Take a tea break to listen to Dr Vandana Shiva interviewed on Lateline.
Listen to her full address after receiving this years Sydney Peace Award at Vandana Shiva's Website
There is also a free download ‘ Manifesto on the Future of Seeds’ on the Navdanya International website.
Check out her new book “SOIL not Oil”.
Dr Vandana talks about many issues in this speech including the future of food and seed for humans and the essential role we must play in caring for this precious planet.
CRUSH HUNGER Challenge
Please read about this challenge, support it and post it on your blog or share it with friends.
If KGI won this challenge it would be able to help many gardening projects around the world.
Last year KGI managed to get a veggie garden at the White House, help them win this challenge.
27 October 2009
Dear Kitchen Gardener,
KGI is a 501c3 nonprofit community of over 18,000 people from 100 countries who are growing some of their own food and helping others to do the same. We have a rare opportunity to expand the number of people we are reaching and the number of gardening groups we are helping by winning America's Giving Challenge, a fundraising competition whose grand prize is $50,000. The prize winners are those nonprofits that generate the highest number of donations (not total dollar value) between now and November 6th, so even $10 is a big help.
We are currently in 30th place out of over 1800 nonprofits (not bad for a little nonprofit with one staff member!), but here's the really exciting news: all we need is for for 10% of our community to make a donation of $10 and we can zoom into second place! As I mentioned before, this is the one and only fundraising drive we're making this year so I hope you'll choose to get off the garden fence and make a secure online donation here and now.
To rouse you into action, I've just posted a fun, 2-minute video to YouTube called "Gardeners have the Power." The message of the video is the same as the message of this exceptional funding opportunity: we can do anything we set our mind to...when we work together. So, let's do just that and win this contest for the global gardening cause.
With over 1 billion people hungry in the world and global climate change screaming out for action, there's no time for us gardeners to waste.
Many thanks for being the change you want to see in the world,
Roger Doiron
Founding Director, KGI
PS: If you really want to help KGI, but do not wish to donate online you may fill out this form and send us a check. The donation will not be counted in the contest totals (because it doesn't pass through the contest counter), but will help support our work. Thanks.
PPS: We'll soon go back to our regularly scheduled kitchen gardening programming, so hang in there!
---
Here's a link and a logo for new dedicated website I set up for our contest entry. Feel free to poke around there and see some of the types of projects KGI has helped in the past to get a feel for the work we're trying to do more of in the future.
(All the donation links and buttons at CrushHunger.org take you to our contest donations page)
Another sms invitation to lunch.... another wonderful, fun day at Hugh's and now we have quadrupled the size of the original patch of vegetable garden and started planning fruit trees too.
There are certain challenges with this work at Hugh's..... the main one being concrete.... who on earth ever thought this was a good idea? Everything is concrete and all different levels and colours....
and then there are the 50 or so bricks we dug out of the little walled garden in the yard.... which were covered with about 4" of soil.... so gardening always starts with demolition.... I love Hugh's gardening outfit too....
We pulled up some more concrete and doubled the size of the herb bed. We planted some parsley I had dug up from my garden and we sowed chervil, chives, rocket, dill and carrots. The rate of growth in Hugh's patch is quite unbelievable. Look at the coriander in the front of this photo....he uses it constantly and these herbs have even graced the plates of diners at Martinha's restaurant and they just keep on growing. One month after planting tiny mizuna seedlings, he said they were too big and overgrowing the lettuce so we removed 2 and put them in a pot which he gave to me and I have just remembered I left it behind! The trimmings went into the salad for lunch....
Thankfully the food is excellent at Hugh's ......well it should be.... he is learning to be a chef!
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| A big bowl of salad leaves, all from the garden | What is left of my perfect latte | Beetroot crisps... thinly sliced beetroot, baked until crisp....that's it....pure flavour! |
I have no idea why Live Writer won't let me write in the last box under the photo but it is of the dish Hugh has been perfecting at Martinha's.... rabbit and pistachio sausage.... and luckily he brought home the leftovers for our lunch. It is now THE most divine creation and oh so succulent.... I ate FAR too much of it.... this deserves a much better name than sausage!
By the time we had finished remaking the walled garden and planting the broccoli, lettuce and beetroot seedlings it was completely dark.... No doubt Hugh is out there now, sweeping and tidying it all and probably the seeds have sprouted already! This light drizzle will be doing wonders for settling everything in.
Hugh recently received an award for "Outstanding Professionalism" in his chef's course.....well.... a mother is allowed to brag!
What I discovered was a wonderful blank slate..... a back yard unadulterated with anything much except a couple of sheds, a bit of concrete, some kikuyu grass..... and a couple of dogs, one being a visitor. Susan started the whole operation as if she knew me well..... by offering me a really good cup of coffee, made to measure.
