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.
One of the segments on Gardening Australia ABC TV (6:30pm tomorrow) will be Sophie Thompson interviewing Daniel in his amazing garden.
Daniel is one of our most enthusiastic Hills and Plains Seedsavers. His knowledge, enthusiasm of gardening and willingness to share with others endears him to all who know him.
If you cannot wait till tomorrow, check out the video and article on the Gardening Australia website. Daniel's Garden
There is also a wonderful article in the December 2010 Gardening Australia magazine about Daniel.
| Tickletank | Artist Irene Pearce's intimate and imaginative garden"> | 24 Hill St, Mount Barker | 10am-4.30pm | $6.00 |
If you are thinking of converting a concrete water tank into a home this is the place to look at.
Tickle Tank is the home of talented artist Irene Pearce .
"You will visit an intimate and adventurous multi-level garden which surrounds a house made from a converted water storage tank. The garden is filled with garden art, mosaics and sculptures made from recycled materials which add humour among the colourful array of spring bulbs, hardy natives and cottage plants. An inspiring garden, brimming with artistic ideas."
See the video at the ABC website: Tickle video (scroll down to the Tickletank video).
There is a kindly bloke over at Magill who likes to grow vegetables in his backyard. He calls himself the backyard farmer. Whenever he is not busy with his other business or travelling the state with work he can be found digging and planting in his garden. His labours and a large suburban block meant that he has been able to feed a hungry family, an amazing variety of fruits, eggs, nuts and veggies for many years from his backyard. His enthusiasm and willingness to share his knowledge has meant that many people have been inspired and enthused to start their own kitchen gardens and enjoy all the health benefits and pleasures this brings.
He writes about his garden on a blog called the Adelaide Kitchen Gardeners Blog , click HERE to read more about Andrews garden and the nourishing ways he and his lovely German born wife prepare much of their produce for cellaring.
At our last Hills and Plains Seedsavers meeting Andrew gave us a butternut pumpkin which has now been made into pumpkin and nutmeg soup. Some soup devoured by us, some soup given to others. Good, wholesome healthy soup is a great winter gift for family and friends. And when we give lovely organic produce from our gardens and kitchens we give others the experience of our labour and skills. We give the experience of what organic food tastes like and the knowledge of what real nourishing food is.
We give sensual flavours and memories of real food and happy thoughts of gardens and gardeners and sharing meals together.
Saving pumpkin seed ?, well that’s another story for another day. A story about how many more gifts can be given by giving one pumpkin to another gardener. Maybe a story told by the backyard farmer himself.
The Indian Government has banned genetically engineered (GE) eggplant after the ex-Director of Monsanto India admitted the corporation provided 'fake scientific data' to regulators. In announcing the moratorium on GE eggplant, Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, said there was not enough evidence that GE foods were safe to eat and that they didn't harm the environment.
Do we need any more proof than this that Monsanto is up to no good? Those who think GE foods will save the world should be shot. There is no such thing as a free lunch.... we cannot bypass nature in the quest for profits. Congratulations India! In many ways the Indian government is far ahead of ours. Kevin Rudd should get off his high horse and take a look outside, in the real world.
There you have it.... and it was obvious all along but I just couldn't put my finger on the link.... I must be getting old....or something!
Monoculture means growing one thing, usually on a massive scale and killing everything that dares interfere with that one thing, with chemicals.
Then there was organic but often it came to mean growing one thing, on a massive scale and killing everything that interferes with it, with chemicals made from natural substances.
In the organic vegetable garden I always encourage people to make use of every little microclimate, interplanting tall things with short to get shade in the heat of summer; always having flowers and seedlings and mature plants in the same bed; feeding the soil and the plants will feed themselves..... but still I was not quite sure what to say when asked "How can we feed the world this way?"
But then there was "Fresh" the movie.... and I have the answer... its all about food being nutritious and the loop....
Monoculture is like a huge field of wheat; when the crop is taken, there is nothing left. The farmer must get the land ready for next year by fertilising, spraying for pest and weeds, fixing machinery and buying seed. He spends many thousands of dollars on inputs from all over the world, which are trucked and shipped and give me a headache thinking about. Lets say that after expenses, he makes $100 / acre for his wheat crop if it is a good crop and if prices are good.
Then lets look at the kind of farmer shown in "Fresh" who has several fields of mixed grasses which soon self seed every year. First he puts cows on the field. Cows eat grass and grow big. Every few days he moves the cows to the next field, then the next and so on around the property. As the cows go along they fertilise the grasses but they also attract flies which lay their eggs in the dung, and flies carry diseases which can quickly spread through the cows when they come back to this pasture. Eventually he sells the cows for meat, to a local butcher. It is organic and of excellent quality and he might get $100 / acre. His cows had calves and so his next generation is produced.
Second, 3 days after the cows are taken off he lets in the chickens to the first field. The fly and other insect eggs have hatched and the chickens are in rapturous delight and gorge themselves, laying big, healthy, nutritious eggs for the farmer to sell. From these large, organic eggs the farmer receives $100 / acre from the local organic food shop or from the farm gate. Some of the eggs are allowed to hatch and become the next generation.
