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Posts Tagged ‘nasturtium’

Joanna’s beautiful garden photos inspired me to take some of my own.  Here’s a glimpse of our winter garden…

The dwarf nectarine and peach trees are flowering…

The first vegetable bed is growing well. We’ve planted kale, spinach, cabbage, beetroot, celery, parsley, lettuce, broccoli, and broadbeans.

Broccoli…

Lettuces…

The second bed has just been planted out.  In addition to more of the above, it also includes peas, carrots and shallots…

The peas are thriving!

The garlic are growing steadily in their laundry tub home – in total we have about forty plants…

The three rhubarb crowns are thoroughly enjoying their semi-shady spot…

The asparagus are still in pots, but growing well.  Spice Girl gave us a single pot, which we divided into seven smaller plants.  We still need to find a permanent home for them…

Our incredibly robust chilli bush has continued to fruit all winter, albeit sparsely…

Bed three is now ready for planting – tomato and capsicum seedlings are ready to go, along with the chitted seed potatoes…

Edit: Our large prunus tree has never fruited, so we have no idea what type it is, but it flowers prolifically every year.  Here are a couple of photos for Heidi..

What’s growing in your garden at the moment?

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In our winter garden, there really isn’t much growing at the moment.  The broadbeans are struggling, the seed potatoes still aren’t in the ground, and there are just four lonely apples on our young trees.

The nasturtiums, however, have really taken off! Planted around the base of the fruit trees as ground cover, they attract bees and brighten our day with a lovely sea of green every time we go outside.  We use their leaves and flowers in salads, they’re good greens for the chickens, and any excess becomes mulch for our fledgling vegetable beds.

Inspired by a recipe in Pam Corbin’s wonderful book Preserves, I gathered some nasturtium leaves and a sprig of mint from the garden…

…and blitzed them in the food processor with slivered almonds, a little grated pecorino cheese, half a clove of garlic and a few brined nasturtium pods.  This was all loosened with grapeseed oil and the juice of half a lime, then seasoned with Maldon salt and a little ground black pepper.

The pesto was delicious – tangy and green, with a lovely peppery note from the nasturtiums.  It was perfect on sourdough rye, and even better on Big Boy’s lunch of spinach and ricotta ravioli.  You can imagine how happy I am about this, given that we have a whole bed of nasturtiums growing faster than we or the chickens can eat them!

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