We drew up a bit of a sketch and I jotted down some ideas. I love seeing people start gardening for the first time. I am so happy to help ensure some success and careful not to swamp them with details that will put them off while trying to give enough advice to be useful. I am no expert but I have learned a few things over the years that I hope will help Susan make the most of her patch.
Susan, I wish you a bountiful harvest and many happy years in what will soon be your garden. And I hope that when you are 50, like me, you will be lucky enough to be asked to help someone else get started on the road towards backyard self-sufficiency.
While Hugh was preparing lunch I nipped outside to check on the vegetables we planted on the 20th of April..... when they looked like this....
Now it looks like this! I could not believe it! In just 23 days there were now lettuce and mizuna leaves that could be picked for a salad..... and the beetroot and kale were growing just as fast.
He tells me that the bloke who uses the rest of the garden for vegetables is moving out so Hugh will be able to plant another batch of seedlings soon.
I have such trouble growing thyme but Hugh's is the biggest thyme "bush" I have ever seen and it started out sooooo tiny and weak. And the coriander in the foreground I thought might not survive the few hot days we had just after we planted it but now has enough leaves to start picking!
Here is Hugh weeding his patch.... he even sweeps the path around the beds..... obviously he didn't get that tidy gene from me!
We sat outside for a while, on chairs set up between the vegetable bed and the herb bed and agreed.....
Life is good... get there fast and then take it slow...
But Hugh is not just a pretty face! He made fabulous rosemary pastry and cooked this beef pie which I unashamedly will say was the best I have ever tasted. Hugh kindly gave me the leftovers but then said.... please give it to the other granma..... who I was going to see later in the afternoon!
Thanks for a great meal and a lovely time, Hugh.
The phone conversation went something like this....
"Hey Mum, wanna come round to my place on the weekend?"
"Yeah, that would be nice, Hugh"
"How about Sunday"
"OK....( mother mentally re-arranging her plans....) Can I bring anything?"
" I thought we might get that new bed ready in the garden. Can you bring the wheelbarrow?"
( Mother thinking.... my car is small, the wheel barrow is enormous but hey, I am inventive...) "No problem Hugh.... I might get some seedlings from Diana too, I need some anyway"
"Cool. Thanks Mum, see you then."
Diana had a stall at the the Stirling Autumn Garden Fair on Sunday, so I went for a spin, with the wheelbarrow snuggly fitted into most of my car and various other bits and pieces tucked in around the sides. My fork and spade were there and my whole gardening bag, complete with ho-mi, labels, twine, wire and a multitude of clipping, digging, and planting tools and various screwdrivers and a multi-grip wrench as well as assorted watering system repair odds and ends. I also threw in 2 bags of compost and a loaf of bread.... well, you just never know, when you go to Hugh's!
There is nothing I would rather have done that Sunday than help Hugh get started on a new bed for his vegetables. It is a sweet feeling to have given your children the desire to grow delicious food for themselves. Hugh is a fabulous cook and I am looking forward to a meal or two in the future, using some of these things we planted today.
I don't know why edible water plants are not promoted in dry areas like here in South Australia because it is so beautiful to look out on a pond or tub of reeds, such as water chestnuts, or the graceful and colourful taro leaves or the lime green water spinach stems and leaves all of which can take the heat as they have their feet in water. No water is wasted and keeping the tubs topped up with water is easy, so long as you have a creeper such as azolla on the surface to reduce evaporation and keep the mozzies away.
I have 3 large tubs from a hardware shop. Each is ........ To insulate them from the heat I surrounded them on 3 sides with small bales of straw and sat them along the front edge of my vegetable garden.Here they get a little sun but are in the shade of the carport roof during the middle of the day. I don't know if this is necessary but they are certainly very happy there, with no attention except a little water now and again.
Right is November 2008 and left is today, April 2009.
Each tub is about 1/3 full of rich compost. I planted into this and gradually filled the tubs with water as the plants grew in height.
I am always on the look out for suitable plants as they are hard to get. I started with just 1 or 2 water chestnut plants that I found in an Asian shop at the Central Market. Cath produced so many last year she didn't want them all so now I have hundreds.The reeds will die down in winter and I will harvest the corms then. I bought water spinach in November at an Asian Green Grocer, to eat, and I put the stems in vases of water to get them to sprout roots.
If, like me, you are addicted to leaves then growing water spinach and water cress are a must. If you like digging up potatoes and finding buried treasure then taro and water chestnuts are for you. If you live somewhere too cold for hot climate plants, there is some more information on Edible water plants here. Scroll down that page for more links. There is a lovely website all about watercress here. Interestingly, it was thought in ancient Greece that watercress would cure a deranged mind. It hasn't done much for me!
