SCUPLIT..... WHAT'S THAT?

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.

Plants for a Future: Edible, medicinal and useful plants for a healthier world

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.

The plant is said to be emollient and is used in baths or as a fumigant. The juice of the plant is used in the treatment of ophthalmia

Silene vulgaris

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.

PINK

I have never really thought of myself as a lover of things pink; preferring instead what I call autumn colours. I have no pink clothes and even if I had girls, I am sure I would never have dressed them in pink either. How is it then that my garden seems to be turning pink?

Amaranthus.... Currently my favourite summer-growing vegetable. Eat the new, pink tinged leaves in salads, cook older ones, scandalously flamboyant flower tassles and stems, nutritious seeds for humans and chooks, self sows readily, water efficient, gorgeous to look at, 1.5m high.
Pink Hollyhock.... always a surprise. Pops up anywhere. Drought tolerant. Tall and elegant. Also have crimson ones and white ones. Flowers for months with carefree abandon. Can grow as tall as the roof!	One plants whose name I can never remember but which covers an arch in a single bound and would be able to leap tall buildings too. Masses of soft pink flowers with very little water needed. Deciduous. Spectacular.
Tropical canna lily. Needs water. Colours range from pink to orange, yellow, red, lime to dark greens. Spikes of bright red flowers. Who designed this plant to have leaves like this??	Fuschia.... oh to be clever enough to grow the dainty, frilly ones!
This graduated pink salvia with flowers resembling little animals smiles all through the heat.	I love hydrangeas with their showy heads but I prefer the white ones. This is almost the last surviving one given to me by my father about 18 years ago.
My absolutely favourite plant.... the spotted leafed begonia with fine webs of pink flowers connected in intricate patterns. Needs shade, not too much water and a frame. I forgive it for being pink!
Even the string tying up the bales of pea straw is pink these days! Here it is being used on an old fence.	My favourite beetroot has deep pink leaves and stems and the leaves are great to liven up a green salad. This is a tiny seedling I planted out just yesterday.

THINKING ABOUT THE AUTUMN GARDEN

This time of the year in South Australia the sun becomes less intense and the nights are cool, making it the perfect time to sow seeds and plant seedlings for autumn and winter. With a bit of luck, there will be some rain soon and the earth will be able to relax and breathe again. People consult vegetable gardening books and catalogues to decide what to plant but don't forget there are lots of other edible and useful plants that are often ignored by authors of books designed specifically for vegetable growing.

If you observe the birds and the seasons and the insects and the weather you will see that the more diverse your garden is in flora, the more diverse it will be in fauna. Rather than keeping out pests we need to encourage all life in, and allow it to keep an equilibrium by itself. It is in this mimicry of nature that we can best reach a point where our gardens are in tune with the life within it.

Insects "see" in various ways. I read about this once and it changed the way I plant my vegetables, from neat rows, to organised chaos! Some insects fly over, looking for patterns of colour or texture, for example a patch of green lettuce or just-hearting cabbages. Others are attracted by scent, and others crawl along the soil and just come across a whole row of young seedlings which can be demolished in one night.

Nature is not orderly and rarely is one species decimated in whole area of bushland, so this is how I grow my vegetables too, as if it were all a self-sown field. I mix up the plants, some grow fast and some slow, some are dark green, others pale, some are staked and left to flower while new seedlings are planted below. All this higglety-pigglety patchwork confuses the patterns that insects are looking for. Added to this I grow some herbs and flowers in the mix too, and some nearby for the beneficial insects and the birds. The food gardens at my place are surrounded with native plants and trees, to attract the biggest range of life possible. Then I leave them to it. The only thing I do use are the snail pellets made from iron, made by Multiguard, at the time of planting out new seedlings.

