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Archive for the ‘Garden’ Category

Growing Succulents

Posted in Garden on November 8, 2012| 63 Comments »

Remember how excited I was when I first discovered the Hipstamatic photo app for the iPhone?

My lovely friend and neighbour Nic was so amused to find me lying on her lawn taking photos of her succulents, that she potted up some cuttings into a miniature garden for me.  Over the past couple of months, they’ve thrived and grown into the gorgeous display above.

Inspired by how beautiful they all are, I asked Nic for more cuttings to fill some of our empty terracotta pots…

Nic’s advice was to buy the best potting mix we could find, and to avoid “succulent blends”, which she found too sandy.  Some of the little plants had no roots at all, so I’ll be interested to see if they take…

I planted out two pots – the smaller one at the back is a gift for my mother, and the larger one will stay here.  I wasn’t really sure what I was doing – it felt like I was just nestling some of the smaller rosettes into the dirt, but I’ve been told that’s usually all they need to get established. Time will tell, I guess!

The original pot that Nic gave us has proven to be a fabulous photographic subject – here are a few of the photos I’ve taken over the past few weeks…

An exciting new hobby to explore! I’ve been to the library to borrow a book, and today I dragged Pete out to local nurseries to see what’s on offer.

Do you grow succulents? I’d be very grateful for any advice or tips you might have!

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Roasted Vegetable Salad

Posted in Frugal Living, Garden, Recipes on September 19, 2012| 87 Comments »

I had a moment the other day.

It’s probably just late my 40s hormones, but…we were outside harvesting vegetables for dinner, and we’d collected the enormous basketful above.  And I got all emotional and had a little cry. I honestly never imagined that we’d be at a stage in our lives when we could walk out the back door and bring in a huge basket of freshly grown goodies to feed our family.

A few years ago we stopped shopping at the supermarket and started buying all our fresh produce at the growers’ markets and specialty retailers. We were astonished at how much fresher the fruit and vegetables were – the supermarket equivalents were often several weeks’ older than what we were buying at Flemington.

And once we’d tasted this freshness, we were hooked.  We wanted to grow our own, and eat broccoli that had been raised without chemicals, harvested just minutes before cooking.  We wanted the experience of eating freshly dug potatoes before their skins and starches had a chance to harden, and peas straight off the vine.

The garden beds were built at the beginning of 2010, and it’s taken a couple of years for them to get to the stage where they’re producing consistently. The initial set up was labour and time intensive, but now that it’s up and running, it’s really quite easy to maintain, particularly with the chooks and worms on the job.

Our harvest included fat beets which seemed to pop out of the ground overnight, curly and Tuscan kale, the first carrots from the back bed,  kohlrabis which we’d thought were purple sprouting kale, sorrel and dill…

We bandicooted a few new potatoes from the oldest patch – until we grew our own, I never knew that freshly harvested spuds had a creamy texture when cooked…

Our celeriacs have been growing forever, so we finally bit the bullet and dug one up. For a celeriac, it’s tiny (about the size of a softball) – by the time the huge roots were cut away, there was only a small portion left.  Nonetheless, it was delicious…

We made Lorraine’s kale chips, and the remaining vegetables were chopped, tossed in extra virgin olive oil and rosemary salt, then roasted in a hot oven.  The beetroots were peeled and sliced before roasting.

Inspired by a delicious meal we’d had recently at Youeni, we assembled a roasted vegetable salad, and served it with Italian sausages, homemade dill mayonnaise and sourdough ciabatta.

A truly joyous meal, and one that celebrated how far we’ve come on this journey!

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Garden Happenings

Posted in Frugal Living, Garden on September 16, 2012| 71 Comments »

A lot has happened in our garden over the past week!

Uncle Steve (Pete’s brother) has built us a new garden bed, and refurbished an old one.  Our back bed has always performed poorly – it’s close to the fence and a couple of large, nutrient-sucking trees. Pete felt the solution was to raise the bed and increase its organic matter.

The bed is filled with a mixture of the existing soil, compost and mulched prunings.  We’re not sure how well things will grow this season, but we’ve optimistically planted it out nonetheless, with purple potatoes, dwarf beans, cos lettuce, broccoli rabé, basil, jalapeno chillies, eggplant and parsley…

The purple potatoes are a bit of a punt, as they’re not virus-free seed potatoes, but rather sprouting kitchen spuds.  Having said that, I bought them from the organic growers at Eveleigh Markets, so hopefully they’ll be ok.

A potato grower on Gardening Australia a couple of weeks ago recommended keeping just one strong shoot on each potato, and we’ve followed his advice…

There was an unproductive patch in between the side beds which was always flooded with run-off from the neighbour’s concrete drive.  Uncle Steve built us a proper little raised bed – isn’t it sweet?

We’ve planted climbing beans and snow peas at the back, with kale, carrots, Hamburg parsley and cos lettuce in front.  There are three different varieties of kale, but unfortunately we can’t remember what they are (the seedlings were started over a month ago)..

The Hamburg parsley should form a large, turnip-like root…

All done, and the garden is looking neat and tidy again!

Hope you’re all having a great weekend! xx

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