Tonight's Dinner from the Garden

Early spring is notoriously the hardest time for getting fresh food from one's garden, with the winter crops starting to fade and the high summer ones still three months away. From the culinary point of view, although the weather may be mild enough to make salad the centrepiece of a meal, one is so over cabbage-based salads by this time, and wanting to eat something a bit more summery.

I think I cracked this problem tonight, with a main dish salad based on roasted baby beetroots, raw celery, baby green leaves and fresh herbs. All from the garden, although I cheated a little on some of the greens, since I have leaf lettuces and basil growing in the greenhouse. They are still small, but big enough to steal a few leaves.

Here's the recipe (complete with energy-saving digression) if you want to try it. Or improvise from it with what you have in the garden. The beetroot is the only really essential part.


SPRING SALAD OF ROASTED BABY BEETS, GREENS AND FETA

Ingredients (for 2 servings)

6 baby beetroots, topped, tailed and well-washed
3-4 stalks celery, sliced
baby green leaves (lettuce, rocket, mesclun), torn if too large to eat whole
fresh herbs (basil, chives, chervil), torn or chopped
50 g feta cheese (organic sheep's feta is delicious)
balsamic vinegar
extra virgin olive oil

Method

Heat the oven to 220 degrees C.
Put a tablespoon of oil in a roasting dish, and roll the beets in it.
Put them in to roast for 15 minutes at full heat;
turn the oven off and let them finish cooking as the oven cools.

[This works, and saves power, which of course is what every ECO-Gardener
wants to do. Even better - and this is what I did today - is to never turn the oven on to cook only one thing. Today I started the beets off in the high heat needed to cook a batch of scones, with the beets in the middle of the oven and the tray of scones at the top. When the scones came out the oven was turned off.]

When the beets are cooked, let them cool, then skin them and slice them into
bite-sized pieces.
Add them to the salad bowl containing the celery, green leaves, herbs and crumbled feta.
Toss the salad in a dressing of one part balsamic vinegar to four parts extra virgin olive oil.

Adventures of Wilby, Part the Eleventh

[Help! Wilby heard himself mentioned on the Radio New Zealand National Afternoons programme today and now thinks he deserves pride of place on my home page! For such a small dog he is very pushy. Should I have given in? The Eco-Gardener]

                                                       Pushy?? Moi??



In Which Wilby Finds Work To his Liking, 
And Shares A Favourite Recipe

Really, I am kept so busy supervising all the building and gardening work going on around this place I wonder where the Eco-Gardener thinks I get the time to be pushy. Or the energy. I am usually worn out by afternoon tea time, and much in need of my special biscuit. Yet on Thursday afternoon, instead of being offered my biscuit, the E-G hauled me out to the car, and told me she had a special job for me.

I was extremely dubious about this, and looked around to see if she had a bucket of sudsy water and a cleaning cloth, or other such horrid things. But no, she opened the front passenger door, and motioned me inside. At this point I realised that she did have a cleaning job in mind, but an extremely specialised one, to which I was particularly suited. On the floor of the car was a quite delicious mess. Small pieces and crumbs of Orange Honey Polenta Cake were strewn everywhere, while a long strip of mascarpone was schmeared right where a passenger's toes would usually go.

Apparently she had managed to drive this cake on its tray right over the long winding hill road to Diamond Harbour for a special celebration, but only 50 metres from her destination she had to brake sharply when a car came round a blind corner, and - calamity! Well, for the appearance of the cake, anyway. Not for its taste, and not for the interior of the car either, because after my expert attentions not one trace of the accident was left.

The only downside to working so hard at this cleaning job, when I should have been on my break, was that I was not rewarded with a biscuit afterwards. Can you believe it?! As they say - it's a dog's life. Nevertheless, I have prevailed upon the E-G to type up the biscuit recipe, and make it available here, so if the Master of Good Hope is reading this, I hope he makes a copy. Enjoy!


PEANUT BUTTER AND VANILLA DOG TREAT BISCUITS


Ingredients

1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cups cooking oil
2 eggs
3-4 tablespoons peanut butter
1-2 teaspoons vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1  cup unbleached white flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup rolled oats

Additional flour for rolling

Method

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C.

