grow | strawberries

By MEREDITH KIRTON

September is the month of strawberries in Australia, ripening first in Queensland and then the season works its way down the coast towards Victoria, each week signaling another flush somewhere of yet another plump, juicy fruit.

Growing to about 0.5m in width and only 20cm or so high, the strawberry is ideal as a groundcover, or as a strawberry patch, but can also be grown in pots, baskets and window boxes.  In fact, this berry is ideal for the backyard, so long as you can protect the ripening fruit from birds and even the pet dog, who all love the taste of the fruits.  Try nets and empty glass jars to prevent them from getting to your crops.

To grow your own, it’s important to protect these fruit not only from hungry mouths, but also from the ground where they can get fungal problems easily.  That’s where the name “straw”berry actually comes from, as originally straw was placed around each bush to protect the fruit from landing on the damp ground.  Commercial growers often use plastic, but growing your fruit in baskets and pots also has the same effect.

Strawberries need full sun to flower, and there are both white and pink flowering types.  There is also a yellow fruited Alpine or non-spreading strawberry, which is said to be harder for birds to see.  It is, however, just as tasty!  Dig in lots of manure prior to planting rhizomes or seedlings, and feed regularly with liquid manure or liquid blood and bone to encourage recropping.

Photography by SUE STUBBS | Blog designed by RED PEPPER GRAPHICS

grow | olives

By MEREDITH KIRTON

Nothing says “Mediterranean” quite like an olive.  These fruits have been used as a source of oil and flesh (once pickled) for Millennium, and these days are no less popular throughout the whole world.  As a garden specimen they are also very adaptable and ornamental.  The foliage is a beautiful silvery grey and very drought resistant once established and the plants themselves are also quite tolerant of cold.

Plants can grow in a number of ways, from espalier or “flat packed” against a wall, to standardized specimens or into trees, where they are normally kept pruned to about 4m tall.  They need a well drained soil or pot to perform well, with adequate moisture over winter and spring when they are in blossom.  Feed once a year with complete plant food.  Cropping will normally take about 5 years to produce decent quantities.  Olives are normally either for oil or fruit/pickling types, so be sure to choose a suitable variety that suits your need.  Kalamata is probably the most popular.

Olives appear on the trees in Australia at Christmas time and are large enough to pick by about February for green olives and March/April for black olives.  Of course, olives straight from the tree are totally inedible.  At some point thousands of years back people realised however that soaking them in the sea for a few weeks washed out the bitterness and rendered them delicious.

Commercially olives are treated with caustic soda, and other numbered ingredients!  If you’d rather replicate the Ancient Greeks and Romans and have salt brined olives, it’s easy, but does take some weeks.

To Pickle, soak olives in water for 10 days, changing water daily. Make a brine solution of 1 cup salt to 4 litres of water. Soak olives in brine for about 4 weeks, changing the brine solution every week. The time it takes varies greatly depending upon the olive variety. Weight the fruit under the water with a clean plate and you can speed the process up by cutting the skin, this will allow the brine soak into the olive more.

Some people prefer to make “sultana olives” which just uses straight rock salt instead of brine to draw out the bitter juices.  They layer olives and rock salt alternatively in a plastic container, punch holes in the lid and the base and turn the container daily allowing the juices to escape.  After about 10 days the olives should not be bitter and should look wrinkled.

With either method, when you are happy with the taste, store them in sterilised jars with fresh brine and a little olive oil to help keep them fresh.  You can add herbs etc 24 hours before use by pouring off the brine, adding oil and herbs and then enjoying these flavours imbued the next day.

Photography by SUE STUBBS | Blog designed by RED PEPPER GRAPHICS

grow | marjoram

By MEREDITH KIRTON

Marjoram is a loved herb both for its fabulous culinary qualities and also for its medicinal properties.  In the garden, it grows to a height of about 40cm and is very closely related to oregano and in the mint family, where many herbs reside.

Marjoram makes a very pretty addition to the garden as a rockery or spreading plant over walls and comes in a variety of cultivars, including a bright gold form and variegated cream and white foliage type.

Marjoram is frost tender in very cold climates, but can easily be cut back and mulched to protect it or potted into containers and overwintered in more protected positions.  It likes a free draining position with full sun bringing out the flavour and colours of the plant, but will also tolerate semi shade.  Fertiliser isn’t necessary and regular trimming if not harvesting will maintain a healthy crop of young, tasty leaves.

The small leaves can be added fresh or dried easily and still keep their flavour, and are best picked just prior to flowering, but can used at any
time. The stems are useful for threading meat onto for kebabs, especially when they are about to flower and get some more height to them.  Hang them in a cool, dry place for a few days till dry and then store in sterilized jars for  no more than 6 months in order to maintain the best flavour.

Photography by SUE STUBBS | Blog designed by RED PEPPER GRAPHICS

grow | mint

By MEREDITH KIRTON

Summer is the perfect season to make the most of one of the best known of all herbs, Mint.  It is fabulous crushed with ice in drinks, in desserts, giving a bite to Asian salads and spring rolls, and even used on that Aussie classic, the lamb roast.   Mint (Mentha spp.) can be the bane of peoples kitchen gardens…they either can’t grow it or seem to have it out of control!  The thing is, mint is one of the only herbs able to cope with shade, but it is certainly one of the only herbs that just can’t cope with a dry spell…mint needs water, drip fed so it seems!

There are many different sorts, but the most common is called common mint! Others include peppermint (M. x piperita), spearmint (M. spicata), apple mint (M. suaveolens) and eau de cologne mint (M. piperita x citrata), and the lesser known chocolate mint (M. piperita ‘Chocolate Mint’), ginger mint (M. x gracilis) and basil mint (M. x piperita citrata ‘Basil’), which is great as a basil fill-in over winter, as most basil is unavailable then.