Third, in come a host of meat birds that eat a different selection of grasses to the cows and the chickens. Once these birds such as geese and turkeys have been through all the fields, they are sold for meat. They are healthy and strong and organic and he might get $100 / acre, sold direct to local shops. These also reproduce themselves.
Fourth, the grass is now well fertilised by cows, chickens and other birds and grows fast. The cows are allowed back in again before the grass dries and goes to seed. Now the farmer cuts it for hay. He uses some for the bedding and winter feed for his animals and sells the rest. He might receive $100 / acre from local people direct from the farm. The grasses self-seed and come up again next spring.
Moreover, some of the fields of the sustainable farmer produce a variety of vegetables at various times and some may have fruit trees under which the chickens graze in their rotation. The system is flexible and is a closed loop, with few inputs from beyond the farm. All his produce is sold locally.
Even with this simplistic view, you can see that he is producing many times the volume of more nutritious food for human consumption than the wheat farmer, whose crop is shipped around the world where it is processed and made into white flour which ends up as items wrapped in plastic bags in supermarkets thousands of kilometres away, adding little but carbohydrate to the diet to those that eat it. And it seems, from the documentary, that the multi-cultural farmer reaps the rewards financially too.
The multi-cultural farmer needs workers to help. He creates employment for locals. Those who may otherwise be driving trucks or ships of wheat, stay home and work on this farm and themselves learn the value of nutrition, raising healthy children who take their message to school and help start a school vegetable garden..... and so the effects go on and on, rippling through every avenue of society.
In this way we not only feed the world but it is sustainable, reducing greenhouse gases, climate change, pollution, medical expenses, unemployment etc etc etc and generally making the world a happier place for everyone.
Watch a trailer, join the movement, find a screening here. It is American, and I am always sceptical of American things (sorry Pattie!) but this is genuinely good and farmer whatsit who lets his chickens be chickens and develop their chicken-ness is fabulous..... as is the big, ex-basketballer turned urban farmer.
"The trouble with eating Italian food is that
five or six days later you’re hungry again."
~ George Miller
There are more and more blogs in Italy and some about Italian food. This quote and photo came from Aglio, Olio & Peperoncini and some ideas for polenta that make me go straight to the cupboard to start cooking lunch, before it is even 8am!
My favourite blog in Italy is Path to Self Sufficiency.... obviously not by an Italian but here is a lovely snippet from a recent post by Heiko ( a Dutchman, who was brought up in Germany and has lived in the UK for a long time and who now lives in Italy on the border between Liguria and Tuscany):
.......To put it quite simply, I really do not understand the concept of money. I mean it, I don't. I can just about follow why they invented it in the first place. Back in the days when humans just roamed the countryside, life maybe wasn't exactly easy, but it was simple. All you needed to sort out was who went foraging for berries and roots and who did the hunting. In the evening they all met up again and shared their spoils.
When they invented culture you could still manage quite easily. You hunted an extra wild boar or deer, picked a few more berries and invited the guy with the interesting metal contraption from the other valley to bring along some pina colada and the other chap who manages to extract those strange sounds out of an old goat skin to join your feast and hey, you had a party!
But once people started settling down people started to specialise. There was the cabbage farmer, the goat herder, the medicine man, the carpenter and the plumber. Once the cabbage farmer got himself yet another acre of land he needed a bit of help. But soon his workmen got bored being paid in cabbages, there's only so much you can do with them. So they needed to come up with some sort of currency, some sort of token with a value they all agreed on..... read on...
It gets better and better and is a great little story!
HERBS ARE SPECIAL......
There is a lovely Australian website and blog for lovers of all things herbal. It is Isabell Shipard's Herbs Are Special. It explores every herb I have ever heard of and lots more, in depth, and son Hugh sent me a link to the page about comfrey, which has from time to time been given a rough trot. Maybe, like many another theory, comfrey is about to have its name cleared and become the latest wonder herb, as it once was. Being a lover of leaves and knowing how easy it is to grow comfrey I would love to start eating it too....well, actually I put it in last night's dinner. I know chooks love it and I have fed it to mine for years. It would be interesting to know what readers think.
....Read the book, ‘World without cancer, the story of vitamin B17’ by Edward Griffin, which reveals how science has been subverted to protect entrenched commercial and political interests. The book explores the revolutionary concept that cancer is a deficiency disease, the substance missing being B17 (also called laetrile), discovered by German chemist Leibig in1830, and further researched by Dr. Ernst Krebs and others.