Mix the water, oil, eggs, peanut butter, and vanilla together with a wire whisk.
Add the flours, cornmeal, and oats.
Combine with a mixer, or just beat well by hand.
Add more flour if the dough is too wet to work easily.

Take half the dough and place it on a floured surface.
Flour the top of dough.
Knead it gently, adding more flour if necessary to form a pliable dough.
Roll the dough out to around 1 cm inch thickness and cut it into
shapes using cookie cutters.
Repeat until all the dough is used.

Place the biscuits on an ungreased baking tray.
Bake for 20-25 minutes, depending on the thickness of the biscuits.
Leave then in the oven for 20 minutes after turning the oven off,
to crisp.
Cool on a wire rack. When cold, store in an airtight container.

Delicious Citrus

         Meyer lemons














The latitude (43 degrees 38 minutes South), and location (about 1.5 km inland), of my garden mitigates against growing any citrus fruit easily or well - except for the very hardy Meyer lemon. I do have a kumquat, a Tahitian lime, a kaffir lime, and a limequat planted in large decorative pots, which can be kept out of the frost. The kumquat has produced one fruit so far, and the limequat has yet to strut its stuff, but the Tahitian lime usually has one or two edible-size fruits on it most of the year, and the kaffir lime leaves stay green (if a little stressed) throughout winter. They add an authentic flavour to Thai-style stir fries any time of the year.

My two Meyer lemon trees (one big and old, one small and new) are both prolific fruiters, and at any time of the year there are usually enough lemons on one tree or the other to make 4/3/2/ Lemon Cordial. I put together this recipe after studying several others, creating one which has less sugar than most (standard recipes have equal parts sugar and water). It also has  proportions of ingredients which are easy to remember. Another tweak on standard recipes is that I wait until the rest of the cordial is cool before adding the lemon juice, so as not to destroy its Vitamin C. Neither of these changes seem to affect the keeping qualities of the cordial unduly, although I do keep it in the fridge. The cordial makes a lovely gift, especially for someone who is feeling poorly and wants a drink with a difference.

Lemon (and orange) juice and zest are also essential for the best gluten-free cake recipe in the world. That's not just my gluten-tolerant opinion, but also that of a friend with whom I shared the recipe (and large slices of cake) who wrote ''Very much appreciated!  It is the best cake I've eaten since forced to be gluten free over 20 years ago!'' The recipe comes from my favourite food writer, Nigel Slater, whose recipes are always delicious, and never difficult. The thing I really like about his Orange Honey Polenta Cake recipe is that it tastes like it was meant to be made this way, for maximum pleasure, not like somebody left out the wheat flour by accident or design. Enjoy!




             Kaffir lime leaves

             
        

Chindogu plant breeding

In the late 1990s my nephew Michael (then aged 10 or 11) introduced me to the amusing concept and practice of Chindogu. Chindogu is Japanese for 'unusual tool', and Chindogu inventions have the interesting quality of seeming to be useful, but actually being more trouble than they are worth.

A classic example is a toilet roll mounted on the head, dispensing tissues straight to the nose of someone suffering from a cold. More convenient? Maybe. Silly? Definitely. A lot of trouble for little reward? Undoubtedly.

A classic chindogu.

Michael and I had a lot of fun thinking up our own Chindogus, such as sports shoes with hollow soles which you could fill with cream. Then while you did aerobics you would churn the cream into butter.

The Chindogu craze passed (although it still has its aficionados), and I hadn't thought much about it until the other day, when I saw yet another article in New Scientist magazine claiming that nature is deficient, and we need genetic engineering to 'fix' it. The on-line version of the article is headed 'Supercrops: fixing the flaws in photosynthesis' and continues ''Many vital crops capture the sun's energy in a surprisingly inefficient way. A borrowed trick or two could make them far more productive.'' The Australia New Zealand print edition of the magazine (No 2777, 11 September 2010) heads the same article ''Supercrops! With ever more mouths to feed, we really need to pull something special out of the hat, says Debora Mackenzie.''

