FOREVER - pick any time of the day or night

lettuces	loose leaf sorts such as: cos, oakleaf, purple-coloured varieties too
mild Asian greens	eat at the small leaf stage - bok choy, mild mustards, edible chrysanthemum leaves, mizuna, almost anything else
sweet potato leaves	small to medium sized ones are best, growing tips are crimson.
broccoletti	tiny sprouts - green and purple
broccoli	smallest leaves
sorrel	even though they taste sour alone, in a salad they are beautiful
water cress	leaves
water spinach	leaves
herbs	mint, basil, fennel fronds, chives, garlic chives, chervil, dill etc
pea shoots	when the peastraw sprouts or sow masses of seeds in beds especially to pick the shoots
broad bean shoots	when the broad beans get to about 6" high, nip off the tops and eat or sow as green manure and keep eating the tips
broad beans	tiny raw, or medium size thrown into boiling water for 30 seconds then chilled
beans	sliced tender, raw beans
peas	sugar snap, Chinese snow peas, any tender-podded peas
asparagus	raw or thrown into boiling water for 30 seconds then chilled
celery	slice thinly or eat chunks separately, smothered in peanut paste! Great snack
capsicums	yellow cornos is best I have ever had - eat like an apple or in salads, red is also good, Mini Mama is an F1 which is cute and can be eaten whole
carrots	thin carrots tossed on top are so sweet
chicory	young leaves are bright and crisp and juicy and not too bitter
cucumbers	yellow (most crisp and juicy one I have grown), Lebanese, any other
flowers	fennel (yellow), nasturtium, calendula (orange/yellow), chives (mauve), chervil, dill, chicory (bright blue), chrysanthemum, day lilies, lemon verbena, pineapple sage (bright red), radish etc
okra	raw pods sliced thinly, or just eat whole like an apple
pomegranate	red seeds
daikon	crisp green seed pods are not strong like the root
spinach	baby leaves
beetroot	baby leaves, especially 'bulls blood' which are dark red
rocket	wild rocket self-seeds year round and adds a spicy hit. It is one of the only things I don't really like to add in large quantities.

 

Young watercress	Crunchy yellow capsicums	Fennel flowers
Sweet potato vine	Beans	Pimento capsicums
Red Cornos capsicums	water spinach	Young cos lettuce
okra flower	crimson okra	pomegranates

I wish I had thought more carefully about sorting the list of salad ingredients. Maybe one day I will arrange them into seasons. Compromises, compromises, where do they end? 

pH, SALT AND OTHER SOIL THINGS

(Amongst this post are photos of what's happening in my garden today: Tony's fennel bulbs swelling, Chinese cabbage exploding with growth, Andrew's rainbow chard with the red stems, Joy's cos lettuce ready to have a leaf or two picked, and the last one is all the goodies from a post from last Wednesday.)

pH : This is a measure of the acidity /alkalinity of a substance. Plant growth is affected by soil pH because at different pH levels nutrients are either tied up in the soil and become unavailable to plants or are released and can be used by plants. Extremes of pH can cause the death of plants not suited to the conditions. Our locally-made testing kit (by Manutec) has a scale from 2 - 10. A reading of 6.5 - 7 is neutral. I would be aiming for a reading around 7 - 7.5 for my vegetable garden.

Today I decided to take some of my own advice and do a few pH tests around the vegie patch. I expected quite a range of results because my soil is generally pretty alkaline at about 8.5 but the vegetable garden has been built up in 2 terraces which vary in depth and over 18 years have had a lot of organic matter added to them. Rain has been scarce and our tap water is meant to be alkaline although when I tested it with a pool-stick it read 6.8.