Another Australian, who valued the HDRA research, was Foster Savage, who I mentioned earlier. I had the opportunity to know him, personally, when he settled in Nambour to farm (and later Cooroy); and, I knew you would guess, he grew lots of comfrey! Wilted comfrey was fed to his animals in large amounts. Why did he allow it to wilt? He told me that animals could eat much more, each day, when it was wilted! He often had groups and private people visit and he would, freely, share his knowledge of comfrey and how it benefited his land, animals and his family (note, he had 13 children). When legislation placed comfrey on the poisons schedule in Australia, and newspapers highlighted the ban, he wrote a letter to the Sunshine Coast Daily, in defense of comfrey, saying:
"I was perhaps responsible for 95% of the comfrey in Australia, having introduced the plant to this country in 1954, and having used the plant in great quantities, since then; I am, perhaps, competent to speak about it and to make a few comments on the …remarks about comfrey made by the CSIRO scientist …"To say that two leaves, eaten daily - over a couple of years - will cause serious disease, is simply not true. In our house, we have eaten 70 leaves, or thereabouts, daily, for 24 years: in the form of comfrey tea, liquidised in a vitamiser as a green drink, and in salads. I also fed comfrey to my farm animals.
Knowing the power of comfrey to restore a worn out animal quickly, and make her milk again, I once bought an old cow at the Dandenong Market, when farming in Victoria. It had been discarded by some farmer, as worn out. I put her on comfrey, giving her 90 lbs of wilted comfrey (wilted to increase the cow’s intake of comfrey’s extraordinary nutrients), and 90 lbs made a pretty big heap, about 4 feet high. This poor, old, creature took to the comfrey, without hesitation … she was starving for minerals and her instincts gave her a craving for comfrey. When she began to eat, she would eat off the heap of leaves for a couple of hours, then sit down for an hour or so. Later, she would continue eating, until every leaf was gone. If Dr. Culvenor’s words were true, imagine the poison she would be taking into her body, with this quantity of comfrey daily. If comfrey attacked the liver, then this cow would have died, because she was in a worn out condition. Instead, she doubled her milk output, within a week, and in a fortnight, trebled it. The remarkable thing, was that the cream that settled overnight, was some 3/4 inch thick and the separation of cream from the milk was so perfect, that the cream could be lifted off, with none remaining. I fed comfrey to calves, as much as they could eat, again with only gratifying results. I fed pigs, entirely on comfrey and grain, as much comfrey as they could eat, and the quality of those pigs was legendary, in the district.
The fame of comfrey spread far and wide, for my farm was visited by 6,000 farmers from around Australia and from overseas. Finally, I well remember the enthusiastic remarks of the butcher who regularly killed our comfrey-fed calves. He told us that he had never before, seen such healthy livers … that, mind you, after being reared on a herb that was supposed to cause liver diseases!"
Watercress is one of my favourite salad additions and the information on this website about its properties makes me glad it is also very easy to grow in a tub of water. You can give it a haircut daily and it seems to grow back overnight in summer!
You can buy herbs, vegetables and fruit trees and seeds from them too....http://herbs-to-use.com/herbs-for-sale/trees-fruits-vegetables-legumes-rare-edibles.html. I will put their link in the side bar, under seed companies.
You can visit the Shipard's Herb Farm, which is in Queensland:
139 Windsor Rd., Nambour.
(on right, past Sunshine Coast Institute of TAFE)
Open hours -
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday - from 10:00am till 2:00pm.
If you would like to come at any other time, please phone during open hours a day or more in advance to confirm a time when you would like to visit.
Phone No. -
(07) 5441 1101
Fax No. -
(07) 5471 6430
email -
info@herbs-to-use.com
There are no blog entries after 2008..... shame... but you can subscribe to email updates from Isabell.
Patrick of Bifurcated Carrots often writes of the lack of meaning for the word organic in Europe these days, as regulations are loose and agribusiness continues to rely on monoculture. Here in Australia things are, thankfully, quite a bit different and I think we can be reasonably confident that biodiversity is an integral part of organic certification. Here is an excerpt of the latest edition of the Biological Farmers of Australia free online newsletter:
Biodiversity and biological farming; a natural partnership
.............Major independent studies have confirmed organic farming actively contributes to better levels of biodiversity at every level of the food chain than non-organic systems. Organic agriculture is proving that we not only must, but can, have our environmental cake and eat it too.
A major pillar of organic production, and the vanguard of biodiversity protection, is maintaining a rich diversity of plant and animal life as the basis for the health of crops, farmed animals, the environment and the community, which are all inextricably linked.
Under the Organic Standard, management decisions must take into account impact on native flora and fauna and hydrological considerations, embracing protection of shelter belts, corridors, wetlands and remnant vegetation protection.
All forms of environmental pollution – chemical, genetic and physical – must be minimised and non-renewable resources must be conserved.
Rob Bauer, a fourth - generation farmer on his Queensland property in the Lockyer Valley, inherited land that the original European settlers had been obliged to clear – and keep clear of regrowth – by government dictates.
Rob converted the property to organic farmland thirty years ago and since then he has seen a marked change in the diversity and populations of native animals and vegetation on his land.
Repair of much of the existing environmental damage was assisted by an ongoing co-operative venture between Rob and Landcare which began in 1985. On a demonstration block in a previously degraded area more than two hundred rare, endangered and “interesting” native trees were planted. Rob carried the concept through the whole farm, which now has, interspersed with the cultivated fields, flourishing native bushland which is home to innumerable native animals, birds and insects, as well as providing shade, shelter and fodder for farmed animals.....