I am giving a little talk to some inner city gardeners later this week. If you know any blogs about gardening in small spaces please email me the links so I can pass them on.
There are a few more of my photos here.
It is worth going to some trouble now to help reduce evaporation, keep the soil from overheating and maintain soil moisture around the root zones, during the heat of summer. We have had a week or so of beautiful, cool weather which has been ideal for getting these jobs seen to so and to avoid working in the hot summer sun, battling against the elements. Working with nature is always the best option because you will never beat or control the forces of the earth.
I fork over the soil, lightly dig in some compost and whatever else you like to use. This year I am also adding some reconstituted coconut fibre blocks that are $1 each at Cheap as Chips! They help to hold the water in the soil and are a better option than those granules or other chemical solutions.....and MUCH cheaper. On this whole bed, I used 1 block, reconstituted in about 1/2 bucket of water, or maybe a bit more.....try it and see. I hate buying inputs but I am preparing for extreme, prolonged heat.
Then I have laid out the dripline. I hate the dripper and much prefer small sprays but this is my front yard.....and people walk by all the time so I have to obey at least this part of the water restrictions. Large plants like capsicums, tomatoes, eggplant and okra are fine with drippers. There are 4 rows of dripline and I will plant between the rows, so there will be 3 rows of vegetables. Over each dripline I place about 3 sheets of newspaper folded into thirds, so that's a thickness of about 9 sheets.....thanks to Joy for the newspapers......I have discovered in the past that this does a great job of keeping all the water going down, into the soil. Then I lay thick 'biscuits' of straw over the top.....if I thought we were likely to get any substantial rain, I would fluff up the straw, so the rain would penetrate.....but it seems unlikely that there will be any rain, ever!
So, now there are 3 channels, between the 4 rows of straw, and into these I will plant the seedlings. They will need watering until their roots reach out to the moisture from the dripline. This method ensures that the roots will congregate in the coolest, wettest, most mulched areas, and there will be a little space around the plants for airflow. This is very hard to photograph...it just all looks like a mass of straw....I hope you get the gist of what I am describing here!
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Another thing I am developing is my water vegetable garden.....4 tubs will all soon be full of various, mostly Asian vegetables like water chestnuts, water spinach (kang kong), taro, water cress, duck potato and nardoo. I also have a few water irises which have been spectacular in the last week or so.
 The water chestnuts are doing very well this year.. |  ..3 of the 4 tubs installed.. |  ..A photo for Chook of the whole scene! |
The water can get very hot on a 40 degree day so I surround all the sides with straw for insulation and fill the tubs completely and also use some non-invasive creeper to cover the water surface. If I think mozzies are a problem, I get a few of those tiny native fish, that don't eat frog eggs, because there are lots of frog noises coming from this area already! Ideally I would like to have light-coloured tubs but beggars can't be choosers!
I erected this floppy bit of shade for the new seedlings but I want to make something more like in Scarecrow's garden. In addition to the white shade top, I am going to put some light weldmesh along the sides and grow beans. By the time it is mid-summer, the beans will be providing extra shade along the sides of my curving garden beds, which are more difficult to shade than if they were in nice, straight lines! Under these more substantial structures I will grow softer things like lettuce and cucumbers.
In the full sun, in another bed which always seems to be drier than anywhere else, I am going to put the terracotta pots, with bush beans and celery around them as they do best with more water. So, better late than never and this cool weather is letting me get these jobs done, while listening to the wildlife.....shame snakes don't make a noise though!
In some States of America and some other countries it is illegal to dry your clothes outside, you must use an indoor clothes drier, how crazy is that!
Here is Aussie land most of us dry our clothes outside, I very rarely use an indoor clothes drier and many of us hang our clothes indoors, on drying racks, in winter or on wet days.
Well let me shock you America, look over my side fence today and you will see a work of art, my new Hills large size collapsible clothes line.My very talented Industrial Designer son designed this and I love it.
It has 32 little lines, 60 metres of line space and 64 hooks to hang shirts on. The whole darn wash fits on it and it glides effortlessly up and down. It has a cover to make it like an umbrella and you can remove the whole thing and it folds away for storage.
Remember the old steel Hills Hoists (Icon of South Australia and included in the Sydney Olympics Opening Ceremony) they were hard work to wind up sometimes. But as you can see Kate is growing peaches on hers.
Okay now for the gardening bit, it did not take me too long to work out what I could do with my old hills hoist. A shade house for young or shade loving plants. We have some new plans for arranging the shade cloth down the sides. I think I shall even grow some things hanging from pots, I have been reading on the KGI forum about people growing things upside down to save space!