There are lots of plants you can use in and around the vegetable garden that have more than one function. And this is another important method I use, as I first read about in my discovery of permaculture. Every plant choice I make should have several reasons for its inclusion in the garden. For example, I love flowers but instead of just choosing a plant for its flowers I make sure it is either also edible, has leaves suitable for making tea, provides habitat or feed for birds or insects, provides shade for something else, creeps along the ground and stops weeds, can be picked and dried and placed inside cupboards, attracts bees, benefits the soil in some way, self-sows or has runners for easy propagation etc etc.

There are lots of plants that fit these categories and salvias is one that I love. They come in so many colours, the nectar-eating birds love them, they are drought hardy, some have edible leaves or leaves for tea, they attract bees, the seeds can be eaten by birds. Some have leaves, flowers and seeds that can be eaten. They can be pruned hard, the prunings run over with the lawn mower and provide compost-making material or kept for lighting winter fires..... the list goes on and on.

In the March/April 2009 edition of the ABC's Organic Gardener magazine there is a comprehensive list of salvias and their useful properties. This is what gave me the idea to write about the natural habitat vegetable garden. Salvias are not native to Australia but there are salvias suitable for every garden in Australia. Native birds and insects love them as much as we do and now is the perfect time to be thinking about planting some in or near your vegetable and fruit gardens.

A SCENTED GARDEN

 

This time of the year there are soft scents wafting about in my garden, intensified by the heat of a day like today. The first time I notice them for the year I turn to where they are coming from and smile at the appropriate plant.....sometimes hiding its first flush of delicate flowers as if shy and feeling they may have been forgotten, amid the brash colours of other flowers in the garden. This is the philadelphus that I am talking about.....or evergreen mock orange, at left, hanging its small, white, beautifully scented flowers under its leaves, almost going unnoticed until there are enough of them to send their perfume down the path to the front door.

 

I also have the deciduous philadelphus, at right, with is stunningly beautiful, pristine white  flowers held upright in bunches, amid the dark green leaves, but having much less scent.

 

 

I was going to write that these are my favourite perfumed plants but I cannot! I think the philadelphus are amongst my favourites.....but there are also the scents of the flowers of various citrus trees that are so fresh and invigorating that maybe they would claim my first prize. Lemon blossom, at left, is number one in my citrus list.....so good it makes me close my eyes when I breathe it in....or maybe that is to avoid the bees who also love it!

 

But I also absolutely love the powerful but elusive scent of the dendrobium orchids, that only give off perfume from the flowers when the temperature is over 18C, in August or early September.....just an hour or 2 here and there....I keep them inside then so I don't miss the moment.

Honeysuckle takes the prize for the first of the spring perfumes to come to my garden and probably for the one that lasts the longest too. We have a honeysuckle hedge which is a delight to brush past on the way to the clothes line. I know roses are wonderful too and I enjoy them in other people's gardens but I don't have them here. Somehow I have never got on well with roses, nor they with me.

Down by the pool we have a dry climate garden bed...with plants with silver foliage and things that need very little water or care. Today, in the hot sunshine, I noticed the curry bushes were giving off their pungent savoury aroma......quite unusual for a plant but a smell of summer, to me. The aroma comes from the leaves and there are other plants that have scented leaves too, the most obvious being herbs.....rosemary, mints, lemon verbena, oregano, thyme etc. Then there are the scented geraniums.... lemon, cinnamon,etc and sages like pineapple and chocolate. There is nothing more delightful that brushing past the pineapple sage that Barb gave me, on a hot summer's day and almost tasting pineapple, ever so briefly....then it is gone.....and you wonder if you imagined it.....

 

Another of my favourites is the Flinders Ranges wattle that flowers for many months, beginning in autumn and going on through winter, but it only has a scent on sunny days, it seems to me. It is the smell of the Australian bush... at least, it is of the bush where I used to holiday. I cannot conjure up its smell.....unlike the citrus or other sweet scents....so every year I relish the days when I can visit my best specimen in flower, on the way to the letter box.