The results of the 7 samples I took ranged in a seemingly random kind of way from 6 to 7.5. So the problem with my bok choy not growing was not a pH problem because both the good and bad bok choy soils had the same reading, which was around 7. I think 6 is a bit acidic for vegetables, in my limited experience, so I might get a bit of mushroom compost , which is more alkaline, to improve it during the next few months. Mushroom compost is the left-overs after the local mushroom growers have finished growing their mushrooms in it and can be bought from Heatcrete and other landscape supply yards by the trailer load. I would prefer not to bring in anything but it will be disposed of by the mushroom growers so we might as well use it. The ad in the yellow pages for our Adelaide mushroom compost says:

Genuine spent mushroom compost

Garden Mulch and Soil Conditioner
Organic - Natural - Environmentally Friendly - Pasteurised.
Saves Water, Inhibits Weeds, Promotes Plant Growth

I don't like the 'pasteurised' bit because it means all the lovely bacteria that were in it have been killed. To me if it is pasteurised it isn't organic. Killing is popular in most bought garden products and it is a shame they have to do it so no-one can sue them for making them sick. If you mix it with your genuine, home-made compost I think it will become alive again before too long. I could add a bit of garden lime to the soil instead but I don't like buying anything that comes in a plastic bag unless it is a particular sterile mix I use for seed raising in boxes. I could also make this but I don't - that is where I draw the line.

SALT

Here in South Australia, especially when things have been so dry and evaporation high, salt levels in the tap water are killing or damaging a lot of sensitive plants like exotics that come from wetter climes ( camelias, azaleas, gardenias etc) and if we don't get huge amounts of rain soon, the rising salinity of our soils will begin to affect vegetable growth too. If you have rain water, use it liberally to wash down those salts. A common sign of salt toxicity is the browning to a crisp of the tips of the oldest leaves. Plants in this state need to have a good soak, even with tap water, to remove the built-up salt from the root zone. If we are to keep growing food like these things at right, we are going to have to start looking for salt-tolerant vegetables to grow. There are a few natives we should adopt.

(Luckily we have had 46.5mm of rain since I wrote this. It is a good start but we have a long way to go).

...I wrote this a couple of days ago and at that time I had a whole lot of other things to add. Just now I can't really get enthused about anything worth saying except the obvious so I might as well just post it as it is. "Other soil things" will have to wait for another day. Life in the blog-lane is not always fun.

Saffron Crocus

Does anyone know of a local supplier of Saffron crocus bulbs or does anyone have a few spare to share?

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES

If you want success next summer - ie tall plants requiring minimal water and lovely sunflower-type flowers plus a guaranteed crop of something in autumn, then these are the plants for you. Make sure that you plant them in a suitable place because you will have them coming up every year forever afterwards. All you need is to plant one tuber next spring and you will get a crop. This plant of mine must have come up from a root I dropped last year because I certainly did not plant it here!

Today I decided to dig up one of mine because it is all yellow and scrappy-looking now.Bad photo I know.	The tubers are formed under the ground like potatoes.
This one plant had them so densely packed it was amazing.	Several were the size of my hand.Not necessarily a good thing when it comes time to prepare them for cooking.

Now, what to do with them? Some people call them 'fart-a-chokes' so don't eat too many the first time!

Here is how I cooked them last night and they were delicious This recipe is from my copy of Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book, which is all tattered and falling apart from 20 years of use.

MAKING CHOICES ABOUT WHAT WE EAT

It is interesting to ask people why they eat what they do. A friend of mine says she grows and cooks only what she knows her children will eat. Some others I know go out shooting feral animals and eat them. Another grew up on a Pacific island, eating plants and animals from the sea. Others are vegetarian for various reasons - some don't like the idea of killing animals, some think it is healthier not to eat meat, others say they feel it is less destructive to the earth to only eat food from plants, for several it is a religious decision and so on. Eskimos eat a lot of fat and blubber to get through the extreme cold. Australian Aborigines eat whatever they can get from the environment through hunting and gathering. All these are perfectly legitimate ways to make decisions and none of these are better per se than another, in my opinion.