I also thought this comparison was interesting:
Australian organic avoids elitist attitude
A slow in the growth of organic sales in the UK has prompted prominent organic certifier and charity organisation, the Soil Association, to voice concerns consumers now see organic as a high-brow and expensive alternative.
.........However, an organic choice for many Australian organic consumers is not only about money - it’s about understanding and appreciating inherent value. Organic food represents environmentally-friendly food production, without synthetic chemicals or genetically modified ingredients, a focus on animal welfare, etc and those are values more people are taking an interest in and willing to support, regardless of their socio-economic status..........
Read more of these articles by subscribing to the monthly Organic Advantage E-zine.
As we all know, different parts of the world have different plants, animals, weather, soil and water conditions. For millions of years creatures of the earth developed characteristics that best adapted them to these conditions. Those that did not have the genes to adapt to the slow but constant heating and cooling of the planet died out; those that could survive the changes went on to flourish. Humans began to collect the seeds of those flourishing plants and sowed them closer to home, allowing them to stay in one place and so gradually the nomadic lifestyle died out in many parts of the world, starting about 10,000 years ago. They also herded animals together, built barriers to keep them in and so began rudimentary farming.
Every season the peoples of the mountains and valleys and plains of the Middle East, Africa and Asia sowed their seeds, grew their food and saved some of the resulting seeds for next year. Travellers in ships, on camels and on foot started to swap their seeds and produce and so to introduce new vegetables and fruits to each other. The people in the new lands would try to grow the new crops and sometimes succeeded, sometimes not but always they saved their own seeds from year to year and in this way the new crops adapted to the new lands and so, over the centuries, different varieties became suited to very different conditions. This is called conserving the processes of evolution and adaptation.
These days seeds are sold in packets in supermarkets, garden centres, hardware shops and nurseries. Mostly we have no idea where they come from. In South Australia, for example, there are no seed companies growing seeds suitable for our climate. Every year lots of people buy the same seed, and do not save the seed from their previous crops. As the climate changes, our seeds are therefore not adapting because they come from somewhere else. Soon we begin to find that fewer and fewer seeds are working for us in our gardens because they simply are not suited to our climate. People try adapting to the seeds by covering everything with shadecloth or using more water or adding things to the soil or spraying for pests which like to eat the sick plants. We have stopped conserving the processes of evolution and adaptation.
People who save seeds are saving the genes of adaptation and allowing evolution to continue so that no matter what happens to our climate, our seeds will have adapted year by year to those changes. There is a lot of fear about climate change and food security but all we need to do is allow our seeds to adapt season by season; always saving the seed from the best plants to sow next year. Buying seed from seed companies far from your home will not work, as our climate changes faster, and artificially genetically modifying the seeds is a pointless task and only seeks to make money for seed companies, destroying the processes of evolution and adaptation forever, leading ultimately to the destruction of our food chain.
So that is why we must save seeds. If you don't feel competent to do it alone, join a local seedsavers group where others can help you get started. You can find one here in Australia, but there are people saving seeds in every corner of the world. In our Hills and Plains Seedsavers group, we swap seeds between ourselves and give them away to friends. This way you don't have to save all your own seeds, just a few to share and soon you will find you have lots of different seeds to try and that these seeds will be adapted to your growing conditions.
Please read more about agricultural ecosystems here.
I think I watched every episode of Gardening Australia while Peter Cundall was on it and I came to really like that pom enough to almost accept his advice. What I like most about him still is his determination to stop woodchipping Tasmania's old growth forests and to stand up and be arrested, at 82, for the cause. He also single-handedly brought organics into the homes of every Australian TV gardener, making purchasers of chemicals quiver in their boots, with his outspoken criticism of chemical agriculture and horticulture.
The vegetable garden was of course lovely but what I loved most was the ecology of it all.... like I am always going on about.... surround your vegetables and fruit with herbs and flowers and native plants and you will gain on every level.... few pests, more variety to pick, whether food or flowers, and the sheer joy of seeing such abundance flourish so effortlessly as a result. And the earth will gain too, in too many ways to go into again here. There were bees and butterflies and birds and all things wise and wonderful in this beautiful border of herbs and perennials which formed the backdrop of the vegetable garden.
At the very back you can just see a corner of a massiv
Scarlet runner beans grow to enormous heights here, as you can see in this photo and beans in general seem to produce incredible crops right through summer.
In the glass house were some tropical herbs like lemongrass.
All in all it was a wonderful, lush, productive garden full to overflowing with fruit and vegetables, all grown without chemicals of any sort.
"I guess that's your bloomin' lot".... as Peter would say .... "but you'll be absolutely blown away by the rest of the Botanic Garden that I will write about soon."
I will upload some more photos here soon. In the meantime, you can read about this beautiful garden here.