The article is typical of most popular science accounts of genetic engineering, in that it conflates producing more crops and animals with feeding more people, when there is no necessary connection at all. Whole books have been written on this subject, and I won't reprise them here. (You can my read my review of one of the latest, Jack Heinemann's Hope Not Hype in My Back Garden).

The diversion of human and natural resources from ensuring food security for all, to profiteering from genetic engineering for a few, is a tragedy of global proportions. The technology of genetic engineering itself, however, is a true chindogu - it works, it looks like it is useful, but it is really far more trouble and not as effective as the usual alternatives.

I just wrote a letter on this subject to New Scientist (below). Let's see if they publish it.

Whenever I read articles like 'Supercrops!' (No 2777, p. 40) I think that the magazine needs a Chindogu section. It should go just before Feedback, since although Chindogu inventions do actually work (unlike the scams covered in Feedback), like those scams they involve a lot of effort and ingenuity aimed at solving a problem which we don't actually have. The world does not have a plant breeding problem for which genetic engineering is a good solution; it has hunger, malnutrition and over-population problems which have political, economic and social causes and solutions.


As far as improving plant breeding goes it is the science of epigenetics, not the technology of genetic engineering, which has the most to contribute to producing crops that are optimally adapted to rapidly changing climatic conditions. Scientists need to be working in the field with producers to catch up with what nature is already doing, not stuck in labs second-guessing which genes might be useful. This is a clumsy, expensive and wrong-headed way to proceed. Yet this is what states and corporations are funding to the tune of billions of dollars, while field work is desperately under-funded. The reasons for this are political - which is why New Scientist should not give Chindogus like genetic engineering the space that should be reserved for real science with real uses.

Food from Seed

All the food in the world starts with a seed. Even for carnivores, since they eat herbivores, and herbivores eat plants that grow from seeds. Now that I have a re-built potting shed, and a brand new greenhouse, I am raising a lot more of my own vegetable plants from seed. I find that it is such a rewarding thing to do.

As well as having seedlings ready to plant out exactly when I need them, it
also means that I am able to eat varieties of vegetables that are seldom or never sold as as seedling plants in garden centres, and are certainly not available in supermarkets. Most garden centres, and all supermarkets, go for bulk, and for bland - not for special and tasty.

When you raise your own plants from seed, you can have quantity and quality.
That's what I am aiming for with the just-sprouting zucchini seedlings pictured above. I have very dark green 'Black Beauty', the speckled mid-green and ribbed Italian heirloom variety  'Costata Romanesca' (or Romanesco - the seed packet names vary) and the new yellow hybrid 'Gold Rush'.

I love checking and watering the seed pots every morning, just to see the everyday miracle of a seed pushing up through the soil. The big seeds like pumpkins do this in a most satisfying way, cracking and heaving the potting mix before finally breaking through, often with tiny remnants of the seed coat on their leaves.

Where does one get these special seeds from? Watch this space...

Peach Blossom Haiku

A fascinator
on the tiny peach
of drying blossom

Diana Levy 

Diana is another Eco-Gardener. She also writes haiku. Read more about Diana and her haiku here, and expect to enjoy more of her garden haiku on these pages.

Conservation Week in the Eco-Garden

This week (September 12-19) is Conservation Week in New Zealand. I am just a teeny bit cynical about the way we now have days, weeks, and sometimes longer periods for things which are patently worth having or doing all year round. It smacks ever so slightly of the people who go to church on Sunday to pray to God to give them strength to [do bad things] on Monday. But taking the charitable view, it does provide a focus for publicity and education on important issues,  which hopefully grabs the attention and imagination of those who would not otherwise have known or cared much about the issue.

This year Conservation Week has provided me with an opportunity to reflect on the many ways in which an eco-garden is a conservation garden, and how this works. Here are some of my ideas.

An eco-gardener conserves nature by

(1) Growing indigenous plants (especially those which are rare, endangered, and/or endemic).

(2) Growing plants which provide habitat and food for indigenous animals.
(Native trees with nectar and berries are best for native birds, but some exotic trees e.g. winter-flowering eucalyptus and tree lucerne, also provide great bird tucker.)