As I wrote in the previous post about fish and in the comments between Patrick and myself, I eat anything that comes my way in a natural and /or sustainable form and I think that, where I live, this is the best option. I have been out doing all sorts of things today but this whole topic keeps creeping back into my mind and I have come to a kind of proposal. It emanates from a book I read a few years ago called "The Future Eaters" by Tim Flannery, about humans consuming the resources they would need for their own future and how Australia fits in. It is still a very thought-provoking book but was even more so in 1994 when it was written and when I read it.

When all is said and done, we should eat what suits our environment to produce. That is my suggestion. Pretty obvious isn't it?

The English who settled in Australia from the 1770's onwards completely disregarded the environment in which they found themselves and proceeded to clear land, plough fields, sow European seeds and farm European animals to the exclusion of all else. And, what is more distressing, on the whole they still do. Massive amounts of our limited water resources and huge amounts of chemicals are given over to producing crops of food from every corner of the earth but our own. Animals raised for eating in Australia are still primarily sheep, cattle and pigs. Every grazing property in Australia would have its share of several different kangaroos, wallabies, emus, feral goats, pigs, rabbits, deer and even camels - 1,000,000 of them in the Northern Territory alone - and all these meats are edible and desirable. However, farmers shoot, poison or trap these animals and leave them to rot and persist with the traditional European species. Huge tracks of land are planted with irrigated grapes - as much as whole European countries, in total, to make grape wines. The whole length of the Murray River's 5,000 km is flanked by plantations of citrus and other non-native fruits which are now dying in the drought that is also killing the Murray itself and the water source for many towns and cities, including Adelaide.

Australia is enormous - bigger than all of western Europe combined, but we only have a population of about 25 million people and most of these live around the coast. This is for several reasons but is basically because of the extreme heat and lack of water supply over most of the inland areas. Why then haven't we as a nation taken to growing some local, native foods which have much more appropriate needs and can survive these extremes? I can picture readers of this post screwing up their noses and saying things like - what fruits....oh I tried something once and I didn't like it...my children wouldn't eat it.....you couldn't produce enough...and so on.

Our state of South Australia is 1 1/2 times the size of France....just think about that for a minute.... and because our population is less than 1.5 million.......yes, that's right, 1.5 million people in a state 1.5 times the size of France...... we would be best to be opportunistic, like the Aborigines were. Every person who lives in South Australia could get almost everything they need from their own gardens and sustainable growers in our own state, and often from just outside the city or town. A little bit of this and a little bit of that, whatever is in season. Our mediterranean climate has set us up to be self-sufficient year round and it would not take much of a change for it to happen but people would have to accept a seasonal and varied diet of European fruits and vegetables that could be grown with little extra water as well as local, native plants and feral and native animals including fish and seafood. I am discovering more and more local plants that are perfect for salads, plus some berries, seeds, spices and nuts that are delicious. What about lilly-pillies, quandongs, muntries, desert raisins and native limes, sea parsley, wattle seeds? See the Outback Pride website for more. I really enjoy the variety I can buy of feral and native meats and fish and because I consider it an ingredient, like any other, when we eat meat it consists of very small portions compared to the volume of vegetables I grow and cook. Our small population can harvest all these things sustainably and even sell some but our environment must come before profits or there won't be any profits or environment left and diets must be adjusted back to a sustainable amount of animals and plants.

I feel certain that this would be the best way for us to do least harm. If we were all vegetarian, for example, there is no way we would have enough water to provide all the food nor can we continue on the way we are going but given our huge tracts of arid and semi-arid land and the suitability of some native and some feral animals to survive there unassisted by humans but hunted by humans, then some kind of equilibrium could prevail. Combined with our vast ocean resources and an adaptation to eating more native vegetables and fruits I think if push came to shove, we could survive anything on this diet and this diet alone. In fact it puts us in a unique position to survive and thrive when all we hear is doom and gloom, if we continue to follow along persisting only with exotics and forgetting about native foods.