Why you should avoid eating anything raised in a monoculture.... animal or vegetable
This link was sent to me by Jan Maes, KGI Board Member
Jamie Harvie, PE, is executive director of the Institute for a Sustainable Future, a Duluth, Minnesota,-based not-for-profit research and consulting organization. He is a nationally recognized mercury-reduction expert who provides consulting on toxics reduction both nationally and internationally. His clients included the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, City and County of San Francisco, and the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency.
......Animal feedlot operations may be considered industrialized protein production
facilities. They epitomize the extreme of our industrialized food system. These operations confine large quantities of livestock to a closed area where all food and water inputs are carefully controlled.
A wide variety of feed additives are provided, including growth hormones,antibiotics in feed and water, and arsenic. Arsenic, though banned in European livestock production, is used domestically as a growth promoter to compensate for poor growing conditions and for pigmentation.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), approximately 70 percent of the 8.7 billion broiler chickens produced annually are fed arsenic (Wallinga 2006a). In a recent study, 55 percent of raw, supermarket chicken contained detectable arsenic, and nearly 75 percent of breasts, thighs, and livers from conventional producers carried detectable arsenic (Wallinga 2006a). Arsenic causes cancer and contributes to other diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and decreased intellectual function. Even low exposures to this type of serious toxin are generally presumed to be risky (Wallinga, 2006b).
In many areas of the US, groundwater used for drinking water may be naturally high in arsenic. The application of arsenic-laden manure further contributes to this drinking-water concern (Christen 2006).
Since 1972, there has been a tripling of counties that have more that 55 percent of their plantings in corn and soybeans (Porter, Russelle, and Finley 2000). Corn and soybeans are two of the most overproduced crops. Twenty-five percent of all US farmland—80 million acres—now grows corn (Christensen 2002).
...Petroleum-derived nitrogen and other fertilizers must be added to soils. Poor nitrogen retention by corn and soy rotation results in contaminated surface waters that migrate to the Gulf of Mexico, where nitrogen creates massive annual algae blooms. These blooms metabolize all available oxygen, leaving a 20,000 square kilometer dead zone in the Gulf
Environmental exposures are widespread. For example, concentrations of atrazine, alachlor, and broadleaf pesticide 2,4-D in rainwater have been reported to exceed the safe drinking-water standards (Gilliom, Alley, and Gurtz 1995). A 1994 study estimated that 14.1 million Americans drank water contaminated with the pesticides atrazine, cyanazine, simazine, alachlor, and metolachlor (Wiles et al. 1994).
Extensive herbicide use in agricultural areas (accounting for about 70 percent of total national use of pesticides) has resulted in widespread contamination of herbicides in agricultural streams and shallow ground water. The chance of finding agricultural weed killers in house dust increases by 6 percent for every 10 acres of cropland found within a roughly 800-yard perimeter of a house (Raloff 2006). Farm-worker and community exposures are another concern. Use of agricultural chemicals known to cause cancer in California increased 127 percent from 1991 to 1998.
_______________________________________________________________________
All this doom and gloom though is part of an excellent article about why it is no good going on treating illnesses while their causes are ignored.
"REDEFINING HEALTHY FOOD:AN ECOLOGICAL HEALTH APPROACH TO FOOD PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION AND PROCUREMENT"
Jamie Harvie, PE
Paper presented by The Center for Health Design® and
Health Care Without Harm at a conference sponsored by
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, September 2006.
If like me you are lucky enough to be able to go outside and pick vegetables, like these delicious beans, straight from your own garden, then thank goodness you can eat tonight without wondering if your food is related to this article!
ps Erica's dog LOVES beans and fruit straight off the plants.... he even climbs trees to pick apricots!
News from Michel and Jude, the people behind the 24 year old Seed Savers’ Network based in Byron Bay, Australia. We are now on a working sabbatical in Malaysia, after two months in Rajasthan, India, and some weeks on a speaking tour in Japan.
Love food gardens? See our perceptions of food plant diversity and food issues, as short pieces, pictures and film clips at www.seedsavers.net We continue to take footage for a third documentary, after the success of “Our Seeds”(have you seen the trailer on our website?). A second, “Our Roots”, was shot in Vanuatu for French CIRAD, is now in post-production and due out in March this year.
The Seed Savers Foundation is a registered charity that fosters fruit and vegetable seed exchanges in twenty countries. It manages eighty local seed networks around Australia - see Google map at www.seedsaver.net.
We would be tickled pink to receive emails from Seed Savers' friends, fans and supporters and be part of your dreams and realisations. This month you will receive news from wherever we travel, now in the equatorial forests of the Cameron Highlands Malaysia, the home of a cornucopia of fruits and, importantly, the Orang Asli, the original forest people. The highlands are the vegetable basket for Singapore and lowland Malaysia, even Japan.
All the best for 2010.