BEGONIA, BEGONIA.....WHEREFORE ART THOU?

I have mentioned before how much I love begonias and now I have, what I think, are the two most beautiful begonias to grace our planet. The one on the left, Dragon's Wings, I bought at the last ABC Carpark Caper and it has flourished and now looks stunning. The variegated one on the right was given to me for my 50th birthday and was struck from a cutting by my friend Robert, whose plant I have admired for years. The flowers are held together by threads, like a beautiful, pink spider web....  and it is soft and delicate and feathery and will grow to be tall and elegant, like its parent, I hope. I have put them in larger pots, on the verandah, outside my door where they get a bit of filtered morning sun.

Since I took the photos I have put a sturdy wire frame behind each, to support them as they grow....

...and I have a little table and chair near them so I can have my morning coffee and bask in their beauty and marvel at nature and try to forget how we humans can stuff things up so much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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? 

LATE EFFECTS OF THE HEATWAVE

In my garden and in gardens that I see when driving around, there have been some late casualties of the weather - more so than usual. We had a very cool February, with chilly nights but no rain, and many plants began to go into autumn mode. Then we were hit by 2 weeks of temperatures around 40C and this caused a major shock for shrubs and trees (and people!) as well as seedlings and, combined with the watering restrictions has caused havoc all over South Australia. Some of the effects are only just emerging now, some were obvious at the time.
In my garden several things happened.

1. First, some established plants went into a kind of hibernation. For example my late plums have never ripened. They were fine and colouring well and should have ripened in March. They sit on the tree still, unripe and inedible. I will remove them.
2. Some seedlings also never developed and remained stunted even though they did not suffer any dryness and were put in the complete shade for most of the 2 weeks. They just remained 1 cm high.
3. Wattles that looked fine and happy all through that time have suddenly died now. This is what I see everywhere. Shrubs and trees that made it through and probably received no additional water because of the watering restrictions have not been able to recover. Possibly their roots were over-heated in that baking sun and although we have had some rain, not enough to relieve the stress. It is sad to see and if you have been reading this for some time will know what I think about the shallow-rooted politicians and their courtyard homes making rules for passionate gardeners and guardians of the earth!
4. Large trees are losing limbs everywhere. This is normal in times of stress, so long as we get a good rain this winter they will be fine.

Some plants thrived, absolutely. These deserve to be planted more. I have mentioned some before but here is a rough list of my thrivers (not just survivors): Plumbago - beautiful, lush, fast and flowers for months. Callistemons (Bottle brushes) - fabulous. Grevilleas - most thrived, one died - moral - choose local varieties. Hakeas - again, local varieties that received no water and still look lush and happy. Correas - most survived, some thrived, especially those in shade. Grey-leafed plants - THE way to go for full sun positions: any with needle-shaped leaves, teucreums, etc. Grasses - native and not. Succulents - but only those from harsh, dry climates. Some that I have seen for sale recently are beautiful but are from rain-forests and some are epiphytic (ie grow in the forks of trees) and don't do well in the ground. Read the labels.

If, like me, you love to read the Diggers catalogues from cover to cover, bear in mind that Heronswood, where Diggers is situated, is on a headland and receives cool air across the sea when the wind is from the north. I went there on a day that was 38C in Melbourne and at Heronswood it was cool and lovely. They really have no idea about heat and plants I have bought from them that claim to be heat and drought hardy definitely are not, in my garden. None of the the other catalogues and online seed and plant companies are in South Australia either so use some caution when ordering. Local nurseries are no better - they get nearly all their plants from interstate too. It is really difficult to get reliable advice in these days of cut-throat prices and lack of service where the people serving are young and inexperienced.

A DRY BUT PRETTY GARDEN IN FRANCE

Oh no. Sorry, I messed up the link. Now I have fixed it...take a look.

