What fruit is for sale up in the Hills?

I was just wondering if any one knows what organic fruit will be for sale up in the Hills now or in January. Can you buy direct from the farms?

BUY A CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR A SEEDSAVER OR FRIEND

Australian Seedsavers Jude and Michel Fanton have finished their wonderful DVD, called  Our Seeds: Seeds Blong Yumi

You can buy it direct from the Seedsavers website, along with other dvd's and books or elsewhere online....

......Filmed across eleven countries with twenty tribal groups, this inspiring cultural tour of the Asia Pacific region engenders great respect for local traditions and wisdom.
It shows that common global threats to food quality and food security have local solutions in which we can all participate......

This excerpt is from the

New Internationalist online catalogue of ethical gifts.....

and it is only $25....

I am buying it for my unethical relatives!

 

And I wondered if we should spend some of our group savings on a copy and share it around..... it is beautiful.

Pictures and questions from Chook's garden

I'm really enjoying my garden at the moment while it's not too hot to be in the garden but warm enough for it all to grow.

This is the first time I’ve grown sweet corn and the ears have started growing at the top …very exciting!

Parts of my broccoli have gone to seed but it is still growing little edible heads so I haven’t pulled it out yet. I also like the look of the majestic plants so I’ll be sad when they have to go. It gets lots of water from my watering spikes connected to the bucket but also has while fly on it. Can you give broccoli too much water? Perhaps if I had given it less, I would have more heads and less leaves. Does that happen? Last year, I got a new broccoli plant from one that I didn’t pull out properly the year before. When these plants finish producing, I’m going to just cut them off at the base and see if they come back next year!

Does anyone know what these 2 types of seedlings are that I planted? I remember scattering the seeds but can’t remember what I put there! I think one might have been parsnip. Would that be right? (I’ve never grown it before!)

Butternut pumpkin, dwarf beans, carrot, basil, lettuce and broccoli seedlings are all doing well along the side driveway. I’m hoping to train the pumpkin up the fence)

The Chicory Raddichio is also doing very well but I can’t find a way to prepare it that makes it nice to eat. Whatever I do it seems really bitter. – Any suggestions?

My passionfruit and self sown tomatoes are also fruiting well. Yippee!!

RAIN IS LIFE.... AND A SKIPPITY DOO THING!

There are a lot of people who, when they look outside and see rain, think of it as gloomy, damp and miserable. I can understand this in places where it rains incessantly for days or weeks during long, cold winters but here in South Australia where the sun shines almost every day of the year and the light is strong and the air dry all year round and where drought is forever beckoning at the door, rain is life.

There is no life without water in the soil. Rain dissolves minerals from the parched land and sends them down through the layers of organic matter, clay, sand, loam and stones to feed the root tips which can only take in their goodness when it is dissolved in a liquid. Root tips are like babies; they can only drink and need the rain like a baby needs milk. As the rain falls through the atmosphere it also picks up particles of dust, nitrogen released by lightening and lots of other elements and these are deposited back into the soil, as the circle of life turns through the centuries and millenia.

I often wonder where the droplets of rain have come from, since rain is simply pure water that has evaporated from a river or the sea or from a forest whose every tree and plant is transpiring water vapour, just as we transpire air. Did this rain droplet come from a stream in Canada or a lone tree on a vast plain in Africa? Did all this rain that is thankfully falling today come from the same area or are they droplets from every corner of the earth, having flown and joined in a dizzying dance, to end up falling here on our gardens today? Where have these drops been and what sights have they seen on their journey through space from the dawn of time? It is truly mind boggling to realise that the water falling today is the same water that has been falling since the beginning of water. It may have been a part of you or me or a dinosaur or an extinct frog or plant.... but it has existed and will exist more or less forever.

We have not had a whole day of rain for years. Our rivers and lakes are at death's door. We had some patchy rains in winter, practically nothing in spring, our wettest season normally and the land has been looking parched even before our summer heat began. It is summer now and is supposed to be dry and hot but I don't care if all my tomatoes die from an outbreak of fungal diseases after this rain, it is far better we get rain, lots and lots of rain.....in fact it would have to rain continuously for about a month to even start to replenish the severe lack of water in the subsoil, where so many of the trees have their roots.

Wherever I am in the world over the next few years I will never lose sight of the magic of rain. Having spent my whole life here in this dry land, rain will always bring a smile to my face and a skip to my step, because without rain, there is no life on earth and we are getting perilously close to being in that situation here in South Australia.

At 6pm we'd had 37mm!! Then we had another 5mm overnight.