The idea was to meet Hugh in the market at 10am..... so I waited and waited.... and to pass the time I started looking at things in and around Goodies and Grains, where we were to meet. I was getting hungry but I thought we were going to do our shopping and then have something to eat.... silly me! Eventually Hugh arrived...at 10.30.... after he had dined on a scrumptious breakfast at Zuma's. Never mind, I was pretty excited by then because I had found 2 packets of Franchi seeds to buy.... one was Lettuce-leaf Basil, which I had tasted once and thought was worth growing, and the other was Scuplit (Silene inflata), which I have never heard of. Today I am going to sow some..... skippity doo. So, thanks Hugh for the mix up!
Silene vulgaris
Cucubalus behen - L.
Silene cucubalus - Wibel.
Silene inflata - Sm.
Range:
Most of Europe, including Britain, to N. Africa and temperate Asia. Arable land, roadsides, grassy slopes etc, avoiding acid soils
Perennial growing to 0.6m.
Young shoots and leaves - raw or cooked. The young leaves are sweet and very agreeable in salads. The cooked young shoots, harvested when about 5cm long, have a flavour similar to green peas but with a slight bitterness. This bitterness can be reduced by blanching the shoots as they appear from the ground. When pureed it is said to rival the best spinach purees. The leaves can also be finely chopped and added to salads. The leaves should be used before the plant starts to flower. Some caution is advised, see the notes on toxicity on the linked page.
This plant is popular in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region in northern Italy. It is cooked as spinach, eaten raw in salads or made into ravioli filling with ricotta and parmisan cheese. It tastes really good. In early spring you will see people looking for it on roadsides but it is also cultivated and sold in stores. It is known as scupitin or grisolon
Dr,. Emma Jack Fri Nov 11 2005
This link to Malta Wild Plants is fabulous but takes a while to load so be patient.
Often people ask me what is my favourite gardening book. This is a tricky question to answer because, as many readers of this blog would know, I am a little bit outside the square in my ideas and I wonder whether this person means a reference book, like Oriental Vegetables by Joy Larkom, something inspiring for the beginner like Backyard Self-sufficiency by Jackie French or something more meaty like Permaculture One by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren.
There is, however, a book that is all of these in one.... easy to read, inspiring, philosophical, Australian and full of wonderful ideas and information. It is Beyond Organics, by Helen Cushing. Luckily for us, Helen has just started a blog, called Gardening with Helen. Here is an excerpt from Nasturtiums are like Teenagers.......
If you have nasturtiums in your garden, you will know what I mean when I say they are a plant requiring a relationship with their gardener.
I am a great fan of the nasturtium, but let’s just say they regularly test the friendship. They are a sort of teenage plant – lots of life, energy and beauty, but unsure of their boundaries. Or perhaps more accurately, uninterested in their boundaries....
.....There is another patch by the veggie bed. As an organic gardener and nature conservationist I believe in having a ‘living mulch’, maximising the habitat, protecting the soil, growing biomass etc – I’m sure you know the reasons. But as with teenagers, so with living mulch/nasturtium. The relationship must be interactive to achieve best results. Neglect means loss of influence (otherwise known as control), blurred boundaries, the need for a firm hand at a later date. Recovering the veggie garden from the enthusiasm of nasturtiums is more an act of archaeology than gardening.
She explains in her introduction.....Hope someone likes whatever it is that evolves here – it will be a rambling garden of words, of that you can be sure! Let me know if you enjoy it, and if you have any gardening questions, try me.
Helen is new to the whole blog thing so go and say hello, and leave a comment, she is our new neighbour! I have put a link to her blog in the side bar, under Tasmania.
Thank you to Patrick for this link.
UN Secretary General Welcome Message for the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity
We are so lucky here in Australia, in so many ways. In relation to biodiversity and things of natural wonder, much of our country is still in its pristine state and none more so than the Lake Eyre Basin of the inland , which covers 1/6 of Australia, an area about the size of France, Germany and Italy combined. The flood waters in eastern Australia last year have been making their way inland ever since, not out to sea, and have filled Lake Eyre for the first time in 50 years or more.Thousands of people go to see it; it is like a pilgrimage. It defines Australians. Watching this on TV even, makes me feel something I cannot describe....
The ABC screened a documentary on it and it is now on iView. It is worth watching on this hot, dry day in South Australia.
This morning I took a tour of some of the blogs we have listed in the side bar, under "Around the World in 80 Blogs". I am so glad I live in blog-land, and can learn and laugh and wonder at all sorts of things people are doing in their back yards, allotments, window sills, balconies and in their research and handcrafts. Here are just a few, from Ireland, Japan, USA, Zambia, Singapore and Barbados.....
There is Peggy, of the Hydro farm allotment in Blarney, Ireland who is harvesting parsnips, Brussel sprouts, potatoes and one leek! She also has this lovely idea for some pots of flowers, that she calls tumbling pots.
Read more about Peggy :
Adekun seemed to be pining for parsnip seed to grow in Japan and has produced some edible parsnips at last!
Christa has Brussel sprouts growing under the snow at
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I love reading about Zambia and the work that Thulassy and 2 colleagues are doing there...... It really makes you think... a lot.
This is where it starts:
A farmer wakes at daybreak to ready his oxcart for the market.