To grow it, simply strike a cutting in water or buy a pot of the mint you want and plant it in a pot, that way it won’t get out of control in the garden and grow wild.  Keep it well watered and feed with both lime and liquid fertiliser.  It is prone to rust, so whenever you see brown spots on the leaves quickly pick them off and bin them.  Extremely bad cases may be worth cutting the whole plant back to a stump, removing all leaves and feeding it back up ready to grow again, this time hopefully disease free foliage.

Photography by SUE STUBBS | Blog designed by RED PEPPER GRAPHICS

grow | salad bowl

By MEREDITH KIRTON

January is a time when thoughts of green salads and fresh, healthy ingredients is never far from your mind.  So it makes sense that growing your own salad greens so you have a salad “on tap”.  Salad green can come in a many colours and flavours, from the sweet crispness of ‘Icebergs’ to the nutty taste of rocket, to the lemony tang of sorrel or the bitterness of endive.  What many people don’t realise is just how simple and fast it is to bypass the shops and grow your own straight on the back doorstep.

What leafy greens mostly need plenty of water and regular feeding, without which they can become bitter.  They also want free draining soil (or Australian Premium Standard Potting Mix).  What most people don’t do is prepare the beds well enough with loads of organic matter, like home made compost, worm manure from your farm, rotted or pelletised manure, even well composted grass clippings can be dug through.  This helps build up the nutrition of the soil and build its structure so that it holds water well and will be the best thing you can do for either clay or sand soils.

The next thing to consider is the frequency of your plantings and the varieties you wish to eat and that suit your climate and the season.  Sowing by seed allows successive plantings, putting a new row in every 2-3 weeks is ideal, as you want to be able to harvest throughout the season.  Most lettuce types grow well in winter and spring and autumn, but can run to seed in summer.  ‘Great Lakes’, which was bred by Yates, is ideal for coping with summer heat and tastes great in salads.  Sorrel is fabulous for coping with cold climes and rocket, which has that fabulous peppery flavour, is best planted in spring and autumn and will be ready for munching on just a few weeks after sowing.

No Space at All?

Think micro vegies…the latest taste sensation in all the best restaurants.  All these are are “just germinated” trendy new leaves that are plucked whilst still babies.  You can grow them in a seedling tray and harvest 2 weeks later.  Think Mesclen lettuce mix, pea sprouts, radish shoots, celery, baby spinach and mini radicchio.

Photography by SUE STUBBS | Blog designed by RED PEPPER GRAPHICS

grow | beans

By MEREDITH KIRTON

Got a fence?  2 metres of beans growing along it could feed your family all summer, and the kids will love going outside with a basket to cut their own greens for dinner, or just nibble on raw beans as they past.  If you can’t find a fence, no probs, you can grow dwarf beans in the garden in rows.

Both runner types and dwarf types can also be grown in tubs too, though obviously the taller varieties will need a tall tripod about 1.8m is ideal, and they are actually very pretty too, with some purple (‘Purple King’ and ‘Purple Queen’), or yellow (‘Bountiful Butter’) podded varieties available. These are all frost tender, and should only be sown after all chance of late cold snaps are gone.

If you live in a colder climate, then Perennial beans, known as runners, can also be grown. These are cut back each autumn then reshoot in spring from their crown.  The two best known ones are ‘Scarlet Runner’, which has beautiful red blooms, and ‘Borlotti’ which has speckled red beds.  These are both the sorts of beans that need slow cooking to be edible, like kidney beans ‘Canellini’.

Whatever you settle on, beans like an enriched soil with lots of added compost to thrive.  They also love regular watering, hate the wind and dislike being overfed, as they will actually make their own nitrogen fertiliser with their specialised roots.  They produce more and more beans the more you pick, so harvest them continually every 4 days of so to keep the plants productive, and be careful not to damage the bush, which is quite easily done, when you harvest by always using a knife of scissors, to reap your bounty.  Sow seeds now, and you’ll be munching away in 10 weeks time.

Photography by SUE STUBBS | Blog designed by RED PEPPER GRAPHICS

grow | coffee

By MEREDITH KIRTON

Coffee is one of the most loved beverages in the world, with Australia’s consumption at around 55,000 tonnes annually. However what many people don’t realise is that it’s also one of the most sprayed food crops. Fortunately, in Australia we don’t have the pests and diseases that plague it overseas, so growing it here means it’s easy to produce an organic crop. Make sure you plant an arabica as these have the best flavour.

Related to gardenias, they are actually are very attractive addition to the garden and easy to grow.  They have glossy foliage, white perfumed flowers in spring and cherry red fruits appearing in November and grow into a small tree and can be pruned frequently to hedge them or make harvest easier.  Coffee trees can also be grown in pots, and will even survive inside providing the position gets plenty of sunlight.  Coffee trees like a frost free position with well drained, slightly acidic soil and regular fertiliser.

To harvest fruits, pick them whilst they are still bright red.  Next, pulp the berries and soak them for a few days allowing the flesh to slightly ferment and fall off the seed, and change from being slippery to having a grainy texture.  Rinse them out a few times and then lay them in the sun till the husk starts to split and reveals the inner bean, which is now ready for roasting!

tip ….
Got a pest problem with snails and slugs? Try giving them a morning coffee they won’t live to regret!  Mix one part espresso to 3 parts water and spray all over leaves and soil of susceptible plants every week to deter them from your salad crops.

Photography by SUE STUBBS | Blog designed by RED PEPPER GRAPHICS