Check out this cool shade house. Gardening Australia - Hills Hoist Makeover (I actually like my air conditioned version better.)
I could say I would love to fill up our heat barren front yard with old hoists and shade cloth but I wont say that. But instead I am digging tiny circular gardens in the front and planting zucchinis and pumpkins. I dont know they will survive the hot summer days, Deb uses old sheets to protect some plants and we use shadecloth over our back garden bed.
Bob is really the gardener(i.e. the one who makes the compost and does all the hard work) but I am becoming more interested because I love eating the fresh veggies and herbs we grow. I also like designing garden beds and letting plants go to flower then seed. I love the bees and bugs that come to the garden and I love growing different things, last year we grew a pepino plant and this year we are growing okra.
I can understand now why people get obsessed with their gardens, there is always something to plant or prune or harvest or just enjoy. There are always new varieties of seeds to germinate and new things to cook, eat and learn about. I reckon it wont be long before I start calling myself a gardener but for the moment I am still a cook, well maybe a kitchen gardener.
And speaking of Kitchen Gardeners please sign up and join KITCHEN GARDENERS INTERNATIONAL, we need all the experiences of gardeners from different parts of the world, different climates, different experiences, you who grow different plants and have different ways of storing, cooking and preserving veggies.
SO COME ON VEGGIE GARDEN BLOGGERS JOIN UP AND GIVE KGI A PROMO ON YOUR BLOG!
Yesterday I finished packing up the seeds to take on my trip to give to people far and wide. I used Laura's template (from Mas du Diable) and this made things very easy. It seems that there are a couple of requirements to ensuring the packets get into the countries where I am going. Firstly they need to have the botanical names on each and secondly the closer the packaging resembles commercial seed packets the better. To give a bit of added authority I made a sticker for the front of the large envelope I am carrying them in, saying "SEEDSAVERS AND VEGETABLE GROWERS' CONVENTION, OXFORD UNIVERSITY BOTANIC GARDENS" and the date..... well, it is isn't it? I have lots more packets than this.....but they were already packed away before I remembered to take a photo.
Tomorrow evening.... Singapore.....see you there....well, you will see me there when I get something to post about.
ps...I made a fabulous chicken dish the other night and have just put it on Gardeners' Gastronomy. Sounds basic but the flavour was extraordinarily good...helped along by Deb's preserved limes, I am sure.The thing that made it superb though was the polenta I cooked to go with it, which was flavoured with lots of left-over bits of good, strong cheeses, including something blue.
Also, Maggie made me delicious pakoras recently too and this is a reminder for her to give us the recipe ASAP!
Our son Alex has been working for Google in Sydney these last few months before he heads off to Oxford late September and he has been telling us of the things they do there for the benefit of the employees, the local community and also the earth, surprisingly enough.
Last week he took part in a local (to the Google office) effort to rehabilitate a misused and now disused area next to a tramline at Pyrmont with a group of local residents who,with a bit of council funding, have been doing bush regeneration there over the last 18 months or so. All Google employees world wide are encouraged (and paid by Google to do) half a day a year of community service like this. That doesn't sound like much, but with tens of thousands of employees, that is the equivalent of one year's full time work for one person per 700 or so employees, or more than 10 years work per 7 thousand employees.
Imagine if every company with a few employees did this, 
all we could get a lot of good stuff done all over the world and, at the same time, introduce these people to places and experiences and contacts they would never otherwise have known about. This in itself could have a snowball effect as some may decide to offer their help on weekends or, through their initial good experiences of planting things, they may decide to start growing some things for themselves and maybe even start a vegetable garden or join a community garden.
We have a small company that writes computer software and I think we should start doing this and telling other businesses in the building about it...sounds like plan. Here come those enthusiasms that I am still liable to...could you do something like this where you work? Could we all do this? I think this needs to become the norm, instead of all these carbon-trading schemes where you just pay someone else money to suck up your carbon through some dodgy tree-planting scheme which, from what I understand, only serves to take over good agricultural land and make profits for investors, with no actual commitments or research into what are the benefits towards solving the carbon problems. People should have to get out and DO something, so they can talk to those who already understand what needs to be done at the same time providing the man-power to get good projects going.
Alex has managed to get himself into a weekly sailing race on Sydney harbour, through some people he is sharing an apartment with...here they are on a windless day with time to take photos!
What a life!...
Today it looks like Feedjit has measles...nice!
...Meanwhile Hugh and Amelia came around to work on some art for my birthday party...so, while Amelia did the work, Hugh read some of my recipe books - in particular one called 'Cooking and Travelling in South-West France' by Australian, Stephanie Alexander...Typical boy!
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