He pulls his cattle from the crow and leads them into the yoke. He fastens a rope over the sacks of grain that represent a season’s worth of investment – money for seeds and fertilizer, a favourable rainfall, back breaking work to weed and harvest, and a lot of luck.
It’s cold and quiet. In the distance, the sky begins to glow with the rising sun. With a short whistle, he sets off on the first of many rocky miles, anxious for what awaits him at the market.
This is what we’re about:
The three of us work for Engineers Without Borders Canada in Zambia and Malawi, where we’re partnered with local organizations and companies that are working to include small holder farmers in agricultural markets.
This blog is a place for us to ask the question:
What does it take to make this work?
Read more at: The First Mile
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Wilson is a wonderful gardener and writer in Singapore who I was lucky enough to spend a day with in September 2008. He has established a community garden and this food garden is an inspiration to many who live in apartments in Singapore. Here is a little from his latest posts:
Appreciate the beauty of Astonias
.....Besides being valued as handsome trees that profusely produce scented flowers, Alstonia has various other uses. The sap, which contain alkaloids, exuded from the bark of Alstonia has medicinal properties. The rather light timber fromAlstonia is used to make a range of products, from posts, coffins, corks, household utensils, floats to boards. In particular, timber from A. scholaris is used in the past to make writing slates for schools, which gave rise to the species name scholaris.
The Balsam in the Water
Waterlogged areas can be a headache for many gardeners as they can be expensive to improve for growing plants that demand a well-draining location....
....Like Impatiens balsamina, the flowers of Hydrocera trifolia yield a dye and the flowers of the latter are used to prepare a red dye for fingernails which serves as a substitute for henna (Lawsonia inermis). This use is behindHydrocera trifolia’s alternative common name, water henna.
This plant is easy to grow that are suited for growing inside or near the edge of ponds. Although aquatic in growth habit, one can also grow it in a pot of soil that is kept moist at all times. It thrives in semi-shaded areas to locations with full sunshine and can be propagated easily via stem-cuttings or via layering.
Read more at Gardening with Wilson
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Barbados.... and the dry season begins.... oh what diverse and wonderful things we can discover from blogs....
Now, this is an excellent use for a swimming pool that may no longer be wanted....
....For those of you who don't know tamarinds it is the most sour of fruits. It is a pod fruit and can be used green and dried. As a child in Trinidad we would eat it with salt and pepper or rolled in sugar into a ball. I used to boil a syrup with it and add spices. It was delicious. In Barbados they would put it in cane syrup in a crock and leave it for several months to a year. That is sooo delicious , my mouth is watering now that has a unique taste and is no longer found.
Visit Barbados and read about the island gal .... I loves to cook for company and adore a fusion of various cuisines. I speak some french with some degree of fluency having studied Pattern making in Paris many many moons ago. I work as a water garden consultant and my husband and I grow water lilies.
Read more at My Rustic Bajan Garden
Why aren't we South Australians all growing this stunning plant? Sturt's Desert Pea (Swainsona formosa) requires absolutely no water after germination and the seeds remain viable for hundreds of years! Seeds are available, evidently, from State Flora in Belair National Park.
Its one need is very good drainage and preferably sand. These are photos of when I grew it in the summer of 2007, in a very sandy patch of soil that the previous house owners must have used to backfill behind a retaining wall. They grew to be about 60cm wide and high. If your children have grown out of their sandpit, fill it with these!
As you can see at the bottom of this second photo, in the middle, it is a true pea and forms pea pods. The "eyes" of the flowers go from red to black as they mature and each spray forms a circle around the stem. I have no idea why I didn't collect the seeds or if I did, what happened to them but I am going to try growing them again. I don't know when to sow them, but I will find out!
If you want to do the permaculture thing and make sure everything you plant has 3 or more uses, then here is one such plant for all South Australians..... they will attract native birds to be your pest controllers, they require no extra watering, they must be one of the most mesmerisingly vibrant plants in the whole plant kingdom and they are all our's!
Here is a shot of them growing in their natural habitat, courtesy of aaardvaark and flickr.
It is an absolutely perfect summer's day as I sit outside at my little mosaic table with my laptop cord plunging unceremoniously inside through the dog flap in the wire door to the power socket in the laundry! Behind me are my two deliciously delicate begonias, meekly displaying sprays of pink and red flowers on tall, elegant stems, and nodding gently in the cool breeze to the raucous laughter of two local kookaburras. It is hard to concentrate on my writing with these 2 comedians laughing so loudly and unselfconsciously from the branches of a gum tree, only about 10m away from me. One even had what looked like the last thin15cm of a snake hanging out of its mouth at the same time as it was sharing a joke with the other. Now that is something..... Hang on while I go and get my camera.......
While lazing about at the shack, without technology, I read 2 lovely books, both of which happened to be by Australian authors and set in Australia. Kate Grenville's: The Lieutenant is an historical fiction story of an astronomer accompanying the First Fleet's arrival in Australia in 1786, and his close association with some Aboriginal people. This book begins slowly and seems scant and superficial at first but it is worth getting into and develops well, leaving you wishing for more. The other, Amanda Hampson: The Olive Sisters, is set in modern times and is a rare treat of a book, captivatingly telling the story of some Italian ancestral discoveries made by a woman escaping a failed city life..... sounds corny.... but is oh so well written and complex.