(3) Keeping the ground covered with plants or mulches to conserve water.

(4) Returning all organic wastes to the soil to conserve carbon, nitrogen and other essential elements.

(5) Using non-toxic methods of weed and pest control.

A garden is Art as well as Nature, but I think of eco-gardening as Second Nature. The default position for anyone who wants a garden which is full of wonder, and not too much work.

Kaka beak (Clianthus puniceus) is endemic to New Zealand, and is now very rare in the wild.  It is a beautiful flowering shrub which is popular with bees, and bellbirds.

The Vanilla Scent of Spring

For the past week I have been enjoying the delicious vanilla scent of the Chilean vanilla tree, Azara microphylla, wafting through my garden. My parents grew this small evergreen tree in their garden, and I have always tried to find room for it in my gardens ever since. It is a narrow tree, and although it is evergreen its leaves are so small, and its branches so widely spaced, and so fine, that it never seems too dark and heavy.  Its maximum height is around 6 metres, but 5 metres is more usual.

Its native habitat is the mountains of southern South America (mainly Chile and Argentina). This makes it a good partner with New Zealand native trees in a mixed planting, since its form and its soil preferences are very compatible. Its flowers are tiny yellow pompoms, drenched with scent that can travel as far as 20 metres through the garden on a still day.

It is not a flashy tree, and it only does one thing really well. But it does this  so well that every September I know that spring has truly arrived when I inhale that lovely vanilla fragrance.

A spray of vanilla tree flowers.

The Garden Survives A Quake Up

The big 7.1 earthquake that hit Canterbury at 4.35 a.m. on Saturday September 4 did no damage to our house or contents. The 108 year old house rocked on its massive totara piles, and rattled its sash windows mightily, but it was all sound and no fury. The cheap vernacular materials of a century ago (wooden weather boards and corrugated iron roof and siding) stood up to the earth's forces much better than some modern materials, or unstrengthened nineteenth century concrete and brick.

The garden was not shaken up at all. The trees stand tall, and the weeds are just as hard to pull out as ever. The very wet weather we had in August did much more harm to the surrounding hills and their roads than the quake and its aftershocks have done. Wherever there are no trees to hold the soft, fine loess soil, and the ground gets saturated, the land is prone to slips. Some of these bring down big rocks with them.

The brand-new glasshouse built by the Eco-Forester last month is as sound as it was the day before the quake, and none of the pots and trays of seeds and seedlings came off the shelves. In the potting shed a dozen or so of the smallest empty pots came down in a shower around Wilby's bed, no doubt startling him, but (thank goodness) the few heavier items stayed put.

As far as the garden is concerned, then, it is business as usual – and this month's business is spring. Budding, blossoming, sprouting and all that stuff. It was a consolation, as the aftershocks continued, to be out in the garden (where they are much less noticeable than in the house) and to see the small pink plum blossoms and fat white magnolia buds begin to unfold. Also to pick a spray of scented osmanthus to take to a housebound friend whose nerves were on earthquake edge.

Magnolia denudata, 14 September 2010

Wilby, Terrieriste, in the garden

Blog and dog. As well as rhyming, what else do they have in common? For me they go together, because while I was creating this blog, I was also looking after a dog. In both cases, this was a first for me. The dog didn't seem to notice, and he turned out to be quite keen on blogging himself. In fact, he virtually demanded that I write down his adventures, inside and outside the garden, and put them on the blog.

Since he was with me at a particularly exciting time (a 7.1 earthquake followed by dozens of big aftershocks) it seemed like a good idea to record the experience. It helped steady my nerves, at any rate. Wilby was much more relaxed about the whole thing, as you can read in Adventures of Wilby, Terrieriste.

Now that things have quietened down, Wilby seems to be quite happy just to help in the garden. His usual role is to supervise, but occasionally he opts for paws-on participation. For example, the other day he firmed down the soft soil where I had just planted a row of peas by walking on it, leaving a neat row of paw-shaped dents. He is also brilliant at selecting exactly the spot where one should be digging next - by lying on it. The less said about the 'fertiliser' he deposits on the lawn, the better. His bumblebee hunting can also be a bit of concern, especially when it involves (as it usually does) paws on the primulas.