Early summer garden update

It's nice to see everybody again today. I wish you a merry Christmas!
I have made garden paths and put drippers in early spring.
I made summer garden much smaller and put plants closer to each other.
Everything looks okay (thanks the heat wave hasn't come yet), except tomatoes are dying. The leaves turn yellow and brownish after fruit appear. Delicious seems the worst.

Does anybody feel they have to keep their veggie garden a secret? Sometimes, I tell people I grow vegetables, they'll stare at me, and say growing vegetables uses too much water. Well, maybe some people don't water their garden, but they must eat...Doesn't somebody else water for them?
I think we should learn to use as little water as possible to grow food, (or admit we are not interested in growing food at all), rather than condemn those who grow, and enjoy most of their food from their backyards.

I hope everybody's garden all grows well through summer!






I harvested my small garlic patch last Wendsday. They are such wonderful food and no need to water. I'm going to grow more next year.

Finally, bitter gourds sprout. I hope they'll survive.

CHRISTMAS FUN IS FOR BIG KIDS TOO

It is such fun when you have children and, like me, you have time to do things with them. When they were young we used to make all our wrapping paper by laying reams of brown paper all over the kitchen floor and stamping Christmas designs all over it. I made the stamps by cutting out shapes of stars and Christmas trees and so on out of kitchen sponges which they then dipped into paint.

I also used to make them a new Christmas T-shirt each year, decorated with fabric paint.....I got quite good at it eventually, just as they grew out of the idea! We used to do a lot of fabric painting, making bags for holding things like pencils and music books etc.

Hugh used to cook the best mince pies and he regularly still makes chocolate truffles from the Haigh's recipe leaflet you can get at the shop.

Every year for 20 years or so we have made gingerbread at Christmas time too. It doesn't matter how big your children get, they never get tired of Mum's gingerbread. They used to help decorate them and that was very messy and "creative" but never-the-less the cooking and icing was done and a lot of fun was had by all. They used to take them for their school friends and teachers so we used to triple the recipe so we had enough to leave some for ourselves. One year I left a plate piled up with them on a coffee table in the lounge while I saw my mother to the door, and when I came back ALL the gingerbread had been eaten by the dog and the serving plate - a hand-made wedding present - was smashed. Needless to say that dog got no dinner.....for several days!

This year Roger and I made the gingerbread for our great-nieces and nephews.....oh dear, we must be very old.....I remember my great aunt and she was ancient! Well, its not so bad when you think that I was only 14 when I became an auntie. Anyway, both our boys are away and won't be home for any gingerbread this Christmas so we only made one quantity. I will put the recipe on Gardeners' Gastronomy....maybe it is already there...

Roger made the piping bags from greaseproof paper, while I mixed up the 4 colours of icing for the decorating.

 

The cooked pieces......are transformed into whatever Roger and I can come up with...

 

 

 

....like this bikini beauty of Roger's... and then packed into cellophane bags .

 

I am taking some of these to our seedsavers picnic in the Botanic Gardens tomorrow.... see you there.

TERRACOTTA WATERING POTS AND WATER SPINACH UPDATES

Gavin from The Greening of Gavin, has installed a few of these himself recently and most of mine are now in operation too. I did as Chaiselongue from Olives and Artichokes did too, and put a tile on top. My plan is to put a single dripper into each , all joined by thin black poly pipe, so they will fill twice weekly, automatically. When it is very hot I can also fill them with the hose any time, since they are a receptacle ......how ridiculous.....but if you can't beat them, use their silly rules to your advantage!...Or do both.

Around each pot I have sown 6 bush beans quite near the pot rims and then further out I have planted out the various chicory seedlings Deb gave me. Since I took these photos the beans have started to come up and  I have also mulched the area with straw.... not everybody's ideal mulch but I have used all my own mulch already and I like straw because its light colour reflects the mid-summer heat.

Also this week, the water spinach or kang kong, has grown enough good, strong roots in a vase to begin growing quite a lot of leaves. Notice how its roots and stems now go right to the bottom of the vase (photo at right) and the leaves are growing tall and straight. 

Now it is time to pot them up and put them out into the tubs of water which I will slowly fill as the plants grow.Eventually, the stems and leaves will fall over and float on the water surface, sending down more roots from some of the leaf nodes.

   

 

Evidently kang kong is related to sweet potato and both of these I saw growing prolifically in Wilson's community garden in Singapore. I have been unable to get any of my 3 sweet potatoes to sprout yet this year....they just stay persistently and stubbornly uninterested in reproducing themselves. My plan was to grow them as a living mulch under the capsicums, and harvest the leaves regularly for salads since the leaves are delicious and far easier to grow than the tubers and are something you can't buy at the markets.