In between these, I drooled over Juleigh Robins: Wild Food.... 100 recipes using Australian ingredients. Here is a little taste of Juleigh's introduction, which tells how she and her husband came upon bush tomatoes grown by an Aboriginal community, about 20 years ago.....
....About 2 weeks later, 20 large boxes of all sorts of native foods arrived. Ian and I were like kids at Christmas, and eventually we found the much sought-after bush tomatoes in box number 5, labelled 'katyerr' in the Anmatyerr language. I immediately rang Janet and Rita to thank them and see if some more of these marvelous fruits could be harvested for us..... we said please send as much as they could harvest - after all, how much could anyone gather out in the desert? It couldn't be more than 20kgs, right?..... Shortly afterwards we took our first delivery of 2 tonnes of bush tomatoes!
I am so looking forward to making some of the foods, like bush tomato (solanum centrale) and roast pumpkin risotto, and fig, fetta and pomegranate salad with wild rosella (Hibiscus sabdariffa) and pepperberry (Tasmannia lanceolata) syrup, and wild lime (Citrus glauca) friands.
The ingredients are available through Robins Foods (branded Outback Spirit), in partnership with Indigenous Australians, and are sourced from pristine wilderness areas from the Top End and the Central Desert and from rainforest, alpine and temperate coastal regions of Australia. A guide to retail outlets is included. There are even growing instructions for those of us keen enough to seek out plants for our gardens.
In the car, on the way to the shack, with no interest in the cricket which was on my favourite station, I was searching the radio waves for something worth listening to and came across Radio National's The Book Show and later, The Science Show. Now, I am not much of a fan of Radio National on the whole..... full of discussions about classical music minutiae and interviews with artists and dancers and poets .... all much too much about people, for me. But, this particular day I happened across a talk (related to his book) - Nicholas Stern: Blueprint for a Safer Planet.... and how it related to economics and Copenhagen. It sounds rather dull but he is a superb speaker and it is well worth listening to since the whole Copenhagen thing hung very much on his report. (Coincidentally, son Alex also happened to hear this talk.... but he was there in the audience, in Oxford!)
On the way home from the shack a few days later, once more in the car, I tuned in to an hour long reading from Tim Severin: The Brendan Voyage , again on Radio National 729. I absolutely loved the idea of rebuilding a boat out of ox hides and seeing if it could be sailed from Ireland to what is now the USA, by an Irish monk hundreds of years ago.....
The illuminated manuscripts that recount the epic voyage of the sixth century saint Brendan from Ireland west across the seas to an unknown land were long considered apocryphal. But explorer, author and film maker Tim Severin was fascinated by the story they told, and after painstaking research managed to build a replica of a sixth century curragh just as the monks of medieval Ireland would have sailed, and set off to cross the Atlantic. With her small crew, the Brendan - forty nine ox hides stitched over a wooden frame - survived pack ice, storms and inquisitive whales to eventually reach Newfoundland, and prove that it would have been possible for St Brendan to have done so also, thus reaching the New World many centuries before Christopher Columbus.
Having discovered some good things I am hooked on Radio National and have listened to many interesting talks, so often in the car, but also online where the manuscripts and audio are readily available. Lord Bob May: The evolution of cooperative behaviour and Martin Rees: Controlling the Future are two from this week, both of which I want to write about as they are so stimulating and thought-provoking.
Barb rang me this morning and reminded me about Landline, on ABC TV. Langhorne Creek.... home of Newman's Horseradish
.....while fads will come and go, some traditional spreads are finding new favour in a range of dishes - take the humble but fiery horseradish. This root vegetable began life in Germany, but according to second generation horseradish producer Brian Meakins, when the root vegetable's name was translated into English, a Frenchman botched the job, and what should have been sea radish ended up with an equine identity.
Brian grows and processes Newman's horseradish beside South Australia's Lower Lakes, his father having been given permission to use the name by Fred Newman back in 1947. The Meakins have ten hectares under production, from which they harvest 30 tonnes of horseradish to process and sell to supermarkets and communities around the country.
Then of course there is ABC TV's iView where, for 14 days, you can watch all those things you didn't know were on until someone said "Hey, did you see that great show on TV...." but of course you didn't know and missed! I watched a wonderful thing about a man who wanted to make the world's best chocolate so he sold his home in England and went and set up a cocoa bean farm in South America....
And then there is East of Everything...... Like Sea Change, but about some pretty cool brothers in their 30's / 40's, who inherit a sort of hippy beach resort at Australia's eastern most point. I love Art.... he is complex, creative, romantic, interesting, difficult and attractive. Is there anyone else like Lizzy?
So, when it's too hot to go to the beach or be in the garden, fill your days with the wonderful world of words.....
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