Yet it is clear that he likes the garden as much as I do, in his own special way, so taken all in all we are both happy to be here together.

Wilby graces the ground where two rows of Jersey Bennes

 potatoes have just been planted.

What Is Eco-Gardening?

Eco-Gardening is gardening with Nature, not against it. What is usually understood as organic gardening is a form of eco-gardening, and so is permaculture. These forms of gardening tend to be focused on obtaining a yield that is useful for human comfort and survival, such as food, timber, fibre and medicines. This is extremely important, and a good place to start gardening, but there are many other good reasons to garden without using synthetic and toxic chemicals, and expensive machines which use oil that is in dwindling supply.

The two most important ones are

(1) to make our immediate environment more attractive and healthy for ourselves, and

(2) to make our immediate environment more attractive and healthy for others.

Those others include not just human others, but also the many non-human beings who are sustained by a good garden, and help sustain it in their turn. (Yes, even the cabbage caterpillars.) These beings may be literally microscopic (the billions of miniscule organisms that live in healthy soil, and contribute to plant growth) or they may be much larger, like the kereru (wood pigeons) who live in and around my garden.

Kereru in the cherry plum tree, January 2010

I garden in Aotearoa New Zealand, a country where much of the original native vegetation has been destroyed, and along with it some of the original native bird species. Introduced species have taken their place, and some of those species are harmful to native species. Gardening in New Zealand could easily be characterised as a war against plant and animal pests, that requires vicious chemical bombing campaigns and ruthless exterminations of living things - and to hell with the collateral damage.

Yet whenever I walk in an intact native forest in New Zealand, I marvel at how Nature arranges things so perfectly, with every plant and bird and invertebrate contributing to a beautiful and functional whole. This is what a healthy ecosystem looks like, and this is what I try to emulate in my Eco-Garden. I use a lot of native plants, for their beauty and for their role in attracting native birds and beneficial insects. I chose exotic plants on this basis, and for their ability to fit easily into a low-maintenance, ecosystem style garden.

In the vegetable garden and orchard I grow a lot of non-edible plants, for all sorts of reasons, from improving the soil to attracting predator insects. This is all part of making the productive garden as much like a diverse and self-balancing ecosystem, and as little like an 'efficient' factory, as possible. Nature abhors a monoculture. Humans build factories to produce one thing in one way; Nature always produces many things at once, in many ways, with each contributing to the other. (This is beautifully explained by Piglet the Great, in her treatise on urban sustainability as transcribed by Tony Watkins, which is well worth studying.)

I am not yet as advanced in my use of ecosystem services as Masanobu Fukuoka (whose many clever work-with-Nature farming activities include engaging radishes to do the ploughing), but then I am working in the challenging conditions of a land where the original ecology has been radically disrupted, rather than in the more stable conditions that prevail in Japan. Thus my eco-gardening is still experimental. Yet it is generally successful. The basic principle I try to follow is 'go with the flow', and a lot of my garden observation and cogitation is directed at working out exactly where the flow is going, and how I can gently channel it to my purposes.

You get the picture. From now on, in this blog, I will try to colour it in.

A Gardener's Credo

A Gardener's Credo

What is a garden?

A garden is art.

It is also science; and exercise.

Most of all, it is sustenance.

A garden is first among places,

and gardening is first among pursuits,

in demanding so much of body, mind and heart,

and in giving so much in return.

A garden in the city 

brings colour, scent and flavour

to the concrete wasteland.

A garden in the country says

'I care for more than grass'.

A garden is

a warm sheltered place; a cool shady place;

a stimulation of colours place; a soothing of greens place;

a dry gravel place; a moist moss place;

a bird song place; an insect wings place.

A garden is

roses and rhubarb,

sequoias and see qua,

wildness and weeds.

A garden is everything we can grow,

and whatever we like to grow.

A garden is its own world,

and we make of it what we will.

Christine Dann
September 2010

The garden path in early summer.