For other, more densely populated countries this would not work but here, in South Australia (and probably all of Australia) it would be the ideal way. Let's stop following Britain, America and Europe and start to make our own decisions based on what would suit us. No-one who has not been here can ever understand how much space there is outside the cities, you can drive the equivalent of the whole length of England and Scotland and barely see another human (or a drop of water!). So we have to set our own agendas and take the best of what we can learn from others then use the information to do what is necessary to ensure our future food security.

In a couple of weeks our seedsavers group is going to a native-foods grower to see what we can grow locally. The details are in the side-bar. The overwhelming response I have received to this suggestion by Maggie has been an indication of interest in moving into this way of thinking and I am sure many of us will come home with local food plants we can grow for ourselves. It has to be the way towards a better future for all Australians.

I would be interested to read what ideas people living elsewhere have for their countries and how they view Australia and its similarities and differences.

TODAY AT GARDENING

Last week we shifted 3 cubic metres of S.A.Composters' compost all around the several acres of garden at Glenys'. It is a great job as I love something really aerobic to do and it is wonderful to be able to take off your jumper when the air is pretty cold and enjoy the shovelling and wheeling and dumping, here, there and everywhere, in short sleeves. Only problem was that both of Glenys' wheelbarrows were in serious need of having their tyres pumped up and there was no pump! When a full wheel-barrow will not roll down-hill of its own accord, you know that going up the other side is going to be bloody awful! Still, we earned our morning tea and got a lot of extra exercise! But please, Glenys, pump those tyres up before next time!

As usual it was off to gardening this morning - this time to Kathy's. As luck would have it, Kathy had had 6 cubic metres of the same stuff delivered and the tyres on her two wheelbarrows were OK and her block is neither so big nor steep as Glenys'. However,tonight my legs feel like I did the whole job by myself! I did do an awful lot of the shovelling and the technique of using one's legs instead of back is a good one...until later. It is quite amazing that Kathy has 2 wheelbarrows and 6 cubic metres of compost at all because less than 2 years ago she didn't even have a spade and had never done 'real' gardening at all. Now she is going to move to a bigger block of land so she will have more garden! Addiction - tell me about it!!

Today we had 6 of us at gardening, instead of the usual 5, because my dear friend Erica, from

Tasmania, is staying with us and she came along to help - the things gardeners do when on holidays! Erica and I became friends a million years ago at uni . Having an old friend like Erica to stay is like putting on my favourite gardening boots - comfortable and warm.

Erica and I took the scenic route to Kathy's and we stopped to take a couple of photos of this gorgeous gum tree that I first saw in full flower on my way to Glenys' last week. It is still as magnificent.

In case you are wondering, its Lou's turn next week and she is so impressed with all this compost shifting she announced as we were all leaving today that she thinks she might get some delivered so we can do it all again next week, at her house! OK Lou, anything would be better than pulling out that darn grass from around your fruit trees...again! Luckily I have 2 piles of my own home-made compost for us to shift when its my turn next.

Now, I know a lot of people think all this buying of compost and so on is not such a good idea but this particular compost I do agree with. It is made entirely from all the tree prunings and other green matter that the local Marion Council collect from their area. It is thoroughly composted and sold back to the residents of Adelaide for a reasonable fee, by the trailer-load or delivered by truck. An excellent service, I think, and not pasteurised or anything else-erized. Just composted. Our gardens are all so stressed by the long dry of over 8 months that a dose of compost seems the least we can do. They also make a super-fine version that I use for seed-raising. Sure, there are some compost-miles involved and making all your own is better but life is full of compromises and this is a reasonable one.

This photo is of produce from Kathy's and Glenys' gardens and my garden today and it never ceases to amaze me what abundance and variety we have between us and how lucky we are to know each other and have the pleasure of spending every Wednesday together, gardening.

I have half written several things for the blog - not the way I usually write at all - but just felt like putting this light and breezy anecdote on now. Tiredness is rapidly making its way up from the legs to the head!