Here is a set of photos of the perfect ornamental plants for our mediterranean climate. Click on each photo to see the names of all the plants in that photo. The rest of the site is in French, but it is nice and simply put for people with a smattering of French to mostly get the gist of what they are saying. Luckily botanical names speak any language....I wonder how they write lavender, in Chinese. In Japanese there is a whole alphabet of characters especially for foreign words. Useful and useless info - my specialty!

Edible, Medicinal and Useful Plants for a Healthier World

We have found this great site about all sorts of plants.

Click on Plants for a Future to open this great website.

This site is a resource centre for rare and unusual plants.

There is also a book called Edible and Useful Plants for a Healthier World by Ken Fern with a forward by Joy Larkcom.

THE ORNAMENTAL HOT, DRY GARDEN

Everyone wants to be able to have a BBQ out the back in a nice garden setting but how do we do it with our hot, dry summers and the water restrictions? These photos are taken at my place in the harshest part of the block and I specifically chose these plants (after months of research, nearly 3 years ago now) to cope with: baking summer sun, made worse by being surrounded with concrete walls and stone paving, the full brunt of hot north winds, the rough soil, sloping ground, once a week water by porous hose under the thin mulch, lots of winter shade and the fact that it is next to the pool and we want it to look good all the time! Now I know what has done well I will fill in the gaps with more of these plants this autumn/winter. Having a large tub with suitable aquatic plants lifts the whole area. Click on the photos to enlarge and read labels.

These lantana (below) get only the water I give them once a week and they are in a narrow bed, next to this north-facing concrete retaining wall. They are winners to be alive at all and have grown from tiny seedlings to this size in 6 months. I chose the lantana after seeing it growing, neglected but happy, outside an office block. It is no wonder that it has become a dreadful weed in Qld.
One area further down the bank I have been trying to regenerate with plants local to my area, mostly. Some of these have been fabulously successful and some have failed dismally, for various reasons, including chook attack. The best have been various small acacias, correas (shade), kennedia, helichrysums,Peppermint grass (grey native for semi-shade), hardenbergia and dianella. Other natives that have received no water at all this summer and still look fresh and lovely are hakea salicifolia, hakea laurina, acaia iteaphylla, various grevilleas. Some of them are in this collage below.



Here is a short list of the best of the non-natives that have thrived this summer with little water (excluding those listed at the top of this post):

Tuecrium marum (Cat thyme - small, pretty bush)

Bignonia rosea (pink tecoma - a twining climber)

Gazania - yellow (attacked ferociously by the chooks)

Lonicera japonica (Japanese honeysuckle - a twining climber)

Euryops virginatus (Medium shrub, soft foliage, yellow flowers)

Euryops tenuissimus (medium shrub, yellow daisy flowers)

Buddleja salvifolia (lilac flowers, survived near death experience )

Buddleja davidii (black knight butterfly bush)

Plumbago auriculata (Cape plumbago - fast, scrambling shrub, blue flowers for months)

Convolvulus cneorum (low silver bush, white flowers for months)

Convolvulus sabatius 'Moroccan beauty' (creeper - hangs over walls)

Sedum 'Autumn Joy' (herbaceous succulent)

Perovskia altriplicifolia (Russian sage)

Kniphofia -various (red hot poker)

Swainsona formosa (Sturt desert pea - stunning )

Citrus hystrix (Kaffir lime - great pot plant - so tough)

Succulents - most

Geraniums - some, especially a large red one

Agapanthus

Cotoneaster horizontalis (red berries are adored by the chooks)

Leukodendron 'safari sunset'

Clivias (so long as they are in full shade)

Plectranthus 'Mona Lavender' (also for the full shade)

Fuschias - (small-leafed red ones are very tough in the shade)

Almost anything self-sown especially about a dozen peach trees

Survived but not really thrived

Salvias - survived but haven't done as well as other things

Lavenders - look pretty scrappy but will come good as soon as it rains

Obviously there is a lot of other stuff that isn't worth mentioning.